A long-awaited report into child protection services in New South Wales that labels the system “ineffective and unsustainable” has prompted calls for the resignation of Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward.
The independent review, authored by David Tune, was commissioned in November 2015 in response to the growing number of children in out-of-home care, rising system costs and futile past reforms.
The report was handed to then Premier Mike Baird in 2016 and has remained secret ever since.
The review found government spending was allocated to an “ad hoc” variety of programs that were delivered in “agency silos” which made it difficult for clients to navigate.
“Interventions are not adequately evidence based or tailored to meet the multiple and diverse needs of vulnerable children,” the report argued.
It recommends the Government establish a new statutory authority to provide “personalised support packages” to vulnerable children and families and bridge gaps between agencies.
The report also highlighted the increasing cost of out-of-home care partly due to the transfer of services from Family and Community Services (FACS) to the NGO sector.
The Government spends $41,000 for a child in NGO foster care compared to $27,000 per child in the care of FACS.
Greens MP David Shoebridge said by withholding the report for months the Government was “playing politics” with the lives of vulnerable children.
Mr Shoebridge said the minister had “failed utterly” to respond to the call for self-determination and ignored the complex needs of Aboriginal children and communities.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-12/secret-report-shows-out-of-home-care-fails-to-help-nsw-children/9857966
Category: Reproductive Rights
What's Current: Belfast women dress as handmaids; distribute abortion pills at pro-choice protest
Women protesting against Northern Ireland’s anti-abortion laws have taken what they say are illegal termination pills in front of police outside Belfast’s main court buildings.
Officers seized the pills and attempted to remove one woman who openly took a tablet which was delivered to protestors by a tiny robot controlled from the Netherlands to circumvent the country’s laws.
There is a major police presence and counter protests from pro-life campaigners at the event, launched in the wake of the historic referendum in the Republic of Ireland in which the country voted to allow abortion in early pregnancy.
Northern Ireland is the last part of the UK where abortion is illegal, unless there are exceptional circumstances.
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/05/31/whats-current-belfast-women-dress-handmaids-distribute-abortion-pills-pro-choice-protest/
Adoption is not the answer to Disadvantage
The Federal Parliament is currently conducting an inquiry investigating local adoption as a viable option for children currently in out-of-home care.
“A policy favouring a return to adoption does not take account of the critical bond between a mother and child and the lifelong trauma inflicted by permanent removal,” says Darelle Duncan, of Origins Australia Inc.– the Forced Adoption Support and Advocacy Network. “The devastating impact of forced adoptions on both mothers and children has been extensively documented. How many apologies does it take for the government to recognise that removing children for adoption is not an appropriate response to disadvantage?
According to Catherine Lynch of Australian Adoption Rights Action Group: “Too often children are removed from poor and disadvantaged mothers in circumstances where they could actually be given assistance to retain care of their child.”
Darelle Duncan observes: “It is wrong to ignore the intense psychological and emotional bond that arises from childbearing.An investigation on how to support mothers and their children is needed rather than repeating the crimes of the past. Women should never be forcibly separated from their babies due to poverty or disadvantage.
https://www.facebook.com/AustralianLawyersAlliance/photos/a.187991454637275.26859.187934784642942/1204239679679109/? https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6407113661055369216/
Sofia Helin: Let’s talk about periods. Women should be proud of them, not ashamed
Periods are a natural process experienced by half the world’s population; they are a sign of life. So, why is the subject cloaked in secrecy and shame? I’m sure all women have faced the embarrassment of awkward period dramas, like being caught without a pad or tampon in a time of need. In these circumstances, should we feel embarrassed to ask a stranger to help us out?
And on a broader scale, the fact that people don’t talk about their periods is having a huge impact on women and girls around the world. One in three women have no access to a decent toilet, which is especially challenging during their period. If there isn’t one in schools, girls are more likely to miss classes or drop out altogether once they start their periods.
Period poverty is an issue we’ve seen in developed countries as well, and in the UK it is one that is starting to be taken seriously, thanks to the hard work of some amazing campaigners who are unashamedly making a noise about it. But we need this kind of action on a global scale. WaterAid is calling on women and men everywhere to talk about periods today on Menstrual Hygiene Day as part of its Period Proud campaign, to address the lack of accurate information and remove the stigma and taboos.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/28/periods-women-girls-facilities-myths-menstruation?
'I call it racism': when they took the children, it was in police cars
Galloway is a mother of seven. Three grown-up children by her first marriage, four young children by her second. She radiates competence, steadiness, but back then, at the end of 2016, she had been going through an “emotional” time. Less than a year before her husband had died of a heart attack in this room, in front of her and the children.
“My children were going through an emotional thing, I was hurting for my babies, I was worried about my babies.” It was the Christmas holidays. On a Tuesday she had gone to Child Safety and asked for vacation care. “I was asking for help and they have used that against me.”
She had only known her 25-year-old caseworker for a month. On the Thursday she was asked to attend court. While she was there they came and took her children from her home. “Everything just happened so fast. It was all in one week.”
“They tried to say my children weren’t going to school. But the principal wrote and said they had 99% attendance.”
Galloway was not able to comfort her frightened children or tell them she would be fighting to get them back.
The children were split up and taken to two different towns. Her children had already lost their father, now they were losing their mother and everything they knew.
