Day care putting children at risk

Australia's early childhood services are among the worst in the developed world, according to a UNICEF report that warns of the risk of placing children in care before the age of one.

Among 25 developed countries Australia ranks third last, meeting only two of 10 benchmarks considered essential to protect children in their formative early years.

Only Sweden meets all the standards but Australia is one of only three countries, with Ireland and Canada, to meet less than three. Mexico, Slovenia, Portugal and Korea are all ranked well ahead of Australia.

The report, called The Child Care Transition, describes the mass movement to child care as a "high-stakes gamble" to the extent it is unplanned and unmonitored.

It proposes an internationally applicable set of 10 core minimum standards drawn up after worldwide consultations as a first attempt at comparing early childhood services.

Australia fails to meet standards on minimum staff-to-children ratios in pre-school education set at 1:15. It fails on a measure of having 80 per cent of all child-care staff trained. The Government also fails to spend 1 per cent of GDP on early childhood services.

We do not provide subsidised and accredited early education services for 80 per cent of four-year-olds; and unlike most of the other countries in the survey, we have no national child-care strategy that gives priority to disadvantaged children.

We do not provide near-universal outreach of essential child health services. Child poverty rates exceed 10 per cent. And Australia is one of a handful of countries that fails to provide parental leave of one year at 50 per cent of salary.

The only standards Australia meets are the provision of subsidised and regulated child care for 25 per cent of children under three. And 50 per cent of child-care staff have relevant qualifications.

The report, which draws on global and scientific studies, favours children being cared for at home for the first year of their life. It notes that when parents have choice, including financial support, they have tended to vote with their feet, with nursery care plummeting in Sweden after the introduction of 12 months' parental leave at 80 per cent of salary.

The report says that the mass movement of young children into child care is a revolution in how children are being brought up in developed countries.

At the same time a revolution has occurred in understanding the importance of experience in shaping the infant brain.

"Today's rising generation … is the first in which a majority are spending a large part of their early childhoods not in their own homes with their own families but in some form of child care," the report says.

Child-care staff were working incredibly hard but under appalling circumstances, said Associate Professor Margaret Sims, director of the Centre for Social Research at Edith Cowan University.

Dr Sims said inadequate care had led to a generation of maladjusted children. "We've seen increases in youth violence, drug and alcohol addiction, obesity."

Lynne Wannan, the past national convenor of the community-based children services sector, said Australia had allowed too much child care to go into private hands, and the private sector was a strong lobby against improved ratios and qualifications.

Quote: In addition day care is also for lazy parents and (especially lazy mothers, some with better things to do) who don't want to raise their children, even if the children's father can provide enough money for the children's mother to stay home and look after them. So in reality, unnecessary day care could be seen as neglect.

Greens to host childcare summit in SA

Childcare providers in South Australia will get to have their say about the future of the sector at meeting.

The Australian Greens will host the meeting on Wednesday prompted by the fall of ABC Learning, which has been placed in voluntary receivership.

On Tuesday, CFK Childcare Centres, the operator of 43 childcare centres in NSW, announced it had gone into voluntary administration due to a failed asset sell-off to ABC Learning Centres Ltd.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the Adelaide meeting was an opportunity to hear first-hand from the private and not-for-profit sector.

"This meeting in Adelaide is a first step in opening those lines of communication, creating a dialogue, and learning from those who are working on the ground as to how to stabilise and improve childcare provision in Australia," Senator Hanson-Young said.

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Gillard flags childcare rethink
Ms Gillard has blamed the Howard Government for letting the private childcare industry run unchecked with no national standards.

Child care for people not profit! The future of childcare services in Australia has been brought into question by the financial collapse of ABC Learning, the largest childcare provider in the country. Its collapse, and government responses to it, reveal much about how public services and private profit interact in Australian society.

What does the Melamine- laced milk disaster have in common with the collapse of the childcare giant ABC Learning? The failure of commercial childcare and the disaster of the melamine toxic milk episode lead us to examine how 20th century capitalism has exploited women and their babies and children. Women’s dissatisfaction whilst caring at home has been amply described by Betty Freidan and others. Their factual reports of the unhappy lives of many a suburban mother and housewife contributed in some part to the mass co-option of discontented women into the workforce.

Gillard flags childcare rethink

Government will look at childcare industry: Julia Gillard

Ms Gillard has blamed the Howard Government for letting the private childcare industry run unchecked with no national standards.

