PARENTS' DRUG ABUSE HITS CHILDREN

Drug-addicted parents are the main reason for a dramatic rise in the number
of children on care and protection orders, according to a child abuse expert.

Almost 20,000 children were subject to care and protection orders in 2001,
a 26 per cent increase since June, 1997, a report by the Australian
Institute of Health and Welfare showed.

In New South Wales, the number of children on the orders rose 40 per cent -
the steepest increase of any state - with 8000 children affected in 2001.

Care and protection orders are considered last-recourse measures after
supervision and counselling have failed, and are a barometer of the welfare
of Australia's children.

Child welfare expert Dorothy Scott, who is associate professor of social
work at Melbourne University, said a new generation of parents with serious
drug problems was one of the main reasons for the increase: "Their children
are often in a parlous state," she said.

She said drug and alcohol services still treated clients as if they were
childless, and needed to become much more "family-friendly."

As well, more people with serious mental illness and intellectual
impairment had children. "In the past, these people were sterilised, in
institutions or denied reproductive rights," she said.

"Now most are in the community and many are sexually active."

The report says the main reasons for children being placed on orders
include substantiated child abuse and neglect, irretrievable breakdown in
the relationship between parents and children, and a parent's inability or
unwillingness to care for a child.

The director of the NSW Department of Community Services, Carmel Niland,
said: "As well as the escalation in parents with addiction problems and
intellectual impairment, high numbers of parents are itinerant, living in
caravan parks, one jump ahead of the rent man.

"Many are driven by gambling debts and live a marginal existence."

The report shows most children were on guardianship orders - the most
serious kind - when families lose legal guardianship for a time, and
children are placed with relatives or foster carers.

Changes in NSW laws in 2000-01 that extended mandatory reporting to more
professionals also produced a big increase in the number of notifications
of child abuse, rising from 30,398 in 1999-2000 to almost 41,000 the
following year.