Letter to the Editor - To the Director-General of  DCP in response to his letter in the Joondalup Weekender - 27/May

Terry Murphy, Director-General of the Department for Child Protection, replied to a letter to the editor in the Weekender. I have a few positive and negative comments for Terry. Terry you are correct that children deserve a chance. You are correct in that which you imply that people should not wish to move the residential care houses out of their suburbs - rather neighbours and community should welcome their neighbours & inspire camaraderie.

We will live in an improving world if we better understand and welcome those for instance in social, public and state housing.

However Terry one serious concern with DCP is as you well know the increasing numbers of children your department is removing from their families because of the very broad 2004 Children and Communities Services Act that your department operates under. If Australia had a Human Rights Charter/Act the moral dilemma that is the 2004 Act would not be possible, it would never have been legislated and implemented.

I am with you in arguing for an ethos of care & community spirit however I am against you in your department's unnecessary and aggressive traumatising of children and destruction of many families because you wrongly believe, and it is unethical, that you must err on the side of caution. How much caution? For every child 'saved' how many children and parents do your under-qualified and inexperienced 'front line workers' hurt and ruin?

The Stolen Generations are not over.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - The Director-General of DCP should apologise - 12.4.2010


The Letter to the Editor (8.4.2010) by Terry Murphy, Director-General of the Department of Child Protection was one of most disturbing prejudicial disclosures I have read from someone who should have known better.

Terry responded to the newspaper articles and letters to the editor describing common themes of aggressive and inexperienced caseworkers prematurely and unnecessarily removing children from families. Terry referred to one mother in particular whose predicament was recently investigated by a newspaper reporter. Last August this mother had her three children removed from her against the advice of her psychologist who describes her as a good mother and against the similar advice of her local parish priest.

Terry selected excerpts from judicial proceedings against the mother by DCP and published them in his letter to the editor. Terry should have known better than to prejudice this person's future interests by damaging her in her the public domain, though the court transcripts are accessible to the public. Terry also knows that this person was not legally represented by a lawyer and he knows that the Court maintains an investiture of faith and goodwill in what DCP advocates. Terry has surely fixated further distrust in this mother's mind towards DCP. Terry in his disturbing letter to the editor failed to represent DCP as educative, remedial, conciliatory and holistic.

Terry justifies his colleagues, the inexperienced caseworkers, most of them who I can describe with merely a social work degree and no other professional development, as people who are called on to make difficult judgments and in arenas of contest. If they have to make hasty decisions then these should be premised purely on evidence, such as actual physical harm. Terry argues that his department appreciates the need for public scrutiny. This is far from the truth, as they employ a legal team, have few internal balances and checks, do not inform the victims of their rights, do not provide case files to the parents, and even under Freedom of Information withhold documents and without a court summons these files are often not seen. Tragically, the shambolic DCP have very minimal audit mechanisms for their caseworkers' decisions. These caseworkers have an unheralded access, and thus abuse, of power, and therefore can escape robust scrutiny.

Terry needs to apologise to the mother of three whom he has now heavily prejudiced by selected excerpts from a preliminary judicial process. I hope this mother and her three children are soon reunited. I know the people who are advocating for them and I know them to genuine professionals. She and her children are one of many families who have been traumatised by DCP, and I assure you, some of what DCP does, in the removing of children, is one of Australia's worst scandals-in-waiting.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - DCP's utopian ideology - 8.4.2010 (from the West Australian Letters to the Editor)

There are urgent calls to reform the Department for Child Protection (Letters, 7/4). However, the DCP is already in the midst of radical reforms and, as with all bureaucratic reforms, the baby is thrown out with the bathwater.

DCP's current mandate appears to be to vigorously defend its own self-interests by avoiding all blame over and above the overriding consideration of what is best for the child. Up until 2008 the child-protection industry appeared to uphold abusive parents' rights as a first priority and children were left to suffer unspeakable terror and abuse which led to many deaths.

This appears to have been curtailed. But WA's illicit drug epidemic and numbers of parents with serious drug-induced mental illness continue to grow unimpeded. Thus, the demands on DCP have grown exponentially and it is forced to employ too many inexperienced staff.

