CALL FOR PARENTAL DRUG TESTS

Parents with a history of substance abuse will be drug-tested as a
condition of keeping their children under a NSW Government proposal to curb
child deaths.

The move follows a special investigation by the NSW Child Death Review Team
which found 86 children died between January 1996 and June last year while
in the care of drug-addicted parents.

This was despite up to 70 of the 86 already having been notified to the
Community Services Department.

Community Services Minister Faye Lo Po' said in some cases it was already
known parents were drug-addicted.

However, she said authorities had been forced to accept the word of parents
who had made hollow promises to give up their destructive habits.

She said further advice from the drug and children's courts would be sought
on how drug-addicted parents known to the department as abusive could be
tested before magistrates and judges decide on a child's future.

The testing would occur where a child already removed from the home was
being returned.

"We've taken the word of the parents that they are no longer on drugs, that
they are going to go clean and so on but it hasn't worked," Mrs Lo Po' said.

"We are investigating ... a system where we actually have parents undergo a
drug test to make sure that they are free of drugs before we give back
their children.

"You either keep your habit and lose your children or kick your habit and
have your children back."

Mrs Lo Po' said she would "take on" civil libertarians who threatened to
object to the scheme.

NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People, Gillian Calvert, said
drug-addicted parents often left their children unsupervised while
searching for substances.

Most of the children who died had been infants who were dependent on their
parents for survival, she said.