Pippa McFall 167021 Social Policy Resubmit 1

STUDENT DETAILS

ACAP Student ID: 167021

Name: Pippa McFall

Course: BASSIX

ASSESSMENT DETAILS

Unit/Module: Social Policy

Educator: Billy Tonkin

Assessment Name: Report

Assessment Number: 1

Term & Year: T312

Word Count: 2044

DECLARATION
I declare that this assessment is my own work, based on my own personal research/study . I also
declare that this assessment, nor parts of it, has not been previously submitted for any other
unit/module or course, and that I have not copied in part or whole or otherwise plagiarised the work of
another student and/or persons. I have read the ACAP Student Plagiarism and Academic Misconduct
Policy and understand its implications.

I also declare, if this is a practical skills assessment, that a Client/Interviewee Consent Form has been
read and signed by both parties, and where applicable parental consent has been obtained.

Document updated 9th June 2011

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NSW Family and Community Services

Child Protection

and

Federal Family Law

“Best Interest”

Pippa McFall

Australian College of Applied Psychology

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Table of Contents
Summary ................................................................................................................................ 4

NSW Child Protection System ......................................................................................... 6

NSW Department of Family and Community Service ............................................. 7

Community Services - Child Protection ...................................................................... 7

Child Protection Policy ..................................................................................................... 9

Influences in Policy making ......................................................................................... 10

The Federal Family Court ............................................................................................. 11

Legalities and Barriers .................................................................................................. 11

Research Into Child Protection ................................................................................... 12

Proposed Action Plan ..................................................................................................... 13

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 14

References .......................................................................................................................... 15

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Summary

The purpose of this report is to demonstrate from a social and legal framework,

how organisational and governmental policy when dealing with child protection

issues can “fail” when governmental policies conflict and overlap resulting in lack of

support from related agencies (NCPC, 2011). The NSW Family and Community

Services have a child protection unit, which promotes protecting the welfare of

children in NSW through intervention and support services(FaCs, 2012). For the

purpose of this report a focus will be placed on FaCs child protection policies and the

impact on that client group and also the community service workers, the Federal

Family will also be used to demonstrate the legal and ethical impacts of opposing

organisational and government policies.

Australia's child protection system is dealt with at state and territory levels in a

Children's Court. When some child abuse allegations arise between separated parents,

these are private matters regarding the care of the children and are dealt with in a

Federal Family Court. These allegations involve two legal entities, the relevant state

child protection department and also the Federal Family Court( Bromfeild, 2008).

Recent research has demonstrated the frequency of concerns regarding child

protection matters in post separation care disputes and there is an increasing

awareness of the impact and need for more effective planning and policy in this area

(Kipsie et al., 2009). For Child protection workers this poses a real problem in

fulfilling their duties and obligations under their organisational policies and

frameworks and also under the relevant NSW Act. This report recommends that a full

enquiry be held, connecting with key stakeholders to find all policies and proceedures

in need of review. That all organisations have stake holders involved in the research,

review and planning stages to ensure guidelines support each other in an effective

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manner. Increasing numbers, funding sources and strengthening community based

organisations to alleviate some of the pressure on FaCs and outsource less traumatic

cases.

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NSW Child Protection System

There are a number of welfare departments, agencies and organisations, which

work together to form the child protection and community services system in NSW.

Formerly known as Department of Community services (DoCs), now just Community

Services is the peak body with the power to ‘intervene to protect’ children from

situations of harm involving their parents. There are many other organisations such as

‘Brighter Futures’, a former Community Services department which has now been

outsourced who all contribute to the efficiency of NSW’s child protection system.

Benevalent Society deals with early intervention and tries to prevent families

progessing to a situation where a child may need to be protected from harm or neglect

by their parents or carers. There are many services providing accommodation and

counselling services to older children. As well as Relationships Australia who provide

education and support to families struggling with relationships (FaCs, 2012).

Whilst there are intervention services available from a social viewpoint, there is

also a legal component due to the fact that child abuse is against the law in Australia

and is punishable through the Australian Justice system. There are many courts for

mnay things, this report focuses on the federal family court which is where complex

cases of custody disputes are heard.

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NSW Department of Family and Community Service

Community Services - Child Protection

“Promoting the safety and wellbeing of children and young people” (FaCs,

2012). The child protection unit of community services deals with allegations of child

abuse and neglect, they can investigate and have power to apply to the courts for

removal of children deemed at being at significant risk of harm. Serious child

protection matters are dealt with in a Children’s Court NSW, who have powers to

allocate intervention orders and to stipulate the protection arrangements for the

children involved, even if this means temporary out of home care or permanent

parental responsibility to the minister until 18 years of age (FaCs, 2012).