DCP's management appears to mirror the utopian ideology of all elitist WA health and social-service executives, which is the denial of their individual responsibility. These public servants appear to shelter behind elitist, prestigious, highly remunerated positions, detest the concept of individual responsibility and sheet blame back to anyone but themselves.

Geraldine Mullins, Geraldton



Letter to the Editor - Listen to them - 7.4.2010 (from the West Australian Letters to the Editor)

I am a loving mother of three children and we have all been lost in the DCP system for years.

My children were taken away by DCP because it believed I could not manage them - and I admit that I was sick and needed help. The intervention of DCP did not help - it made me sicker than I already was.

Recently I have my children back and DCP is no longer involved with us, but this outcome has involved years of fighting and terrible damage to the family.

I thank the recent new workers in DCP who believed in me and worked with me and with my doctor and support workers. if only the earlier DCP workers had not accepted the stereotype of me as a bad mother just because I was ill. If only they had worked with all the other people who were helping me.

Please listen to Dr George O'Neil and Patrick Cuneen (Letters, 7/4) and let's find a way to assist children in and with their families.

Name Withheld



Letter to the Editor - DRACONIAN POWER OF DCP - 7.4.2010 (from the West Australian Letters to the Editor)

Your report (The West Australian's - Children caught in the middle, 3/4) should be a flashing red light for all West Australians, especially those interested in the rights of mothers and children.

Any fair-minded person would concede that the Department of Child Protection has an important role in the service of society and one that is difficult to administer professionally and dispassionately.

Our volunteers visit many single mothers and children, including the family featured in your report, and we believe there are serious shortcomings in the administration of the Children and Communities Services Act 2004 by the DCP.

In relation to the children featured in your article, my home was invaded on June 3, 2009, by the DCP, supported by two police officers and two officers of the regional Mental Health Authority who were told by DCP (based on evidence of an anonymous informant) that I was harbouring these children.

It transpired that the DCP did not have a warrant for its intrusion, nor did it follow procedures for a search without a warrant. Two days later (on June 5) it obtained a court order giving it (the DCP) custody of the children. While this was going on a court case was in recess to consider a DCP application to take the children into care.

Letters from the St Vincent de Paul Society asking both the Minister and the CEO to meet to discuss this problem in particular and mothers and children in general met with refusal. However, I have met some DCP officers who are quick to point out that the DCP has both a "welfare" and a "statutory" function. They claim that respective officers observe a strict separation of these functions. Sadly, I have found this not to be the case. The "statutory" arm, particularly when a court case is involved, overrides the "welfare" arm. Not surprisingly, given the draconian powers of the DCP, many mothers are too frightened to go to it for aid.

For example, we are currently assisting one mother who is too frightened to report her abusive partner to the police (for breaching restraining orders) because she believes that each time the police visit her house they are bound to report the incident to the DCP and the witnessing of violence by the children is sufficient cause for the children's removal.

The enforcement provisions of the Act, which make the DCP a de facto police force, should be given to a specially trained division of our "first" police force. this would allow the DCP time to consult the community groups for the welfare of our children, as the Act demands, and would remove the temptation to interfere in the court process to achieve outcomes favourable to the DCP. The fear of the DCP would thus disappear.

In January, the Minister foreshadowed legislation to extend the period of care of children to 18 and to loosen the oversight provisions. She called the new class of carers mooted to administer these extended powers "guardians".

I would counsel extreme caution on the part of Parliament in considering this legislation.

Patrick Cunneen, regional president, St Vincent de Paul Society.



Letter to the Editor - URGENT REFORM (from the West Australian Letters to the Editor) - 7.4.2010

I call on the Premier to reform the Department for Child Protection after your Agenda report (Children Caught in the middle). There is a need for the DCP to work with professionals supporting families. It has not been committed enough to support mothers, who may be ill for a short time.

To protect families as well as the children, the Government needs to set up an independent body with appropriate professionals so that good people like Maria Harries, Doug Brewer and Pastor Dennis Doust can have the aggressive behaviour of individuals inside DCP stopped and independently investigated when mothers just needing support are being attacked.