Since Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen children 10 years ago and his insistence that the nation had learned from its mistakes, the rates of child removal have increased dramatically. A report released by Family Matters last November found that Indigenous children are nearly 10 times more likely to be removed from their families than non-Indigenous children. In April of last year a UN investigation found Australia among the worst countries in the world for forced removals of Indigenous children.
“Now they are saying that it’s a new stolen generation, but it never stopped” says Landers. “It’s like the apology never happened.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/26/i-call-it-racism-when-they-took-the-children-it-was-in-police-cars?
Repeal the 8th: Ireland's historic referendum & 'a quiet revolution'
Ireland has done it. In a referendum held on Friday 66.4% of voters opted to repeal the 8th Amendment which effectively bans abortion in almost every instance.
It amounts to a landslide on a sensitive and divisive subject in a deeply Catholic country. Ireland was once viewed as among the most conservative nations in the world with good cause: it only legalised divorce in 1995.
Now, in 2018 the people of Ireland have cast their votes overwhelmingly in favour of overturning some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws. As it stands in Ireland women are prohibited from aborting pregnancies unless their lives are at risk — even in the cases of incest, rape, and fatal fetal abnormality.
The Irish Government plans legislate by the end of the year which will mean, for the first time in history, the women of Ireland will not have to travel to access abortions.
People power cannot be underestimated. Here in Australia that same people power is needed for the very same reason. We may not have Ireland’s history but the women of Australia still face too many hurdles in accessing abortions.
https://womensagenda.com.au/politics/world/repeal-the-8th-irelands-historic-referendum-a-quiet-revolution/
Abortion clinic safe zones: human rights lawyer applies to give high court advice | Australia news | The Guardian
Laws took effect in Victoria in 2015 that made it illegal for anti-abortionists to protest within 150 metres of health and fertility clinics. The “safe access zone” laws were intended to protect health workers and their patients from being confronted and intimidated by protesters while seeking medical advice or getting medical treatment, including abortion.
But the high court is to hear a case challenging the validity of the safe access zone laws in Victoria as well as Tasmania. The Victorian case has been brought by anti-abortionist Kathleen Clubb, who was the first person to be convicted of breaking Victoria’s safe access zone laws in 2016. She was fined $5,000 for communicating about abortion to a person attending the clinic in a manner “reasonably likely to cause distress or anxiety”.
In its submission to the high court this month, the Victorian government warned that without safe access zones, some women who needed abortion services would decide “to delay or not to seek those services at all”. Submissions in the Victorian case close in June and in the Tasmanian case in August.
[ed: Meanwhile Penny Sharpe’s Bill for safe access zones in NSW
passed on Thursday!]
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/26/abortion-clinic-safe-zones-human-rights-lawyer-applies-to-give-high-court-advice?
Tougher US border enforcement policy to separate more families
A strict new enforcement plan by the Trump administration will mean more parents caught illegally crossing the U.S. border will get prosecuted and separated from any children accompanying them.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the strict new policy has been under discussion for months, but added that the administration postponed announcing it “because of the sensitivities of removing children from their parents.”
In March, the American Civil Liberties Union sued to the Trump administration in a class-action complaint that alleges the government is “forcibly separating asylum-seeking parents and young children.” The ACLU argued the family separation case this past Friday in San Diego. No date for a decision has been announced.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/07/tougher-us-border-enforcement-policy-to-separate-more-families.html
US immigration officials are now routinely separating immigrant mothers from their children when taking families into custody, and classifying the children as unaccompanied minors, ICE officials are reported to have “lost” 1,475 such children, and alleged to engage in widespread abuse of those children in custody.
http://tucson.com/news/local/parents-children-ensnared-in-zero-tolerance-border-prosecutions/article_e6b83d53-f4bd-566d-8487-9e9b67ef2bd8.html
Woman says she delivered own baby in cell after jailers accused her of faking labor
Woman says she delivered own baby in cell after jailers accused her of faking labor
The premature baby she named Cashh now clings to life in Cook’s Children Medical Center in Fort Worth. Bear says jailers ignored her repeated pleas for help.
Ellis County defense attorney Melinda Peel, who is not representing Bear, says she received a call that Thursday evening from a friend of an inmate saying that Bear had been screaming for two days in pain.
The friend told Peel that jailers did not believe Bear.
About two hours after Bear gave birth, Peel says an inmate called her from the jail saying that the female inmates wanted to file a grievance but were afraid to do so.
“The inmate stated that nobody was able to sleep for the last two nights because Shaye was screaming on and off all night long,” Peel said in an email.
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/woman-says-she-delivered-own-baby-in-cell-after-jailers-accused-her-of-faking-labor/287-556820943
Trump Administration to Tie Health Facilities’ Funding to Abortion Restrictions
WASHINGTON — Clinics that provide abortions or refer patients to places that do would lose federal funding under a new Trump administration rule that takes direct aim at Planned Parenthood, according to three administration officials.
Federal family planning laws already ban direct funding of organizations that use abortion as a family planning method. But conservative activists and Republican lawmakers have been pressing Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, to tighten the rules further so that abortions could not occur — or be performed by the same staff — at locations that receive Title X federal family planning money.
One Trump official said the rule would give Planned Parenthood and other groups that receive federal family planning money a choice: Disentangle themselves from abortion or lose government funding.
At the time, Planned Parenthood publicly rejected the proposal out of hand, saying it would never agree to a plan that would compel it to stop offering or advising women about abortions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/us/politics/trump-funding-abortion-restrictions.html
