Bligh won't budge on smacking code

The Queensland Government says it will not change a controversial section of the criminal code that allows "reasonable force" to be used when disciplining children.

The State Government reviewed 200 cases in response to concerns that parents were using discipline as a defence for abusing their children.

Premier Anna Bligh says the review showed parents who use excessive force are being charged and penalised accordingly.

Quote:"Reasonable force" by picking up a young child and moving them out of danger is okay but reasonable force by assaulting them is not. Anyone who assaults another person is committing a crime. Governments should not make crimes legal. Hence child abuse.

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Children needing protection 'has tripled'
The biggest increase in the number of notifications was in NSW. New research shows state governments have failed to put in place appropriate child protection measures despite a sharp rise in the number of children needing protection from violent and sexual abuse in the last 10 years.

Criminal Code legtimises violence against kids: MP
A Queensland state Labor MP says new statistics showing the extent of child physical abuse by parents support his case for a review of the criminal code.

Child removal rate similar to Stolen Generations
A Queensland Government report shows Aboriginal children are being removed from their families at a rate similar to the Stolen Generations of the 1920s.

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.

Mental illness more prevalent among youth
A new report on children's health shows that young people's mental health may not be improving, as was previously thought.

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.

Formal sorry to child abuse victims
The Mullighan Inquiry recently exposed hundreds of cases of abuse, some dating back to the 1960s. Commissioner Ted Mullighan called it a foul undercurrent of abuse in SA institutions.

Principals agree: cut out social subjects
"The curriculum is far too crowded and we know from our research that not all schools can do what is being asked of them," she said. "The social responsibilities being placed on primary schools are ever increasing, taking time and resources away from our core business."

NZ passes anti-smacking law
New Zealand's anti-smacking Bill will become law within weeks after winning overwhelming support in Parliament.

End Physical Punishment of Children
EPOCH-USA seeks to end corporal punishment of children in all settings including homes through education and legal reform. The following links provide useful information about effects of corporal punishment of children and alternatives. Questions?

School attendance and welfare: Amnesty

School attendance and welfare: another blow to human rights

Last week, the Australian Government introduced legislation linking school attendance with welfare payments. Under the new legislation, if children don’t go to school regularly, their principal carer could have their welfare payments stopped for up to three months. The 3-year trial will begin at the start of the ‘09 school year in six Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

The way that the policy is being implemented specifically targets Indigenous people without seeking to adequately address the underlying causes of Indigenous disadvantage.

Successive Australian Governments have failed to meet their international human rights obligations to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and consequently, Aboriginal Australians are denied rights to the highest attainable standard of health, adequate housing, an adequate standard of living and freedom from discrimination. These failures contribute to Aboriginal children's lower levels of engagement with the education system and are not adequately acknowledged by the governments new policy.

As such, it's questionable whether the policy will actually work. This model has been tried before, notably in Cape York, in parts of WA and through the NT Intervention. The evidence shows that quarantining welfare will have little effect on whether children go to school.

An issues paper by the Australian Education Union shows that the programs that work combined sanctions with case management, supportive services and positive financial incentives. Even those programs showed limited success and this was attributed to the case management, not the welfare quarantining.

Not only that, but evaluations of the trials found that illness rather than truancy was the major cause of absence rather than truancy, and ACOSS cites other factors for absence, which include "a lack of basic education and support services in some areas, poor quality education programs, bullying, insecure housing and health problems affecting children and families."

The most appropriate policy response is one that protects all human rights. It must seek to repair the cumulative effects of the history of rights violations, poverty, exclusion and discrimination and emphasise the restoration a sense of empowerment and dignity not just in the punishment of truants but in the sense of community engendered by the school. Only then will children go to and stay in school.

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No school, no cash 'hardline' benefits plan
Withholding welfare payments is unlikely to fix the causes of family dysfunction: Australian Council of Social Service. Families face losing their welfare for three months if their children continually skip school, under legislation to be introduced to Federal Parliament this week.

NT election turnout lowest in 20 yrs
The raw final figures from the Northern Territory election have revealed the lowest level of voter turnout in at least the past two decades.

