LOST LIVES

SEVENTY at-risk children have died in NSW during the past three years
despite being known to the Department of Community Services, a new report
has revealed. Even though the department was warned by other agencies or
family members about the plight of the children, who were living with
drug-addicted parents, DOCS staff didn't investigate many cases, the Child
Death Review Team Report found.

The report also found on some occasions, when DOCS decided to investigate
claims of abuse and neglect, its inquiries were "inadequate".

Community Services Minister Faye Lo Po' last night told The Daily Telegraph
she has had a "gutful" of watching unfit parents being given a "second
chance" and has ordered an overhaul of the system including drug testing of
parents.

NSW Children's Commissioner Gillian Calvert said DOCS and the community at
large must be "more vigiliant" in recognising children at risk and
reporting their parents.

The Daily Telegraph last night obtained a breakdown of the ages and gender
of the children who have died. Their names, listed left, have been changed
for legal reasons.

Among the cases cited in the damning report were:

Baby John - the child of methadone- addicted parents - who died at four
months of age.

DOCS staff did not consider hospital staff's information about drug use by
his mother as an official notification, stating they felt "comfortable"
leaving the child with his parents.

Baby Caroline: DOCS received a notification from a relative her mother was
not providing adequate care.

DOCS visited the mother on one occasion at which she denied drug use. The
concerns of the relative were deemed "malicious" in the departmental
report. Caroline was found dead at six months of age, wedged between a
mattress and a lounge.

Baby Dillon: Police told DOCS they found the four-month-old overheated and
distressed in the back seat of a parked car with his mother, would could
not be roused because of drug intoxification.

DOCS didn't not take this as a notification and 10 days later Dillon was
found dead in the back seat of his mother's car.

The report found many notifications were treated as "information only"
meaning DOCS workers were not required to add the information to the
database or even investigate the claims.

The report said the failure of DOCS staff to "accept relevant information
as a notification" was a result of inadequate training or supervision, high
workloads of DOCS staff or "overidentification" with the plight of the parent.

It also expressed concern about inadequate investigation of potential cases
of abuse and neglect by drug-addicted parents.

"This often occurred in cases in which the notification was made by a
relative and deemed to be malicious or ill-founded," the report said.

"Further parent's denial of such allegations were sometimes taken at face
value without corroborative evidence being sought, even though denial of
substance abuse is a well-known clinical feature of addiction."

According to the report's investigation of 86 deaths of children of drug
addicted parents between January 1996 and June 1999, 81 per cent had
previous involvement with DOCS.

Children of drug and alcohol addicted parents were more likely to die from
sudden infant death syndrome, non-accidental injury or from suffocation
from sharing a bed with one of their parents, the report said.

Mrs Lo Po' said authorities had been forced to accept the word of parents
who had made hollow promises to give up their destructive habits.

She has demanded more information from the child death review team on the
children who were known to her department.

"I've had a gutful - and I think the community has as well - of watching
parents who are unfit to be parents, taking their children back and
wrecking their lives one more time," Mrs Lo Po' told The Daily Telegraph
last night.