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CHILDREN as young as five have been assaulted, starved and improperly restrained after being placed in protective care in Western Australia. With governments under fire for their mishandling of child abuse cases across the nation, a damning 185-page report was tabled yesterday in Perth outlining how authorities continue to fail vulnerable children. While criminal charges have been laid, federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said yesterday there needed to be uniform national child protection laws. Western Australia's Ombudsman, Deirdre O'Donnell, revealed the embattled Department for Community Development had failed to investigate properly the allegations of serious abuse. Questions were also raised in the NSW Parliament yesterday about the death of a baby born to a methadone-dependent mother. The ACT Government is under fire over the deaths of five children in state care. In response to the findings, West Australian Community Development Minister David Templeman would only confirm that two DCD staff had been removed and another was still being investigated. He refused to elaborate on the nature of the criminal charges. The report has put more pressure on the Carpenter Government to call a royal commission into the workings of the department, which has been under constant attack after a succession of scandals involving children in its care. The state's strict whistleblower laws stopped Ms O'Donnell revealing more details about the abuse claims in her report. She said she would raise with the Government difficulties the provisions placed on her reporting. It comes after state Coroner Alastair Hope handed down his findings into the death of baby Wade Scale, who died in a bath after being heavily sedated. The DCD gave the 11-month-old back to his drug-addicted mother and her convicted baby-basher de facto husband just weeks before the toddler died. Yesterday's report revealed the whistleblower was fobbed off by the DCD in 2003 with claims about insufficient evidence and told that "systems are not necessarily perfect". The Ombudsman's office became involved after the whistleblower complained about the department's inaction. After investigating, Ms O'Donnell not only found serious flaws but called on the department to apologise to the informant for the anxiety caused by its "inadequate" investigation. DCD hostels house some of the state's most troubled youngsters, many of whom have serious behavioural problems and a history of neglect and abuse. Ms O'Donnell said the issues continued to be relevant to what was occurring in the department's facilities today, despite changes to policies and procedures made in the interim. She noted the department had still not reviewed its hostel system in 2003 when the allegations were raised, despite being warned in a 2001 report that it had "lost the capacity to deal effectively with the high-risk children and young persons in its residential care." Opposition spokeswoman Robyn McSweeney said it was a disgrace. "It's report after report and it was only after the Ombudsman came sniffing around that this department once again started covering its butt. I'm very angry 15 per cent of these children in hostels are under 10 years of age." The report details disturbing claims by caseworkers and other staff about the "detention centre" culture of the hostels. Mr Templeman said he was confident the department had learned from its mistakes and had accepted all 24 recommendations in the report, covering improvements to staff training, educating children about their rights, procedural reviews and changes. In calling for uniform laws, Mr Ruddock said: "It is very desirable that (child protection) laws across Australia are both, in legal terms and in terms of administration, harmoniously dealt with. "That is, it is undesirable to have substantial differences in treatment depending on where you live in Australia. So that poses a very significant demand in my view for states and territories to work at ensuring substantive differences don't arrive and to properly resource organisations like the Department of Community Services to ensure the children's needs are properly addressed." In NSW, calculations based on DOCS's annual statistics show almost half of all initial assessments deemed by DOCS Helpline workers to be worthy of further investigation were never followed up. The Australian (1-9-2006) Amanda O'Brien/ Tony Barrass |
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