She said that it is vital for the Government to manage the system and it must respond to the failure of ABC Learning.

"We are in a difficult situation and we've ended up here because the former government took the caps off childcare places and then just let the market rip," she said.

"They had no plan for market design, they had no workforce plan, no quality plan - they just let it go with their eyes shut.

"We want to make sure we've got a child care system that is stable for the future.

"That doesn't mean that there won't be private providers. But how this market works, how it is managed, is a question for the Government."

ABC Learning, which provides care for over 100,000 children, was placed in voluntary administration yesterday.

A Government taskforce has been monitoring the child care provider since September.

The centres remain open for now but Ms Gillard has not yet confirmed if the Government will provide any bailout funds to keep them running or whether they will guarantee entitlements for its employees if the centres close.

There are around 16,000 staff employed in ABC Learning Centres in over 1,000 centres across the country.

The company was placed in voluntary administration yesterday and owes more than $1 billion.

Community operators keen to step into ABC void

The community childcare sector should take over the running of ABC Learning centres in the wake of the company's collapse, a community childcare advocate says.

The spectacular collapse of the childcare giant, which controls around 25 per cent of the market in Australia, has raised questions about how a private operator was allowed to build up such a stake.

Lynne Wannan, the immediate past convenor of the National Association of Community Based Children's Services, says it would be "foolish" to let the company return to its previous business model.

"It is extraordinary to imagine that they would ever have been able to see you could return shares to shareholders. So there was no other route for them than to end up like this," she said.

"To imagine that you are ever going to have millions and billions of dollars t2o return to shareholders and banks based on the revenue that you get from childcare is ludicrous."

She says the community-based sector is in a strong position to take over ABC Learning centres, with just a minimal increase in workload.

"It is not a complex task to manage children's centres and those community ones that have been operating for 30 to 40 years, they can do it. They manage. That is what they do on a day-to-day basis," she said.

If community operators are to step in, they will need the Government to use its capital to secure the buildings, Ms Wannan says.

Receivers McGrathNicol have taken control of ABC Learning and moved to assure parents that fees will not rise.

But Ms Wannan says it is inevitable costs will be trimmed.

"To try and generate the surplus that you need to repay shareholders, what you have to do is cut your costs considerably and it is unfortunate but ABC has had a very long record of all sorts of cost cutting," she said.

"You would hope that we would finally get the better ratios, the better qualifications of staff, improvements to all sorts of things including food and the rest of it that has really dogged ABC throughout its existence."

Gillard commits $22m to keep ABC Learning open

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard says the Government will provide up to $22 million in funding to keep ABC Learning centres open until the end of the year.

Yesterday the childcare company was put into voluntary administration and has revealed it is $1 billion in debt.

Ms Gillard says preliminary data shows 40 per cent of the company's 1,040 centres are unprofitable.

"The $22 million represents the possible costs of supporting the continued operation of these centres for two months and will allow parents to have certainty that childcare will be provided as usual," she said.

"It is there to bridge the gap between the costs of operating the unprofitable centres and the amount that is raised through their operation."

However, the funding is conditional on further figures being provided by receivers about the unprofitability of some of the centres.

Ms Gillard says until December the receivers will work with the Government taskforce to conduct a review of the company's operations and the Government will also fund some of the receivers' costs.

The Government also expects to make a further announcement about the company's future by mid-December.

But Ms Gillard says it should not be assumed that centres will close on December 31.

"This period will be used to work through the arrangements beyond the 31st of December," she said.

"We will obviously be as transparent and upfront with people as we can ... and make sure they understand what the future of their centre is."

"Our priority has been and continues to be providing child care to mums and dads who need it."

Ms Gillard has reiterated to the company's workers that it is "business as usual" until the end of the year but entitlements are a matter for the receiver.

"On the question of accrued entitlements, obviously the ability of ABC Learning to meet those entitlements is first and foremost a question for the receiver and should be directed to him," she said.

More than 100,000 children attend the ABC Learning centres across the country, which also have over 10,000 employees.

Parents lack life skills, means, time: Stanley

ONE in five Australian parents are poor caregivers because they don't have the means or life skills, child health expert Professor Fiona Stanley says.

she said many others could not devote enough time to their kids because of excessive job commitments.

"If we don't respond to these challenges ... we will be looking at our generation, my generation, as being the last generation that lives longer than its parents," Prof Stanley said.