The reform necessary includes: a change in department policy to protect families as well as children; never to use the legal strength of the government against women who cannot afford lawyers; to set up professional consulting with groups caring for sick mothers and involve them in planning as part of the parent, family and children's rights' and to set up a training program for DCP staff so that they engage and consult those caring for sick mothers.

This consulting should especially apply to mothers working to recover so that they can care for their families. The absence of this consulting with the professionals in the case described on Saturday is similar to the problem that the big group of staff who work with me experience too frequently.

The department has lost the ability to consult the families' doctors, psychologists and social workers. They have too often used the courts in a manner that destroys families without consulting those with skill and insight already caring for the family.

Dr George O'Neil, Fresh Start, Subiaco




Letter to the Editor - Paedophilia - 28.3.2010

Child sexual abuse and paedophilia are not as difficult to eliminate as some people assume. The Pope should admit the historical and contemporary prevalence of paedophiles within the Catholic diocese and remove those who have offended. The television producers of 'Hey Dad' should have replaced the actor Robert Hughes, upon reasonably substantiating the allegations, rather than hire 'chaperones' to presumably protect the child actors.

As a society we need to encourage the truth, we need to encourage victims to fearlessly speak up, we need to encourage whistle blowers, we need to ensure appropriate agencies, not just the police, to work with all parties in pursuit of qualifying the truth and in managing the journey and in minimising trauma.

We need to remind the Department of Child Protection that this is the type of abuse they should focus on rather than ludicrously hovering all over the place judging parents for smacking their children or hound them for arguing amongst themselves nearby their children. We're a long way from a perfect world. We need to ensure that the worst of what happens within humanity is foremost focused on and remedied. We need to get at what's rotten.

Only 1.6% of reported child sexual abuses are successfully prosecuted. Hidden attitudes and unwarranted fears of shame and intra-familial divisions, and of persecution have allowed child sexual abuses and paedophilia to evilishly flourish. Lazy politicians are part of the problem as the people are guided by them. Politicians cower behind the hidden attitudes rather than work to eliminate them. They hide behind quests to eliminate pat-smacks and insist on educating parents to hug and cuddle their children however they do not rise to finance the elimination of rampant paedophilia and child sexual abuse.

The tobacco industry got away with murdering at least half a billion people in less than a century. Genocide. Politicians did not have the propriety driven integrity to outlaw the genocidal tobacco industry. Instead during the last three decades they chose the marathon instead of the sprint, and have worked to educate people about the dangers of tobacco. The campaign has reduced the number of people smoking however in Australia alone during this campaign half a million Australians have died from smoking related diseases. If they had outlawed tobacco most of these people would still be alive!

If we do not insist that the Department of Child Protection, and supporting agencies, should focus on child sexual abuse then we will continue to lose more people to this hideous scourge. If politicians do not finance the agencies to support this, if they do not tighten legislation to support victims, whistle blowers and the police efforts to investigate then we will let the perpetrators escape  successful prosecution and even their own rehabilitation. We need to prosecute offenders and those complicit. The Pope should do what his calling expects of him, politicians should rise to their calling, families should gather around the victim rather than persecute the victim, and in doing so I assure you we will diminish this soul destroying scourge.

Gerry Georgatos





Letter to the Editor - Are they protecting children? I think not! - 21.3.2010


The 29 Government Agencies of this State have individual Acts and Bills that guide them. Many of these Acts and Bills hugely conflict.

The Department of Child Protection is one government agency which is guided by one of the broadest and loosest Acts (2004) and dangerously over empowers its often under qualified workers and agents.

It is dangerous to over empower any agency as it will notably ensure inadvertent abuses from the mishandling of power and the subsequent impingement of human rights and the diminution of natural social justice.

We have heard in recent weeks of this Department's disproportionately high removal of children from West Australian African families. This is a clear indicator of a systemic fault. I have met some of these families. The Act that guides the mentality of the DCP workers does not include the recognition of iinter-cultural sensitivities. Therefore our ignorance can make ones cultural identity a liability, as this country did for two centuries to our Aboriginal brothers and sisters.

