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| Custody grab breaks parents' hearts
Parents of children with severe intellectual disabilities are facing heartache
because of bureaucracy, as Margaret Wenham reports
January 10, 2005
http://www.news.com.au/common/story...55E3102,00.html
TWO Queensland families' worst fears are about to be realised.
Each is about to be stripped of the custody of one of their children by the
Child Safety Department.
Not because of physical or emotional abuse or neglect, but because of an arcane
line of demarcation between the Child Safety and Disability Services
bureaucracies which dictates that parents seeking more than 50 per cent
out-of-home disability support services and funding for their disabled children
must relinquish custody to the state.
The Courier-Mail revealed the peculiarities of the system in October by telling
both families' stories and the invidious choices they faced.
Then, the families from Redcliffe and Rockhampton were adamant they would not
and should not be required to hand over custody of their children.
But tomorrow the Redcliffe family will be in the Redcliffe Magistrate's Court
as child safety officers seek a care and protection order on the basis they
have abandoned their 14-year-old severely autistic son.
To add to their heartbreak their attempts to draw attention to their plight
have been blocked by state laws that prevent the identification of children
likely to be placed under child protection orders.
The Courier-Mail is unable to name the families despite their wishes. The
Redcliffe child's mother explained yesterday that with had her health failing
and the pressure increasing on their two younger children, she and her husband
held talks with senior child safety personnel early last month to discuss their
son's future.
"At one of the meetings I was assured I would have control, I would have
contact, if (he) was to come under a care and protection order," mother Jackie
said.
"So we relented and after I took (him) to a DSQ respite centre in Boondall on
December 9 we informed them we would not be picking him up.
"Then we had the compulsory family meeting with Child Safety and just about all
our requests were knocked on the head – access will be at the carer's
discretion and will have to be arranged a month in advance, we're not to be
involved in the selection of his carers, we won't be able to approach his
teachers on an informal basis to see how he's going, we'll have no input into
the development and monitoring of his case management.
"I'm racked with guilt because I'm giving him up to the system to do with him
as they wish.
"I'm caught between a rock and a hard place – we can't have him living here,
we just can't cope, but I want to have control and I want to be able to check
what they are doing with him.
"We love (him)."
In October, Disability Services Minister Warren Pitt conceded the system
presented "difficulties" to families.
He said the departments of Disability Services and Child Safety were "working
together to examine whether there are potential solutions to better meet these
families' needs".
Asked when the changes might be made, he said: "It is not possible . . . to
give a time frame for when the Government will be able to make its response,
but the issue is a priority."
Whatever the changes, they will come too late for the Redcliffe family, and
possibly too late for the Rockhampton father who is also facing losing custody
of his 10-year-old son, diagnosed with autism, oppositional defiance disorder
and Tourette's syndrome.
But the families are not giving up without a fight. They are aware that
Disability Services Queensland provides out-of-home support funding to people
with disabilities over 18.
Both have lodged complaints with the Anti-Discrimination Commission.
A conciliation conference in the Redcliffe case has been set for February 10.
A Child Safety Department spokesman said when the needs of a child with a
disability became so great that a family relinquished care, the Department of
Child Safety had a statutory obligation and duty to apply to the Children's
Court for a protection order.
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