Families SA insider says ...

By Lauren Novak, Sam Kelton
Perth Now
July 23, 2014

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/national/families-sa-insider-says-new-childprotection-policies-will-fail-without-extra-resources-to-help-overstretched-social-workers/story-fnii5yv8-1226999289951

Child Development Minister Jennifer Rankine and Premier Jay Weatherill foreshadow a new Royal Commission.

INDEPENDENT psychologists will review employment records of social workers supervising children in state care, in the wake of alleged abuse by a Families SA carer.

Child Development Minister Jennifer Rankine told Parliament today she had instructed her department to hire an independent firm of psychologists to undertake audits of employment records of Families SA residential care workers.

She has also promised to fast-track the hiring of an extra 180 staff with early-childhood education qualifications.

Ms Rankine was updating Parliament on the Government’s response to revelations on Tuesday that a 32-year-old Families SA residential care worker was last month charged with sex offences against seven preschool-aged children in his care.

Premier Jay Weatherill told Parliament if the allegations were proved true “then an evil shadow has descended on our state”.

“The entire community shares a sense of disbelief, anger and hurt that such little children could be subjected to such acts of depravity,” he said.

“We are resolved to support and care for the children and their families and to ensure justice is done.”

Mr Weatherill said the allegations could be referred to the current national royal commission into abuse in institutional care but he expected a state-based royal commission would also be necessary.

Mr Weatherill could not say when this would begin, only that it must not interfere with police investigations or court proceedings.

However, an inquiry could be conducted “in parts” and begin by examining child abuse issues not directly related to that case, he said.

“We are presently giving thought to the terms of reference and we will consult with the Opposition for their views,” Mr Weatherill said.

He also thanked Opposition Leader Steven Marshall for supporting the Government’s response to the allegations and “his kindness to staff who are dealing with these distressing matters”.

A taskforce of child protection, health and police officials is meeting daily to discuss the implications of the allegations.

Ms Rankine said she had instructed the taskforce to put in place individual support plans for each affected victim and their family or carers.

“This plan is to ensure each family has the therapeutic, emotional and victim supports they need at this awful time,” she said.

A principal social worker and two principal psychologists have been appointed to coordinate the support strategy for victims.

EARLIER

A FAMILIES SA insider says a radical rewriting of child-protection policies will be useless without extra resources to help social workers already stretched to breaking point.

In the wake of revelations a man working for Families SA was last month charged with child sex offences against seven preschool-aged children in his care, the State Government has promised an urgent review of policies and processes to shield vulnerable children from predators who use the care system to gain access to them.

But a Families SA worker who contacted The Advertiser said there was no point making major changes without providing extra staff to support them.

The worker, who asked not to be named, said it was unsafe for staff to be left supervising children alone and called for at least two workers to be rostered together at a time.

“We don’t have enough resources to do the job that we’re charged with doing,” she said.

“You can have all of the best policies and practices in the world, if you don’t have the people to do it then it doesn’t work.

“Every week they (case managers) have to decide which cases they’re going to close because there’s not enough resources.

“Every really good thing we’re trying to do here comes down to resources. It has to be a priority.”

While the Government has moved to increase checks on staff working alone with children, it is yet to commit to funding, staffing, or other resources beyond current budgets.

The Government says it will open a royal commission into the case once it is dealt with by the courts, although a national legal body argues investigations should instead be referred to the existing national Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The accused man, 32, from Adelaide’s south, is facing charges of unlawful sexual intercourse involving seven preschool-aged children in state care.

The crimes he is accused of allegedly occurred over 18 months up to late 2012.

Detectives from the Special Crime Investigation Branch have been analysing more than 100,000 images and 600 video files to try to identify alleged victims.

On Wednesday, the State Government revealed that:

THE accused man previously worked for a non-government organisation which supplied contract staff to work in department-run care homes.

HE has been suspended without pay.

LETTERS have been sent to parents at a school where the accused man worked in out-of-school-hours and vacation care, informing them of the sexual abuse of children at a state-run home. Counsellors have also been dispatched to the school.

RECORDS show the man only worked at one Adelaide school.