DCP are removing children from African families because they may have pat-smacked their kids or because they are perceived as latch-key while the parents work. DCP thinks it can tell parents who protected their children throughout civil war, treks across vast distances, who endured famine and lived long experiences in refugee camps while they sought asylum that all of a sudden they are not able to protect and care for their children. A number of years ago while filming a short documentary I discovered many of our African refugee families had lived in refugee campus for up to 16 years! Can the Department of Child Protection, and other ignoramuses, grow up?

DCP workers took it upon themselves to contact African communities and search for foster carers, however what they achieved was the humiliation of the families they had over-involved themselves with. These families receded from their valued social networks. 

Workers I am interviewing within DCP departments, and affiliated DCP funded departments such as the advisory Family Inclusion Network and Aboriginal family conciliation oriented Yorgum describe DCP workers with a frustrating employee-mentality rigorously enforced to the unrealistic and immature expectations of a brutish Act (2004) which pervasively extends itself in pursuit of a nanny-state mentality. DCP needs to focus on expedient conciliation and remedy where possible, and never stand in its way, as they do. DCP needs to focus on child sexual health abuse, evidenced physical harm to children, malnourishment, and in ensuring access to educational opportunities and resist its almost Catholic like urge to sermonise to families, and to insist on hugs and cuddles, and to judgmentally diminish people because parents may argue with each other or even if they've endured an alleged domestic violence incident. Education campaigns can assist here, however in terms of DCP's involvement with families the Act must work to limit DCP's involvement and not to allow for their disgraceful over-involvement.

The Department of Child Protection needs to ensure that their often under qualified workers have engaged in professional development in anti-racism, affirmative policy understanding, conciliation, grievance handling, substantive equality training, etc. To date they have not. All 29 of the state's agencies would benefit from this compulsory development, and especially the young people who have just left the very limited life experience of university.

A Human Rights Bill is well overdue to assist us in reigning in the vastly unique Acts and Bills that have made such a mishmash of our government agencies and their workplaces. However, who really suffer are society, and people continue to slip through the cracks of our legislative nightmares and discriminatory management systems.

Gerry Georgatos





Letter to the Editor - The Stealing of Children - leave people alone - 11.3.2010

35 children have been removed from West Australian African families by the Department of Child Protection. This is disproportionate in terms of ratio to population. Usually, such a discrepancy is an indicator in terms of a lack of awareness of the other, and hence we enshrine systemic anomalies.

The Department of Child Protection is under-funded and under-resourced, and hence it desperately employs under-qualified and inexperienced people as Field Workers and Case Workers. Contextually, professional development is minimal. These under-qualified Workers make assessments, from usually a few meetings and some information which is not always disclosed to the parents. This is obviously very wrong. DCP Workers are granted an investiture of faith and goodwill by their legal department and by the Children's Court and hence obviously there is a great capacity for many families to suffer unjust damage. The legislation in place, the 2004 Act that guides them, is so loose and wide in its expectations and perceived powers that there is no capacity for these under-qualified and time-constrained Workers to provide any robustly accurate assessments. The Act needs to be amended so it is not misinterpreted by inexperienced Workers, which I have found it often is. Many of them recite from a few vague and legislatively conflicting lines from the DCP website, about their right to make assessments and to remove children into the care of their CEO or the State. The Act needs to focus on the most serious abuses, such as child sexual health abuse, of which only 1.6% of reported cases are successfully prosecuted. DCP should focus on evidenced physical harm, on evidenced malnourishment and on real neglect such as the lack of provision of school education and requisite health checks. The rest is beyond them and really none of their business.

We should not support a nanny-state nor be judgmental of others. Every couple of decades society rocks up with new guidelines of how to rear children and family. How about we merely ensure the dissemination of this information and stay out of the lives of people. It is not up to us to ensure that families must hug and cuddle their children, or to clinically eliminate every argument from within a family, nor for us to presume that a child is at physical risk because the parents have argued with each other or experienced an ad hoc domestic violence incident. For the most part we need to leave people alone rather than make things worse. DCP Workers should focus on the serious abuses and work to eliminate these rather than misdirect their energies away from the horrific real abuses.