Indigenous welfare quarantine scheme gets go ahead
Parents in four Cape York Indigenous communities could soon have their welfare payments quarantined if they do not take care of their children and homes and do not stay out of trouble with the law.

Union calls for $2.9b to fund education shortfall
The Education Union is calling on the Federal Government to provide an extra $2.9 billion in funding for public schools.

Retailers' warning on welfare card shop spies
EMPLOYEES across the country will be at risk of entrapment by government "spies", retailers have warned, under a Federal Government proposal to control fraudulent use of a new welfare debit card.

Abandon NT intervention: Commissioner
The Northern Territory's Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Tony Fitzgerald says the Federal intervention into remote Aboriginal communities should be abandoned and the legislation underpinning it should be repealed.

Income management extended for NT
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin has announced income management will be extended for up to a year in four Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.

Aborigines want end to NT intervention
Thousands of Aborigines are petitioning to have the Northern Territory intervention abandoned.

No school, no cash 'hardline' benefits plan

Withholding welfare payments is unlikely to fix the causes of family dysfunction: Australian Council of Social Service.

Families face losing their welfare for three months if their children continually skip school, under legislation to be introduced to Federal Parliament this week.

Under the Federal Government's proposed scheme, regular school attendance will become a condition for receiving all welfare except the Family Tax Benefit.

If the legislation is passed a pilot scheme at eight schools will begin next year.

This morning Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said that the Government made no apologies for the hardline approach.

Mr Rudd says his Government's priority is making sure that all children go to school.

"We think this conditionality - that if individual families are in receipt of income support payments the regular attendance at school by their kids is a necessary precondition - is the right way to go," he said.

"We need, in order to compete with the rest of the world, to boost our current school retention rate from 75 per cent to 90 per cent by 2020, [but] we have real problems of school non-attendance in Indigenous communities and also school non-attendance on the part of certain other kids as well.

"You've got to take a hardline approach."

But welfare authorities have criticised the plan.

Australian Council of Social Service president Lin Hatfield Dodds says there are various reasons why students do not go to school.

She says withholding welfare payments is unlikely to fix the causes of family dysfunction.

"[One issue] is chaos in families' lives," she said.

"Is there anybody around in the morning to help the child get to school?

"If there isn't, and if the family for whatever reason is in a high degree of chaos, then it's unlikely that turning off the income tap to a degree for 12 weeks is going to make any difference in that regard."

Ms Hatfield Dodds says there is no evidence that such a plan would help reduce truancy rates.

"As far as we're aware in the community sector there isn't really any evidence either in Australia or from overseas that involuntary income management actually works on any dimension," she said.

"It's difficult to see how it is going to address the causes of the crisis and chaos in family lives that result in this kind of experience for children."

She says the Government should instead make support programs available to more families.

"So if there's an issue with the parenting, let's wrap some parenting support programs around. If there's alcohol, other drugs, violence - if those things are an issue in the family's life in the adult's life - then let's try and go to the core of those issues.

"With all of these programs there is a strong evidence base for and we know they actually work we know they get results.

"The problem is out there in the community, particularly in areas that are locationally disadvantaged, is that those programs are simply not available to people."

Govt to trial welfare cut scheme in NT, WA

The Federal Government has Western Australia and the Northern Territory on board to trial its new program to cut welfare payments to the parents of children who do not go to school.

Parents in the trial areas who receive income support will be required to prove to Centrelink that their children are enrolled and schools will also be asked to provide attendance information.

The Greens have condemned the scheme.

Senator Rachel Siewert says the Greens do not support an approach which is punitive.

"It won't generate the outcomes they say it will," she said.

"What are they going to do about the children that aren't coming from low-income families or families on income support?

"This is about punishment, it's not about an education revolution that the Deputy Prime Minister is talking about."

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NT election turnout lowest in 20 yrs
The raw final figures from the Northern Territory election have revealed the lowest level of voter turnout in at least the past two decades.

Indigenous welfare quarantine scheme gets go ahead
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Union calls for $2.9b to fund education shortfall
The Education Union is calling on the Federal Government to provide an extra $2.9 billion in funding for public schools.