A taskforce of child protection, health and police officials has begun meeting daily to discuss the wider implications of the case.

It has also emerged that the accused worker had lived in the United States and the extension of investigations there has not been ruled out.

About 30 calls have been made to a hotline established in the wake of the revelations and more are expected.

The Government is facing calls to double the number of staff assigned to supervise children living in state-run homes so workers are not left alone with them.

The public sector union has also raised the idea of installing CCTV surveillance in some care homes.

There are about 300 children in this type of supervised accommodation on any given day because they have been removed from abusive or neglectful parents or guardians.

Social workers supervise the children in three shifts and it is common for only one staffer to be rostered for the night shift.

The union representing Government social workers says some day shifts also are reduced to one worker because of staff shortages and has backed the call for more recruits.

Child Development Minister Jennifer Rankine said there were not currently enough staff employed by Families SA to always roster at least two workers to cover all the activities of children living in residential care.

Ms Rankine said she would work with Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis to see what extra resources could be made available but warned the proposal would take “a lot of additional staff” and it might not be practical.

Ms Rankine said Families SA would increase the number of visits made to check on homes where there is a single worker.

The Government has previously promised to hire 360 extra qualified full-time social workers to supervise children in residential care, and so has recruited about 140.

Public Service Association spokesman Peter Christopher said there was a shortage of about 300 social and youth workers.

“I would imagine budgetary decisions have led to the fact that there’s only single staffing, certainly on all night shifts and also many day shifts,” he said.

The State Government says a review of child protection protocols will prompt “radical” changes.

Families SA will begin an internal review of its child protection policies within weeks and the case will be referred to the state Child Death and Serious Injury Review Committee.

Premier Jay Weatherill said he expected the case would spark a state royal commission but the Australian Lawyers Alliance argues it should be referred to the current national royal commission.

Alliance legal expert Dr Andrew Morrison, a QC and former judge who has been involved in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse abuse for several years, says the existing commission is better equipped and experienced.

“It seems entirely appropriate that they would be the obvious ones to conduct this inquiry,” Dr Morrison said.

However, the SA Law Society backs the idea of a new state royal commission.

EXPERTS GIVE THEIR IDEAS ON SOLVING THIS CRISIS

The role of men:

MEN are unlikely to be precluded from working with children through changes to child-protection policies, but the State Government concedes it must consider “radical” ideas.

Premier Jay Weatherill said the idea that men should not be employed by government in caring roles was raised with him as a result of the arrest of a male Families SA worker on child-sex charges.

However, the union representing social workers warns that if men are removed from the potential workforce “there simply will not be enough workers to actually do the work”.

Public Service Association spokesman Peter Christopher said about half the workforce working with children in state care was male.

“The suggestion that males not work in the environment is going to be a pretty difficult one to sustain,” he said.

“They shouldn’t be tainted by the actions of a person who’s done the wrong thing.”

Mr Christopher said there was already “a significant shortage in finding workers to come into the field”.

“If there was a mandatory decision made on the basis of gender that would, in many cases, cause more problems than it would solve,” he said.

Child Development Minister Jennifer Rankine on Wednesday said there were many “great men” working in child protection “whose every working minute is aimed at keeping children safe”.

She said it would be “a very big call” to preclude them from working with children.

A Families SA worker who contacted The Advertiser, but did not want to be named, said children would be disadvantaged without male carers.

“They need the male role models,” she said.

“We can’t have this blanket ban on men.

“We need (boys in care) to know that there are safe men out there and that they can be a safe man when they grow up.”

The testing process:

CHILD-protection experts warn that abusers seeking jobs working with children are learning to manipulate checks designed to weed out potential abusers.

Workers employed to supervise at-risk children living in state-run homes are subjected to a criminal-history check conducted by police.

They also undergo a child-protection background check conducted by the Social Inclusion and Communities Department to screen for issues that may not have resulted in a conviction but could put children at risk.

Finally, they must pass psychometric testing similar to that applied to SA Police applicants.

However, experts warn some abusers have become adept at manipulating the testing, or hiding their backgrounds. “Perpetrators are very, very good at targeting children that are most vulnerable to not being detected and to not telling anyone,” Australian Centre for Child Protection deputy director Leah Bromfield said.