The Department of Child Protection has few internal balances and checks, and this lack of real audit and review is dangerous. Yes, there are Case Review Panels and the State Administrative Tribunal however by the time one is versed enough to have their matter heard much trauma and damage has been enabled. The Family Inclusion Network (FIN) which provides advice to parents who have had their children removed or monitored by DCP are actually funded by DCP. Yorgum which works to provide access for Aboriginal parents to their children are also restricted by DCP because they too are directly funded by DCP. However, interestingly workers, who I know, with FIN and Yorgum have described to me, in private, their concerns with the heavy-handedness and ignorance that has overwhelmed DCP. The Yorgum workers who spoke to me are frustrated and incensed by the rigidity and employee-first mentalities of the DCP Workers.

As part of a research project I am now interviewing parents who have had their children removed by DCP, and many describe over-reactions, bullying, the irrational and illegal demand that parents separate or not see each other (at all!) and hypothetical 'at-risk' scenarios for which in evidentiary terms little exists to justify DCP's invasive actions.

One person described it perfectly, "...they are not the Department for Child Protection rather the Department for Family Destruction..."

On February 13, 2008 Prime-Minister Rudd apologised to the 'Stolen Generation'. On 14.2.2008, a mock tent and banner was set up at the Old Tent Embassy in Canberra, at Old Parliament, which I photographed on a visit later that year. It reads, "RUDD, 14.2.1908, YESTERDAY YOU SAID 'SORRY' - TODAY STILL YOU STEAL OUR CHILDREN".

Kindly, Gerry Georgatos




Letter to the Editor - Apologies alone are lazy - 4.3.2010

Health Minister Kim Hames will apologise on behalf of the State Government to the victims who were unlawfully and immorally separated from their mothers who had given birth to them outside of wedlock. Apologies are useless when we continue with similar practices. Eugenics continue to this day as we live in an ever increasing nanny state, and who is responsible for this - the Government.

What good is the Apology to the Stolen Generation when children are still taken by the under resourced and under qualified Department of Child Protection? This terrifying Department over involves itself in people's lives and destroys families. With the Children and Community Services Act 2004, and especially with the vague and loose section 133, under qualified and inexperienced Field Workers can move into any family and remove their children. They do.

Kim Hames and Kevin Rudd have apologised for the 'attitudes' of generations past that allowed for unwarranted, invasive and soul destroying intrusions. However we continue with these attitudes disregarding the inherent love within families, disregarding the pursuit of civilised conciliation and the plethora of support mechanisms and rather we continue into demeaning and destroying families. I suppose in a couple of generations some politician will apologise on behalf of our generation's harsh and hidden attitudes rather than amending the Acts to ensure such horrific removals do not occur and cannot be loosely justified.

Gerry Georgatos






Letter to the Editor - The Department for Child Protection destroys families - Oh God! - 19.2.2010

I spend my time campaigning to remedy many poorly worded and structured Bills and Acts of Government. Our so-called parliamentarians either don't know how to or take their sweet time. Often we create Bills that allow for incredible powers to under-resourced departments and agencies, and to under-qualified employees or agents of these departments. These people can have devastating effects on peoples lives.

One such department is the Department for Child Protection. This department has the horrific power to take children away from the real love their families. Right now I am working on a ministerial paper and on urgency motions to State Parliament to address the wrongfulness of the Act that has over-powered DCP.

In recent weeks I have met many families who have tragic stories to declare about how DCP has unnecessarily taken their children away or into 'protective custody'.

The intentions of the Act are not matched by the due funds to ensure procedural fairness, high quality and validated assessments, appropriately qualified and experienced personnel and the necessary education and mechanisms required for conciliation, remedy and support. DCP destroys families rather than keeping them together. The damage even from a short stint in foster care or placement with 'extended family' has a devastating long lasting effect.

What are we looking for from people when we scrutiny them in terms of their performance as parents? What are we looking for from the poor or from cultural groups who have different demographics and dynamics than the predominant groups who arrogantly dictate terms?

