Foster Care Victoria

bowie23

Yet another article from the Herald Sun in the past couple of days…the one below is from Monday and focuses on the perceived over-zealous nature of some Child Protection workers.

Craig Binnie

September 03, 2007 12:00am

AN intellectually disabled couple with 10 children are at the centre of a dispute with child protection workers over who is best able to care for their children.

A Children’s Court has heard allegations of over-zealous child protection workers acting simply to justify their existence.

But the Department of Human Services claims the children have been forced to sleep on mattresses on the floor in bedrooms that smelled of urine.

In one of the fiercest attacks on the credibility of the department in the Children’s Court in recent times, a highly experienced former childcare worker accused child protection staff of seeing things in a way that suited themselves.

The man said the staff considered children taking two steps out of a playground to be so big a problem that they had to intervene.

The beliefs of the department’s expert witnesses were also questioned when one recommended a child be given a feather duster or cloth to play with instead of shaving cream for a tactile experience.

The case revolves around how much time the mildly intellectually disabled parents should be allowed to see their three youngest children, whom the department put into foster care.

Child protection workers have painted the couple as being unable to adequately care for their children, up to six of whom are also believed to be mildly intellectually disabled.

But the former worker said the couple were loving and capable parents who were raising their children to be happier than those in many so-called normal families.

Two of the workers, flanked by their lawyer, refused to comment outside the court on the allegation that they created problems to justify their existence.

The magistrate in the case was critical of the department’s witnesses, likening the workers’ expectation of what should occur during child access visits to what one could expect in Stalinist Russia.
_________________
Visit the Foster Care Victoria Blog - http://fostercarevictoria.wordpress.com