‘Forgotten children’: state care failings scrutinised
Savannah Meacham |
An inquiry will examine a state’s “broken” out-of-home care but advocates are concerned it will fall on deaf ears and more children will slip through the system.
Advocates have welcomed the Queensland government’s $20 million, 17-month commission of inquiry into a state child safety sector they say is harming kids.
Queensland has the most children in residential care of any state or territory, with 2200 as of December 2024.
The inquiry will investigate links between the system and criminal offending.
Almost a third of serious young repeat offenders are living in state care, with 111 in the system as of September 2024 according to government data.
“We’ve seen kids who haven’t offended before being placed in residential care and the often inadequate and negligible environment leaves them with little opportunity to establish a productive life,” Youth Advocacy Centre CEO Katherine Hayes told AAP.
Ms Hayes feared history would repeat itself and some children would remain “forgotten”, saying the state government failed to implement vital recommendations of the last system inquiry in 2013.
“There’s always a concern that once the headlines have gone away, once again these really forgotten kids will be forgotten again,” she said.
One of those failed children is a homeless 16-year-old girl under the care of child safety who was recently admitted to hospital for suicidal ideation.
Child safety called the Youth Advocacy Centre to drop her back into the park where she lives with some food vouchers, Ms Hayes claimed.
“That’s not just an isolated story … child safety is failing these kids,” she said.
The crime-focused LNP government took aim at the former Labor administration for failing to fix the child safety system, acknowledging that kids and workers have been let down.
“There is no coincidence that we have a youth crime crisis at the same time we have a broken child safety system,” Premier David Crisafulli told parliament.
Ms Hayes said it was “disheartening” for the child safety inquiry to be a political point-scoring activity but believed both sides of government were responsible for the failures.
Queensland’s Family and Children Commissioner Luke Twyford said the inquiry was an opportunity to fix a “broken” system.
“We’ve designed a system that leaves children isolated and alone,” he told AAP.
“The young people are lost, they are moved around, and their needs are not met.”
He hoped the commission would focus on how to provide kids with an adult – whether that be a foster carer, youth worker or even teacher – who would fight for them and put them on a safe and steady path.
Any child who had grown up with trauma and abuse in their teenage years would have behaviours that exhibited that neglect, Mr Twyford said.
However, he said it was a reflection of a broken system.
“It is absolutely true that children in youth justice that a very high proportion of them have contact with the child protection system,” he said.
“The reverse isn’t true. There are 15,000 kids in care in Queensland, and a very small proportion, about five per cent or less, have contact with the youth justice system.”
Mr Twyford hoped the inquiry would “propose the solutions and create accountability for actually making the change”.
The inquiry will be led by former Federal Court judge Paul Anastassiou KC with the final recommendations due by November 2026.
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AAP
