Vulnerable and neglected children worse off under BrumbyFriday, January 29, 2010
Today’s Productivity Commission Report on Government Services paints a damning picture of child protection services under the Brumby Government and reveals how Victoria’s most vulnerable children have been exposed to repeat traumatisation and neglect, Shadow Minister for Community Services Mary Wooldridge said today. "Over the past ten years, Victoria has gone from spending the most on our children in child protection and out-of-home care to spending less than any other state or territory government in Australia," Ms Wooldridge said. "This is the second year in a row that Victoria has been the lowest spending state on these vital services. The report also reveals that 98 children who left the care of the government in 2008-09 had at least six carers in either foster care, residential care or with a relative, and of those, 25 had 11 or more care placements over several years," Ms Wooldridge said. Of the more than 1,072 children who left state care in that year, almost 40 per cent had three or more placements, and some had been in the child protection system for less than six months – a damming reflection on the Brumby Government’s management of child protection. "It’s totally unacceptable that vulnerable children are re-traumatised by being bounced around a bureaucratic system without a proper place to call home," Ms Wooldridge said. The report is yet another example that highlights the incompetence of the Minister for Community Services, and her failure to invest in a system that appropriately cares for vulnerable Victorian children. The findings of today’s report come off the back of a damning Ombudsman’s report in November 2009 which found that the Brumby Labor Government failed to protect vulnerable children from being injured and neglected, manipulated child protection records and allowed the child protection system to fall into crisis amidst systematic incompetence and negligence. "It is a scathing indictment on John Brumby when vulnerable children, who depend on his Government for care and protection, are those who are most neglected," Ms Wooldridge said. "This is just another failure by the Minister for Community Services in a long list of failures, and proves the Brumby Government cannot be trusted to protect our most vulnerable children."
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| [ Copyright Mary Wooldridge © 2009 | Privacy | Disclaimer | Website by Peter Wiseman | Admin ] |