A Families SA worker who contacted The Advertiser, but did not want to be named, said: “It doesn’t matter what kind of screening processes you have, some of them are going to get through.”

Having a specialised court

A COURT dedicated to dealing with sex-abuse cases, with specialist judges and lawyers trained in child behaviour and development, should be established to enable more successful prosecutions, experts say.

South Australian child protection advocates say such a court would enable more cases involving young children, especially those under seven, to proceed to trial.

This follows comments last week from NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Lloyd Babb at the national royal commission into child sexual abuse that he would like to see a separate court structure to deal with sexual assault cases.

A University of NSW study, Alternative Models for Prosecuting Child Sex Offences in Australia, by Dr Annie Cossins in 2010, made similar recommendations.

UniSA child protection expert Elspeth McInnes said everyone who worked in a child sex offending court would be trained in child development, the impacts of trauma on children, processes and dynamics of offending, perpetrator behaviours and grooming.

“It’s quite a specific skill set. Although there are many cases in the justice system ... judges only see the tiny window of material that’s put before them by defence barristers and the prosecution,” she said.

“What we would need is a different way of obtaining and dealing with the evidence of children, especially young children, because they cannot be questioned and cross-examined.

“We saw this with the bus case (against a bus driver working with children from a special school) where the children had intellectual difficulties that fell through because no one knew how to communicate with them.”

Dr McInnes said a child sex court process would need to be inquisitorial, rather than adversarial between defence and prosecution. She said this would mean questioning would be led by the judge, similar to coronial inquiries.

“The gathering of evidence doesn’t rely on what the prosecution has brought to the table and what the defence has put up for reasonable doubt,” Dr McInnes said.

“You would have people trained in communicating with children convert defence counsel questions into age appropriate language.”

Child protection expert Freda Briggs agreed there needed to be a specialised style of court for child sex abuse cases. She suggested one judged by a panel of child development and abuse experts assisted by a legal officer, similar to a London court she worked in years ago.

Need for resources

THE state care system could face a worsening shortage of social workers following revelations of abuse in Government-run homes, the public sector union is warning.

Public Service Association spokesman Peter Christopher said cases of alleged abuse like that revealed this week could put people off choosing a career in social work.

This would exacerbate existing staff shortages, he said.

“There will be a lot of people who would choose to perhaps undertake other work rather than face the … fact that the job may be seen as tainted in some way,” he said. “I do fear that the issues that have come to light in the last few days will discourage many people from working in the field and particularly working for government.”

Education and Child Development Department deputy chief executive David Waterford on Wednesday said Families SA staff had been left “gutted” by this week’s revelations.

A worker who contacted The Advertiser, but did not want to be named, said Families SA staff felt they were “all tarred” by the allegations against one of their co-workers.

SHOCKED PARENTS LEARN ABOUT ACCUSED

By Doug Robertson and Sam Kelton

AN emotional mother at a southern suburbs school broke down on Wednesday after learning that an alleged sex predator had cared for students.

The woman, who cannot be identified, had just read a letter sent out by the principal informing parents that a man, 32, who was accused of child sex offences at another government institution had worked at the out-of-school-hours care centre.

“Our other son has been abused,’’ she said before being overwhelmed by tears. “Lightning can’t strike twice ... ’’

The accused is no longer at the school, which has offered professional counselling to students and parents.

Another letter outlining the incident was posted to all parents on Tuesday but the school gave students a take-home letter on Wednesday to “complement that information’’.

Several parents told The Advertiser it was the first they had heard of the accusations and the school should have informed them earlier.

“I didn’t really know about it until this morning ... and I’d just dropped off my son,’’ one mother said. “I would have thought something should have been said prior to that.

“I’ve been pretty upset all day thinking about it; it’s such a good school too.

“(The accused) used to come to collect some of the young children from my son’s classroom ... that’s disturbing now to think about.’’

Another mother who has two children at the school said parents should have known that the accused had worked at the school “straight away’’.

“How do they get through the system? You put them in a position of trust with your children,’’ she said.