A HUNTER first has resulted in a report to the NSW State Government on ways to reform the broken child protection system which put family inclusion front and centre.
The report follows a roundtable meeting of people with lived experience, researchers, non-government organisations including Aboriginal organisations, and government to discuss how family inclusion can improve outcomes.
Since that meeting, the organising committee has met with Minister for Families and Communities and Port Stephens MP Kate Washington, as well as with teams from within the Department of Communities and Justice appointed to lead reform.
The report makes 26 recommendations, including a record of accountability to ensure various members of a child's family are contacted as part of the family finding process.
Family includes dads
Fathers can be invisible in that process, the report says, and paternal grandparents are not generally considered as a potential substitute family.
"This should be a real option, not a second thought," the report says.
Extended family must also be in the picture, only currently becoming involved very late in the process if at all.
The report refers to biases underpinning current practice including a bias around the concept of "purposeful parental neglect".
"In the greater number of cases of seeming 'purposeful parental neglect', parents are often doing the best they can for their children within their resources and understanding," the reporter says.
"There is usually something other than deliberate neglect that is underpinning a behaviour or a series of behaviours that the system sees as outright neglect.
More emphasis on family first
"That can become a serious bias influencing the decision for removal. Deeper investigation and communication could help address this before removal becomes the only solution."
In another area of concern, families are not kept in the loop, the report says.
"Families do not know where their children are and are not given opportunity for input into their children's care because they are deemed unsafe," it says.
"This is based on a deficit view of parent rights rather than the strengths of family bonds. . Children are not asked for their opinions and preferences: there is a need to consider what they want/need."
There is a lack of information sharing between DCJ and non-government organisations, and information sharing across the family and agencies is prevented based on privacy laws, but in family inclusion decision making, information sharing may be more important than the need for privacy, the report says, calling for more open communication.
Relevant information is not made accessible to parents and families, and processes are created around managing risks.
The system also offers more support for foster carers than for "actual families", it says.
The recommendations include a call for expectations grounded in relation, citing a disparity between hypothetical best practices e and the reality of practice, workforce and family situations.
"Sometimes, we have lost touch with the reality for families on the ground," the report says.
"There is no point talking about actions that aren't implementable or actionable."
Members of the planning and organising group included Rachel Evans of Family Inclusion Network Hunter (FISH); Associate professor Wendy Foote from the University of Newcastle School of Social Work; the manager of the Family Action Centre at the University of Newcastle Marette Gale, and Debra Swan, from Grandmothers Against Removal (GMAR NSW).
Early intervention
Industry insiders continue to call on the State Government to invest more into early intervention and family preservation services to help ensure children are safe at home.
Currently, there are about 4,500 families, including 12,500 children, engaged with a family preservation service across the state.
Nationally, about 17 per cent of the child protection services budget is spent on family support and prevention, 24 per cent on investigation, and about 60 per cent in out of home care.
More than 2,800 kids have been removed from their families and are living in out of home care across the Hunter Central Coast, and statistically more than a quarter will experience three or more different places, in different locations, with different families and/or service providers.
Research shows that during the first year of leaving care at 18, a third of young people who grow up in out-of-home-care end up homeless and 75 per cent do not finish school.
