Reporting more detail on children in care?
This came from Caroline Overington (#overingtonc) via Twitter. The full article is called The girl in the window, and recounts, in quite astonishing detail, the story of a 9 year old Florida girl.
She was so neglected and abused in her birth family that she now suffers developmental delay of the most extreme, fundamental kind. She has been adopted by a family who are trying to mend what they can. The article discloses a great deal of personal information about the child and her birth family, and a lot of detail on what the child experienced.
It should be compulsory reading for anyone who thinks they have an informed opinion on children’s services.
So, why can’t Overington and other responsible journos report this type of story, at this level of detail, in Australia?
Should we be able to report this type of story at this level of detail?
How can you work to a solution when no one is able to openly discuss the problem?
Can you educate all the people involved when the facts remain hidden?
Can you bring struggling parents to some degree of self-awareness if they never hear other stories they might identify with?
Can you report at this level of detail and still protect people’s privacy, particularly the children’s?
Perhaps it is time for a new approach.
Just today it was reported that ’Australian health and welfare agencies … formed a taskforce to combat increasing numbers of child abuse and neglect, which reached 55,000 cases last year’.
With notifications for alleged child abuse and neglect almost tripling in Australia between 1999 and 2007, the problem isn’t being solved by existing methods.
So maybe the time has come to give some committed, experienced, responsible journos the green light to start reporting.
Is it too easy to consider it ‘someone else’s problem’ if we don’t get too close to it?
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