"If you look at the overall trend in many problems, they are actually showing no improvement and some of them are getting dramatically worse."

Mental illness, obesity, asthma and substance abuse were the biggest health risks for Australian kids.

"Family life has changed a lot," Prof Stanley said.

"You've got more hours of work, you've got more women working, but without men, or the business world or government, actually coming forward with really good childcare.

"So who's responsible for the children when a high proportion of women are working?

"That's been very detrimental to children."

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Taking the scalpel to DOCS

Overloaded on one front, the state's child protection agency fails all.

When the body of a boy was found in a suitcase last year, and a girl was later found starved to death, the State Government could no longer ignore the calls for a major inquiry into the state's child protection system.

People wanted answers: why wasn't the Department of Community Services there earlier? How could problems escalate to the point of tragedy?

As evidence unfolded at the inquiry under Justice James Wood, it seemed miraculous the number of child deaths was not higher. Only a fraction of the tens of thousands of children reported to DOCS each year because of fears about their welfare and safety is removed from their families. Most reported children remain with their parents. But these parents receive little or no help for their drug addiction, depression, domestic violence, or poor parenting skills - the problems that prompted someone to make a report to DOCS in the first place.

"People assume because a child is in the child protection system he or she is getting help, but usually they don't get anything, and certainly not the intensive family support they need," says Jane Woodruff, chief executive of Burnside, a non-government child welfare agency.

It is this wider story of state neglect - of a failure of DOCS to intervene early before problems escalate into crises or tragedies - that has given rise to calls for radical change in the child protection system.

Justice Wood, who will present his blueprint to the Government in a few weeks, has been urged to make the sort of sweeping changes that happened in Victoria, Queensland and West Australia in recent years. Some believe DOCS is beyond saving. No amount of tinkering or infusion of money, they argue, can fix what they see as an overwhelmed, defensive and ineffectual bureaucracy.

"DOCS needs to be broken up," says Louise Voigt, chief executive of the non-government child welfare agency Barnardos.

Woodruff and Voigt want the department shrunk, not expanded, and they want it to get out of the way of non-government child welfare agencies, such as Barnardos, the Benevolent Society, Wesley Dalmar and Burnside, which would play a much bigger role in a revamped system. They want a pared-down Department of Child Safety to replace DOCS. Its sole function would be to investigate the most serious reports of suspected abuse and neglect, to take court action, and to remove children if necessary.

And to stop the new department from being overwhelmed by reports, as now happens with DOCS, the threshold for mandatory reporting by doctors, police, teachers and child-care workers would need to be raised.

Voigt, Woodruff and many others advocate lifting the bar so that only children "at risk of significant harm" would have to be reported to a statutory agency. Under the current definition, police, for instance, report every child at a domestic violence incident, swamping the DOCS helpline in the process. No discretion is allowed.

In separate submissions, Voigt and Woodruff are also calling for a second agency - a Department of Families, Children and Communities - to be established to help all families and children, but especially those "in need". This department would take over much of the other work DOCS is supposed to do but does badly because of its child protection workload. These duties include early intervention and foster care, but the proposed new department would contract the non-government children's agencies to do on-the-ground work with families.

"The aim is to enhance the efficacy of prevention and early intervention services," says Woodruff.

It is a bold vision but not everyone thinks such a radical restructure is the answer. Splitting the roles of child protection and early intervention between two departments has been less than successful in Queensland, according to Paul Testro, a child protection consultant from Brisbane, who has watched Queensland's 2004 changes create barriers and turf wars.

But it is a measure of the profound disillusionment with DOCS that the non-government children's agencies and many experts want the department, if not scrapped, then curbed, and its workload shared.

It would not be the only player in child protection work, for example, under a plan put forward by three leading child protection experts, Judy Cashmore, Dorothy Scott and Gillian Calvert. Police, hospitals, schools and child-care centres would have an in-house trained child protection expert who would judge whether children of concern to their colleagues were "at risk of significant harm".

So judged, the children would be referred to DOCS for immediate investigation. If not, they could be referred directly to a non-government child agency for practical help.

At the heart of the call for radical change is an ocean of unmet need for help from poor and struggling families. But it is hard to quantify. Of the 286,000 reports to DOCS, many involve the same children time and again. The inquiry heard that mandatory reporters, such as doctors, would repeatedly report the same child until they provoked some action from DOCS.