Retailers' warning on welfare card shop spies
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Abandon NT intervention: Commissioner
The Northern Territory's Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Tony Fitzgerald says the Federal intervention into remote Aboriginal communities should be abandoned and the legislation underpinning it should be repealed.

Income management extended for NT
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin has announced income management will be extended for up to a year in four Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.

Aborigines want end to NT intervention
Thousands of Aborigines are petitioning to have the Northern Territory intervention abandoned.

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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Child protection system wait too long
Child protection workers say six months is too long to wait for a national information sharing system on child protection.

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The Government needs to do much more to support familles so parents can afford to feed their children and to prevent children from neglect.

DOCS insiders blow whistle on tragedy
DOCS workers have detailed a catalogue of failures that have left at-risk children in unsafe families and put staff in danger, as officers struggle with crippling vacancies in a department top-heavy with managers and with a dysfunctional records system.

Ten years for beating infant to death
A 31-year-old West Australian man has been jailed for 10 years for bashing a three-year-old boy to death after inflicting injuries described by a judge as "almost beyond belief".

Criminal Code legtimises violence against kids: MP
A Queensland state Labor MP says new statistics showing the extent of child physical abuse by parents support his case for a review of the criminal code. Dean Wells says figures compiled by a parliamentary intern found almost 700 assault charges were laid against parents disciplining their children in the 2005/06 financial year.

Australia grappling with child abuse 'epidemic'
A child protection organisation says the rate of child abuse in Australia has reached epidemic levels. Child Wise has collated research showing one in four girls and one in seven boys experience some form of sexual abuse.

Smacking children 'allowable': minister
NSW Community Services Minister Kevin Greene has defended himself against accusations of hypocrisy for smacking his children and then supporting his department taking a six-year-old boy away from a grandmother who smacked the child.

Man jailed for bashing girl to death
The ACT Supreme Court has sentenced a man to 15 years in jail for the manslaughter of a four-year-old girl in Canberra more than two years ago. Darren Lee Cassidy pleaded guilty to killing South Australian girl Trinaty Monique Howarth with a saucepan and walking stick on November 26, 2005.

SA row over smacking children
South Australian Democrat MP Sandra Kanck has criticised a move in State Parliament to legally endorse the smacking of children. Family First Upper House member Dennis Hood has introduced a bill seeking to endorse the legality of "reasonable chastisement" of children.

NZ passes anti-smacking law
New Zealand's anti-smacking Bill will become law within weeks after winning overwhelming support in Parliament. The country joins only a handful of European nations to legislate against the use of unreasonable force in disciplining children.

Housing dept under scrutiny over neglect

Better monitoring of public housing may have uncovered the problem earlier.

Questions have been raised about the role of public housing authorities in a case of alleged child neglect in Canberra.

A woman has been charged with neglect for allegedly allowing her four children to live in squalor.

The 35-year-old appeared in the ACT Magistrates Court yesterday and was remanded in custody.

The court heard police found the children alone in a house, in the inner-north suburb of Ainslie, which was littered with dog faeces, moulded food and rubbish.

But better monitoring of public housing may have uncovered the problem earlier.

Housing ACT have many questions to answer in relation to this case.

If there were regular inspections on properties where we can cleary see there is a mess then that should have been attended to by housing authorities.

They have some 40 housing managers to service over 11,500 properties, clearly they're under pressure and more resources may be needed.

The Housing Minister needs to really respond in saying why this property was not picked up during regular inspections.

Meanwhile, doctors are calling for a new parenting program to be rolled out in Canberra to help reduce cases of neglect.

Australian General Practice Network CEO Kate Carnell says the parenting scheme has been trailed successfully in Brisbane at a cost of about $20 per family.

"This is a program that's now been evaluated," she said.

"What it shows is that if it was rolled out right across Australia you would end up with 72,000 fewer parents reporting problems with depression, nearly 100,000 fewer parents using coercive parenting practices, a whole range of really good data that runs off the back of this."

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Government must do more to support families
The Government needs to do much more to support familles so parents can afford to feed their children and to prevent children from neglect.