Departments such as the so-called Child Protection, Corrective Services, amongst others, need to have a closer at themselves before they look into the lives of others.

After discovering that the Stolen Generation essentially continues, the horror stories from families and individuals destroyed by over-eager time constrained DCP field workers, I am making it my life's work to correct the ignorance of the Act that allows them to cruelly inflict this untold damage on behalf of the Government of Western Australia.

Gerry Georgatos
Please contact me with your story or for help - gerry_georgatos@yahoo.com.au (read more further down and on the website)



Letter to the Editor - 13.2.2010 - ACTS and BILLS that allow for abuses and horrific trauma
Letter to the Editor - 28.1.2010 - Toy offer not wanted (from the Armadale Examiner)

I'm 25 years old and my daughter is seven and every year we donate all of her old toys that are too good to just give up to Good Sammys.

Last year it was Armadale Hospital - they were so grateful and appreciative for our donation to the children's ward.

This year we were going to donate to a woman's refuge so we went to the Department for Child Protection (DCP) Armadale to ask for an address.

The woman I spoke to was rude and said the children don't need toys.

I know what the refuges are like, as a child I lived in refuges with my mum and three siblings.

I asked this woman if I could donate the toys to anyone, she was very rude and suggested I give them to the Salvos as there wasn't anywhere that needed the toys. (We all know that there are plenty of places that need toys for children).

I explained why I didn't want to give them to the Salvos. She rolled her eyes and said "oh ok, I'll put them out the back and see if anyone wants them."

She didn't say thank you or ask for my name or anything. I went into DCP to help the children they are working to help and yet she was rude, dismissive and looked down her nose at me.

It made me thinkk, how are the people who go there asking for help treated?

Clearly there are some people who should not be working in this industry and we as a community should be aware of this and fight for those people who go there asking for help.

S.Sando, Brookdale



Letter to the Editor - 21.1.2010 - Child Sexual Predators


Child sexual predation is up in WA to 298 offenders caught in 2009 in comparison to 45 less during 2008. However this is the tip of the iceberg. I estimate that there are minimally 10,000 child sexual abuse incidents each year.

We haven't educated society to ensure the identification of such sexual abuse, most of it intra-familial. We haven't educated society and the families that make it up to report it. Rather the perpetrators are protected even if it is by the shameful hostility of denial.

We need to encourage people to stand up and respect the victims. The effects are life-long and inter-generational. We need the law to find ways to establish the truth as currently only 1.6% of child sexual abuse prosecutions are successful.

Child sexual abuse is horrific, a betrayal of trust, the abandonment of love, a life in darkness and the morbid, the precursor of mental breakdowns, a journey into loneliness, torment, anger and violence, it is the breaking of the soul - and it takes so much and so many to help put ones soul together again. Please people, let us really rise on this one. I have.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – Homelessness – 4.1.2010

 

 

With my 9 year old daughter I've made a few early morning walks in Perth's CBD during the last few weeks and I have noticed that there are more homeless people sleeping on benches and doorsteps and on either bitumen or the grass. I have also noticed this increase in Fremantle.

Governments need to step up the pursuance to eliminate homelessness and outrageous abject poverty. Rudd made a promise, as did Hawke, however key focus has never been prescribed into substantive policy and underwritten by budgeted funding.

Homelessness in Australia is not at the presumed 100,000 rather at closer to half a million if we understand that people living in shared accommodation or drifting from room to room and hostels and the outdoors and having little or no income are people always in a precarious situation. They cannot be classified as having secured a home.

In WA we have 23,000 applications in pursuit of public housing, however the 70,000 on the waiting lists are essentially homeless, as they have no secured residence. This time next year the waiting list will grow to 100,000 people.

If policies do not exist that will remedy these endemic problems then they will only continue the runaway increase. If the Federal and State budgets do not include them then we are guaranteed increasing homelessness, abject poverty and all the negative implications for society that governments will only try to consequently address with harsher prison sentences and the further erosion of human worth.

Gerry Georgatos







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