PARENTS ON DRUGS LOSING CHILDREN TO STATE CARE

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

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

In NSW the number of children on the orders rose by 40 per cent - the
steepest increase of any state - with 8000 children affected in 2001, or
five in every 1000.

Dorothy Scott, an associate professor of social work at the University of
Melbourne, said: "This is a very significant proportion of the community's
children deemed to be in such dire circumstances they require state
intervention."

Care and protection orders are considered measures of last resort. Welfare
departments must apply to courts for an order to be made, and do so when
supervision and counselling have failed.

Professor Scott 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 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 the child.

The director-general of the NSW Department of Community Services, Carmel
Niland, said that in some states it was now easier to get court orders due
to changes in child protection legislation.

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

Ms Niland said anecdotal evidence also suggested many DOCS staff were "risk
averse", as a result of close scrutiny of the department, and "in ambiguous
circumstances they may be more likely to seek to take a child into care".

The report shows most children were on guardianship orders. These are the
most serious kind and involve families losing legal guardianship for a
period of time and children being placed with relatives or foster carers.

A minority were on supervisory orders, meaning they might be allowed to
stay with their parents under supervision.

In NSW, most children were on orders for a relatively short time.

Changes in NSW child protection laws in 2000-01, which extended mandatory
reporting to more professions, 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.

"There's a massive increase in the proportion of children investigated for
abuse though some say many are still missed," said Professor Scott.

"With more cases referred into the system it's likely, if there's a basis
for the concern, that orders for care and protection will increase."