MPs baulk at rules on sexualisation

CHILDREN are increasingly exposed to highly sexualised images, a Senate committee has found - but it has stopped short of calling for tougher government regulation, which has angered parent groups.

The issue has been thrown into the spotlight by controversies such as the publication of photos of the 15-year-old Disney star Miley Cyrus topless in the magazine Vanity Fair.

Although the committee rejected tighter standards on what television and advertisers can show, it recommended a national sex education program as a way to teach children about healthy relationships and to help them "deconstruct" sexualised images.

It singled out raunchy music videos and toys such as Bratz dolls, but said "it is the primary responsibility of parents to make decisions about what their children see, hear, read or purchase.

"These parental decisions can have a significant impact on the market for sexualising products and services."

The committee has also suggested that television networks consider a dedicated children's channel and that publishers of magazines such as Dolly and Girlfriend investigate putting content warnings on covers.

Parenting groups were angry the committee did not take a tougher position.

"The reliance on industry bodies to fix most of the issues is misplaced. If these bodies were willing to take effective steps to address the issues they would have done so by now," the vice-president of Young Media Australia, Elizabeth Handsley, said.

The professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, Clive Hamilton, said: "The report fails to understand or reflect the level of community concern about the ways in which children are being sexualised by the media and advertisers and has largely ignored the evidence of harm presented to the inquiry by psychologists and other experts working with children."

More than a third of the people who made private submissions to the inquiry identified themselves as parents or grandparents who were concerned that their children and grandchildren were being subject to sexualisation by the media.

The Democrats senator Lyn Allison, who instigated the inquiry, denied the committee had failed to take the issue seriously. "This is a call to industry to shape up or we'll get tougher," she said.

A national sex education program would help children make sense of the images they saw, she said.

"People link the resilience of children to their education about relationships and sex. It's not saying education would fix exposure to images, but it would give help kids deal with them."

The advertising and media industry largely welcomed the report.

Helen Willoughby, the chief executive of the Outdoor Media Association, said: "We are yet to see the detail but we have been speaking with the Advertising Standards Bureau to look at ways to address issues over the past six months about addressing content issues as they relate specifically to the outdoor medium."

A spokesman for PBL Media, the owner of ACP Magazines, the publisher of Dolly, said: "We will have a look at whether we put any age-appropriate information on the covers." The peak body for commercial broadcasters, Free TV Australia, said in a statement that it believed there were already "clear protections" in place for both content and advertising. "We are confident that these are in line with community standards and do not sexualise children," it said.

Rights win for lesbian families

The rights of New South Wales children with lesbian parents have been expanded under legislation passed by the State Government.

The law clears the way for children from lesbian couples to inherit money from their non-birth parent and receive workers' compensation on behalf of their non-birth parent.

It also allows both mothers to appear on their child's birth certificate.

NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos says the Bill is a big step.

"It means that the non-birth parent will have obligations to that child in the same way that every other parent has," he said.

"It also means that child will have the same relationship with the non-birth parent as they do with their birth parent."

Mr Hatzistergos says shadow attorney-general Greg Smith defied his own party in voting against the Bill.

"The Opposition is hopelessly divided on this issue but it's important to recognise that the vote was carried 64 to 11," he said.

"With Mr Smith being one of the few leading spokespersons within the Opposition voting against the legislation, he not only defied his leader but also the leader of the National party."

Emily Gray, from the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, says many Liberal MPs, who voted against the reforms, were confused about the meaning of reforms.

"A lot of that was stemming from the fact that they believed that fathers would be removed from birth certificates following these reforms and that's just simply not true at all," she said.

Ms Gray says the changes have been long-awaited.

"With 71 per cent of the Australian population now supporting equal rights for same-sex couples, it's about time that this equality came through," she said. "We're really happy that it has."

We owe prisoners more than jail‏

Prisons are too important to be left to jailers, for the simple reason that the standard prison magnifies social problems. It is a congregation of people with an accumu–lation of risk factors for crime.

The prison experience generally adds to that accumulation. People's capacity to function in the community, including their parenting capacity, is weakened. Their children grow up with a bigger bundle of risk factors than their parents.