It is possible that a relatively small number of families with many children account for a lot of the reports. DOCS estimates only 10 per cent to 20 per cent of reports are high-level cases that require immediate intervention. It substantiated reports for 14 per cent of children notified in 2006-07. By DOCS's estimates, at least 10,000 families need early intervention programs.

It is not that government has been unaware of the huge hole in service provision. Less than two years ago, DOCS launched a major early intervention program, costing $150 million over three years. Badged the Brighter Futures program, it is a partnership with non-government children's agencies. Parallel systems have been set up of DOCS case workers and non-government workers to share the 6000 targeted families.

Fourteen non-government agencies won tenders. It is relatively early days. But the experience so far of the Brighter Futures "partnership" with DOCS has convinced many that even if the department survives Justice Wood's report, it should hand over all early intervention work to non-government agencies.

"If all the Brighter Future services were delivered by the non-government agencies, the state would get more bang for its bucks," says Maree Walk, director of the Benevolent Society's Centre for Children.

Most agencies were scathing in their submissions to the inquiry about DOCS's ability to do early intervention work with families. Sadly for the many good DOCS child protection workers, the department's reputation is so tainted that many families will not accept help from an agency that could take their children away.

As well, the agencies claim DOCS has much higher staff turnover than the non-government sector, jeopardising continuity with families whose relationships with the department are meant to span two years.

"Their capacity to deliver Brighter Futures is woeful," says the head of an agency contracted to the program. "They have the same size team as we have in this area but deliver services to less than half the families we do. If we were doing half our contracted families we would be booted out. But there is no consequence for DOCS."

As well, DOCS's multiple role as gatekeeper, service provider, funder and contract monitor has made Brighter Futures unnecessarily cumbersome, the agencies say. The department insists 80 per cent of the families referred to the program must first have been reported to the DOCS helpline; 20 per cent of referrals can come directly to the agencies from community sources such as mental health nurses or child-care workers. Many agencies want the ratio changed.

As most agencies have discovered, Brighter Futures is far from early intervention work. Many families DOCS refers have entrenched and multiple problems; their children have been known to the department for years. By default, some agencies have found they are doing child protection work with high-risk families.

"It's been a shock," says Peter O'Brien, manager of child and family services at Wesley Dalmar. He dreads one of his workers ending up "with a baby in a suitcase". But if he refuses high-risk families, the most needy children will get no help. "We're in a dilemma," he says.

Justice Wood and his team face a massive task. At every turn the dilemmas are profound - whether it be raising the threshold for mandatory reporting of child abuse, or cutting DOCS out of direct early intervention work, or out of existence entirely.

What is clear is that the small number of child deaths is a barometer of a wider malaise. Many parents, usually poor, often unwell, are struggling to supervise and care for their children adequately. The children may not be in immediate serious danger. But their life chances are being eroded, and their health and cognitive development compromised the longer their families wait for help.

How to ensure more families get high quality services early enough, long before children need to be removed from homes, or are found dead, is one of the biggest challenges facing Justice Wood and his team.

NO RHYME NOR REASON

The following is extracted from Burnside's submission to the Special Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection Services in NSW:

In 2004 Lisa, a sole parent, had three children under eight. She sought help from DOCS because she was depressed and felt she was not able to cope. She was told her circumstances were not serious enough to warrant a response.

In 2005, after a number of reports to DOCS that her children were neglected, the children were removed and placed in foster care. Lisa was left feeling alienated and angry.

Her children were restored after a couple of months with no further help offered. Her children were clingy, and frightened when she was away. She is engaged with a Burnside family support service, and doing well. She is bewildered about why, when she sought help, she was not able to access it.

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Negligent parents face 3 years jail

Queensland parents who abandon their children to go gambling, drinking or shopping, face up to three years in jail under a new law set to go before Parliament.

The controversial law, which will apply to the parents of children under 12 years of age, is expected to be up for debate later this month.

The bill has been drafted in response to reports of children being abandoned in car parks and hotel rooms, or left at home and it will allow police to charge parents who have left their children unattended for an unreasonable amount of time.

Under the current law, police can only issue a warning to parents who abandon their children and cannot charge them unless the child has been hurt.

"I'm taking to Cabinet on Monday, 14 [April]... [about] proposals for a new law to clamp down on irresponsible parents who abandon their children for limited periods, and I'm proposing that a maximum penalty of three years should apply," Attorney General Kerry Shine said.

As every case of neglect is different, police will be given discretion to judge what is unreasonable.

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