Reflections on the Three P’s of Child Protection:

politics, policy and practiceProfessor Dorothy Scott

Australian Centre for Child Protection

The Australian Centre for Child Protection - Enhancing the life chances of Australia’s most vulnerable children through:

research and strategic evaluationprofessional educationcommunication and advocacy

Photo: Wayne Quilliam/OxfamAUS

The power of politics …

The power of politics in relation to protecting children in remote Aboriginal communities – first principle “do no further harm”.

The power of politics

The power of politics in driving interventionist policies in Australia’s child protection systems today, and there is growing evidence on the possible harm this may be inflicting on large numbers of children and their families. If the first principle is “do no further harm”, how do we know if we are doing harm?

Increase in Children in State Care

June 30, 1996 June 30, 200613,979 25,454

Audits on one day in a year grossly underestimate the total number of children in care in any year, especially in States where there is a pattern of children being in care for short periods.

Rates of Children in care per 1000 on June 30, 2006

NSW 6.2

Qld 6.0

NT 5.9

Tas 5.8

ACT 5.1

SA 4.3

Vic 4.1

WA 4.0

Length of time in care at June 30, 2006

under 1 month under 6 monthsQld 19.9% 40.2%

NT 8.5% 33.5%

NSW 2.3% 29.0%

SA 5.5% 24.2%

TAS 4.4% 19.9%

ACT 5.2% 17.8%

VIC 1.9% 14.1%

WA 2.3% 12.9%

Parental Substance Dependence

• England & Wales has 2-3% of all children have a drug dependent parent, and Scotland 5-6%

• Australia: estimated one in 20 children living in a household with at least one adult with an alcohol/drug dependence

(So where are the evidence-based policies to reduce parental alcohol abuse?)

Prevalence of mental health problems among children in care

• SA: Sawyer, Carbone, Searle & Robinson (2007), SA children in foster care have 2-5 times rate of mental health problems as children and young people in community.

• NSW: Tarren-Sweeney (2005) PhD thesis, over half NSW sample of children in foster and kinship care scored above clinical cut off on Child Behaviour Checklist.

Evidence on harm done by being in care

• Rubin, O’Reily, Luan & Localio (2007): US study showing contribution of placement instability on behavioural problems.

• Doyle (2007): Huge longitudinal Illinois study - children in foster care committed more crime, had less employment and more teenage pregnancies than those in similar risk situations left with birth parents

So …

• How do we recognise potentially harmful policies and practices when they are the norm?

• How do we resist politically driven child protection policies and promote evidence-based child protection policies ?

• How do we get real prevention on the agenda (eg reducing parental alcohol misuse?)

• How do we nurture hope in families, ourselves and our organisations?

What would evidence-based preventive strategies look like?

Population-based, whole-of

government strategies of primary,

secondary and tertiary prevention to

address inter-related risk factors early

in the causal pathways

Family Centred Services

• Transform child centred services so that they extend to the parent eg maternal and child health, early childhood education and care, schools

• Transform adult-centred services so that they extend to the child eg adult mental health, family violence, drug treatment services

Evidence-based Prevention

• Two interventions with strongest evidence: Olds’ sustained nurse home visiting and Perry Pre-School model

• In SA, on top of universal home visit, 2 year family home visiting is routinely offered to 12% of families (indigenous families, mothers under 20 etc). Promising take up and completion rates, parent satisfaction. Too early for outcome data.

Similar to Perry Pre-School

• Parent Resource Program, SDN Children’s Services, NSW – outreach to vulnerable parents and high quality care for their children

• Lady Gowrie “Through the Looking Glass” program – treating attachment based disorders from early childhood education platform

Exemplars of child sensitive, family centred drug treatment services

• Parenting Under Pressure (PUPS), Brisbane

• Odyssey House, Nobody’s Clients, Victoria

• Woraninta Playgroup – collaboration between UnitingCare Burnside Macarthur Family Centre and Coopers Cottage Methadone Maintenance Unit

Innovative Aboriginal initiatives

• Aboriginal Homemaker Service in remote community in Central Australia responding to infant failure to thrive

• Mums and Babies Program, Townsville Aboriginal and Islander Health Service, Panaretto et al, MJA 2006

Sowing the seeds of innovation

• Is it effective?

• Is it efficient?

• Is it sustainable?

• Is it transferable?

Hope in an era in which the spirit of the age is one of fear and despair ..

“Institutions of hope refer to sets of rules,

norms and practices that ensure that we

have some room not only to dream of the

extraordinary but also to do the

extraordinary.”

(Braithwaite, 2004