In this way prisons are at the centre of an inter-generational spiral of disadvantage and dys–function. In blunt terms, the more people who have experienced the standard prison the more will end up in prison in the future. Aus–tralia's prison population has been growing at an average of 5 per cent a year since 1984.The biggest challenge for the ACT is to see that the mental health of those who emerge from its new prison is better or at least no worse than when they entered.

Based on surveys of prisoners in NSW, it can be expected that ACT Corrections will have to cater for the 80 per cent of men and 90 per cent of women who will have experienced a major mental health disorder in the previous 12 months. Thirty-four per cent of women will have had an affective disorder like depression. The same percentage of men will have had an anxiety disorder; 40 per cent of men and 57 per cent of women will have had a personality disorder.

To cap all this off, 64 per cent of men and 75 per cent of women will have a substance use problem - overwhelmingly, dependence on an illicit substance rather than alcohol. Yes, sustance abuse and dependence are recognised as major mental health disorders.

The correlation between prison, drug dependence and other mental health disorders is no conci–dence. The rate of those with even severe mental illnesses like schizo–phrenia becoming mixed up in the criminal justice system is only slightly greater than the general population. The rate jumps through the roof when substance dependence is added to the mix. A big driver in the remorseless rise in the prison population is the fact that more and more people with other mental health problems are adding substance dependence.

The Government is committed to the prison being rehabilitative. If this is to be more than a pious wish, steps must be taken both in prison and after people leave to minimise recognised risk factors injurious to mental well-being. Within the prison there are barriers to people accessing the mental health treatment that is available. In the words of a prison psychiatrist, "Those who do seek mental health treatment are at risk of being seen by staff as attempting to evade the rigours of prison, and by fellow prisoners as weak and unacceptably alien." Somehow prison must compen–sate for the sudden loss of factors protective of mental well-being like beneficial social and family support. Strip searching is a com–mon practice. The Human Rights Commission found that a detainee on remand could expect about 10 such searches a week. This degrading practice can retraumatise the many women in prison who have experienced sexual abuse. In a Queensland prison survey, 37 per cent of women reported sexual abuse prior to the age of 16. Concern about radiation severely limits the use of X-ray scanners as a substitute for strip searches.

Seclusion is also pervasive in the standard prison. It commences with the 14∏ hours a day that remand prisoners presently spend in their cells. It can expand for any number of reasons, including unscheduled lock-downs. Separation and seclusion are all too often applied to troublesome prisoners who have a mental disorder.

Suicide can be prevented by placing someone threatening self–harm under surveillance in a bare cell devoid of hanging points. This is the reverse of therapeutic - human interaction is a key element in suicide prevention. Self-harm may be prevented in prison but not after release. A NSW study published last year found that the suicide rate for men was 3.87 times higher in the two weeks after release than after six months.

Then there are overdose deaths. Strip searching is just one of the draconian steps taken in the vain attempt to keep drugs out of prisons. In disregard of addiction being a chronic relapsing condition, prisons place a premium on abstinence. In many cases abstinence is achieved, only for the person, now with reduced tolerance to the drug, dying from an overdose upon relapsing after release. None of these mental health problems is insoluble. All we need to do is to deploy the knowledge we already have. The challenge is to change a mind set.

Bill Bush is secretary of the ACT Community Coalition on Corrections. He helped write its study "Healthy or harmful? Mental health and the operational regime of the new ACT prison" launched this week.

Bill Bush Canberra Times Wednesday 16 April 2008 p. 15

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Prison hospital lock-down: mental patients madness
“Prison authorities have ordered the removal of 28 officers from the prison hospital area as part of their ironically named “Way Forward”. This will lock patients into cells at 3.30pm instead of the current 9pm from April 2nd” said Justice Action Coordinator Brett Collins.

Judges depart Red Mass
Bishop Peter Ingham reminded the Judges about locking up the mentally ill in prison and that they should not be dishing out double punishment to them.

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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Jail parents of truants, says Iemma
EDUCATION and welfare experts have ridiculed Morris Iemma's plan to send parents to jail if their children repeatedly miss school, saying the policy is "heavy-handed" and will only hurt the most disadvantaged students.