The Children’s court can make orders to investigate allegations further and can

involve other non-government agencies to help provide care and services.

Community services is the state governments peak body on child protection and

particularly aims to help those most vulnerable and in need of help and support. The

NSW Community Services provides services and support to many of the most

disadvantaged families and communities in NSW. In recent times a lot of scrutiny has

been directed at the child protection services across NSW. Some problems which

have been highlighted by recent reviews of NSW child protection systems according

to Bromfield (2010) are:

 Problems with high case loads

 Poor training and supervision

 Burnout

 High staff turnover

 Inexperienced staff performing investigations into complex cases

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 Not enough interagency collaboration and transparency

Furthermore, in the context of separated parents, a case may be open in the

Federal Family Court, which is a private and closed court acting on legislation in the

Family Law Act 1975 to hear parent’s disputes regarding care arrangements and

maintenance actions for children of the relationship that parents cannot agree on.

They cannot act on state or territory legislation as it is outside their jurisdiction.

The particularly troubling aspect here is that it is expectable that parents would

separate at finding the other parent is abusing a/the child in a family yet this is when

the breakdown occurs(AIFS, 2011).

Community Services staff are trained and employed to protect children although

some of these jurisdictional gaps makes this very difficult. Whilst the average person

has a hard time dealing with constant failure in life or in a high pressure job, those

dealing in the human services suffer the most, their care is what gets them involved

but also what makes them leave. This directly affects their capacity to satisfactorily

complete their responsibilities to the child and to care and protect themselves from

emotional stress (Stevens & Higgins, 2002). Community Services has a history of

difficulty retaining caseworkers due to the emotional nature of the work, being unable

to protect a child from abuse due to bureaucracy is perpetuating burnout for

caseworkers (FaCs, 2006)

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Child Protection Policy

Child protection in NSW is covered under several NSW legislative Acts, the

principle being Children and Young People (Care and Protection) Act 1998(NSW)

and other relevant Acts and Legislation include,

 Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Amendment

(Parental Responsibility Contracts) Act 2006 (NSW)

 Child Protection (Offenders Registration) Act 2000 (NSW)

 Crimes Act 1900 (NSW)

 Commission for Children and Young People Act 1998 (NSW)

 The Ombudsman Act 1974 (NSW)

 Family Law Act 1975 (Cth).

The Children and Young People (Care and Protection) Act 1998(NSW)

stipulates that child protection is paramount and all emergency concerns relating to

child safety and welfare should be directed to Community Services to determine the

‘best interests of the child’(NCPC, 2008).

NSW Community Services child protection policy guidelines covers issues

such as, “Best Interest” of the child decisions and provides guidelines on how to make

these decisions. Other parts of the policy involve Early Intervention, the participation

of children in decision making, Out of home care services, working with Aboriginal

and Torres Strait Islander people, permanency planning and stability of care.

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Influences in Policy making

NSW Child Protection Policy is directly influenced by the Federal Governments 1989

ratification to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (The CRC)

and many of the principles within the Convention are found within Australian states

and territories child protection legislation. The CRC is one of the treaties within the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which as a one of two treaties of the

International Bill of Human Rights, re-enforces and contributes to human rights

policies worldwide.

Australia manages it child protection Laws within each state or territory Bromfeild

and Holzer (2008) state that all states and territories in Australia have their own Child

Protection Policies, which are all significantly different although, he suggests, this is

in “accordance with local needs”.

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The Federal Family Court

Legalities and Barriers

“The mandate of child protection authorities is to intervene to protect children

only when a parent is neither willing nor able to protect the child from harm. In

contrast, the task of the federal law system that deals with parenting disputes is

to resolve disputes between parents who are separated over what arrangements

are in the best interest of their children. (p. 244)” Higgins and Kaspiew (2008).

The federal family Court deals in deciding custody, care breakdown and

distribution of family assets when the parents cannot agree. The Federal Family Court

relies on admissible facts making its decisions on clear-cut evidence

This Federal Family Court is unable to investigate allegations of child abuse

unlike the Children’s Court who have the powers to hear and investigate and

intervene i.e. allocate care to minister and refer the family to further services from

relevant non government organisations(Moloney, 2006).. Although the court may

apply to hear the testimony from child protection authorities, the evidence needs to be

substantiated and abuse needs to be proven. In the case of sexual abuse the evidence

is often limited, emotional and psychological evidence are hard to prove equivocally

mainly because of the ages of the children and the ethical considerations making some

allegations unfounded in a Federal Family Court (Faulks, 2012).

