Kids in foster care after child is smacked by grandparents

FOUR children were removed from their grandparents' care and separated, allegedly because the grandmother smacked one of them.

FOUR children were removed from their grandparents' care and put into separate foster homes, allegedly because the grandmother smacked one of them on the bottom after the child tried to climb into a drain.

The children had lived on and off with their grandparents for six years while their mother battled drug addiction. The children were removed in December by the NSW Department of Community Services and have been living in foster homes, separated from each other.

Details of the case are included in a submission to the Wood inquiry into child welfare, kept secret by inquiry staff but obtained by The Australian.

The inquiry is investigating the system of child welfare in NSW, but intends to keep secret 90per cent of the submissions it receives.

The Australian has been publishing some of the secret submissions this week, with the permission of the authors.

A woman who is close to the grandparent case, who cannot be named because it would identify the children, said the four siblings, had been "in and out" of their grandparents' home for years.

"Those grandparents loved those kids," she said.

"They were really nice people. They weren't hitting the kids willy-nilly.

"What happened was, the children had been with their mum and it had gone badly wrong again.

"They were put with the grandparents and the idea was to try to make it more permanent."

Such permanent placements are often resisted by parents, because it means they lose not only their children but the Centrelink and other benefits associated with being full-time carers.

The woman said the grandmother "saw the littlest one heading down a drain pipe and grabbed him with one hand and smacked him.

"It was shock. It was sudden, like a moment of frustration, or fright, a startled reflex."

Soon after the incident, DOCS case workers visited the children at school to interview them, as part of the process of making the placement with the grandparents permanent. "They said to the little one: do your grandparents ever hit you, or smack you? And of course he said: 'Yes, she smacked me last week.'

"He was just telling the truth and it spiralled from there."

The children were immediately removed from the grandparents' home "and because they couldn't find emergency carers to take all four of them, they were split up.

"Never mind the grandparents for a minute. It's very traumatic for small children. It's like they are being punished.

"Somebody just picked them up and removed them, and they were put in another family with people they'd never met."

The grandparents appealed to the Administrative Decisions Tribunal and the case is now under review.

"The problem is, it takes time," the woman said.

"The children were removed before Christmas, so it's been nine months, and nine months is a long time in anybody's life, and a long time in a child's life."

She said the grandparents, who lived in Blacktown in Sydney's west, "loved their grandchildren and would have turned themselves inside out for the children".

The submission to the inquiry by retired NSW Supreme Court judge James Wood says the grandparents "had received no advice or training from the department that carers are not permitted to smack children in their care at any time".

The submission says: "Grandparents often face the reality of managing their own care and that of their ageing partner while dealing with child rearing."

It says: "In many ways, their lives are more difficult than foster carers because of emotional ties with the families."

The Foster Care Association was stripped of its annual funding this year, a decision it intends to appeal against.

The association said it often provided advice and support to grandparents whose grandchildren were being taken from them at the department's behest.