Foster Care Victoria

Victoria’s major players in Child Protection policy and community services met for a discussion in the lead up to the release of the Ombudsman’s report into Child Protection last week. Anglicare Victoria’s CEO, Ray Cleary, was among the leaders and experts at the table for a discussion facilitated by The Age.

On the agenda were issues of the child protection system, worker fatigue in the sector, community engagement, funding and resources, children’s courts and mandatory reporting.

Here’s some of what Anglicare Victoria’s Ray Cleary had to say.

“I don’t think we’re asking the right questions. And the right questions, to me, are what’s happening to families in our society today, in Australia, which is seeing increasing numbers of children coming to notification for child protection and family support, and what’s happening to our children in that regard? What are our schools having to deal with? Why are we seeing so many families where relationships are so fragile? It seems to me they’re the bigger questions we ought to be asking because that stands behind why I think we’re seeing the notifications in child protection, the increase in placements in our home care…”

“But let’s put the elephant on the table: that’s about resources, and that’s about the Victorian community or the Australian community being willing to invest in children and families and not invest in other things which in fact work against that; so education, housing, health services, kindergartens, child care centres, all those sorts of things, are the way that we can only address that question.”

You can read a transcript of the discussion from The Age website, or read the related news article. You can also follow news and opinion from Anglicare Victoria’s Social Justice and Foster Care blogs.