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Research Into Child Protection

The Wood (2008) enquiry was conducted in 2008 and found that inter agency

collaberation was a major problem in child protection as well as case flows and over

worked child protection staff.

In the last 24 months at least 4 noteworthy reports have shown the need to fix

the gaps and overlaps between the child protection and federal family law system.

Three by the Australian Law commission, which focused on consultation legislative

and process analysis. The other was one was a large empirical study that considered

these issues as part of an evaluation of the 2006 Family Law reforms as a whole.

The reports showed the following similarities:

 Lack of awareness, regarding Family Law Act 1975 provisions relating

to shared parenting and how Family violence effects the presumption of

shared parenting.

 Concern about provisions that obligate courts to make cost orders

against parents making false statements, and provisions that the court is

obligated to consider the extent that one parent has supported the

involvement of the other parent in the childs life.

 Need for better more comprehensive screening processes for family

violence and child abuse across the Family Law system

 Lack of education and training relating to family violence and child

abuse across the family law system.

 The need for better co-operation between professionals and agencies in

both systems, federal family law and child protection in the states and

territories.

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Proposed Action Plan

This report makes several recommendations to ensure the care and protection of

children is paramount and that effective policies are developed or modified.

 Immediate action taken by government to review the policies of the

Federal Family Law System that may prevent or deter a parent from

reporting abuse or family violence.

 Research and develop more protective policies and procedures within

both Family Law and Child Protection Systems.

 Raise awareness socially and through education at school and tertiary

levels regarding child protection services.

 Train and retain quality staff in child protection through added support

services for workers and outsourcing to NGOs less severe cases.

 That all stakeholders involved in child protection and family law be

first trained to equal standards on “best practise’ and “best interest of

the child” then, involved in a review and enquiry into policies and

procedures for amendment.

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Conclusion

There is now a lot of evidence from many sources that to full fill a policy there

must be a number of supportive structures around it to ensure it has back up to work

smoothly (Coote., Harmen & Hewitt. 2006). The case here is a serious one in that it

deals with a client group unable to protect themselves and current policies are failing

not only to keep them safe but to disallowing protection by their parents in some

extreme cases. Many studies have been done but more are in the works and many

different levels and in several ways. The federal government is considering

undertaking changes to address the gaps and overlaps between the two systems.

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References

Briggs, Em. Prof. F., McInnes AM, Dr E., Pragnell, C., (2012), Flawed Family Law:

Failing Sexually Abused Children., AIFS Conference 2012.

Bromfield, L. M., & Holzer, P. J. (2008). A national approach for child protection:

Project report. Retrieved 10 June 2009, from

<http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/reports/cdsmac/cdsmac.pdf>

Coote, A., Harman, H., & Hewitt, P. (1998). Family policy: Guidelines and goals. In

J. Franklin (Ed.), Social policy and social justice. Cambridge, England: Polity

Press.

FaCs. (2012) Good Practice Guidelines retrieved from

http://www.facs.nsw.gov.au/about_us/goodpracticeguideline/html

FaCs.(2006) interagency guidelines evaluation. Retrieved from

http://www.community.nsw.gov.au/docswr/_assets/main/documents/interagenc

y_guidelines_evaluation1.pdf

Faulks, (2012), Family Transitions and Trajectories, Justice and the Protection of

Children AIFS Conference 2012.

Higgins, D. J., & Kaspiew, R. (2008). ‘Mind the gap...’: Protecting children in family

law cases. Australian Journal of Family Law, 22(3), 235–258.

Kaspiew, R., Gray, M., Weston, R., Moloney, L., Hand, K., Qu, L., & the Family Law

Evaluation Team. (2009). Evaluation of the 2006 family law reforms.

Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies. Retrieved from

<http://www.aifs.gov. au/institute/pubs/fle/index.html>.

Moloney, L., Smyth, B., Weston, R., Richardson, N., Qu, L and Gray, M. (2007)

Allegations of family violence and child abuse in family law children’s

proceedings, AIFS Research Paper No. 15, May 2007.

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Pragnell, C. (2011) Position Statement., National Child Protection Alliance.

Stevens, M., & Higgins, D. J. (2002). The influence of risk and protective factors on

burnout experienced by those who work with maltreated children and their

families. Child Abuse Review, 11, 313-331.

Wood, Justice J. (2008). Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry into Child

Protection Services in New South Wales: Volumes 1–3. Sydney: State of NSW

through the Special Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection Services in

NSW. Retrieved from <http://www.dpc.

nsw.gov.au/publications/news/stories/special_commission_of_inquiry_into_chil

d_ protection_services_in_new_south_wales>.

Document updated 9th June 2011