'Shattered father failed by DoCS system'
OK, we’d like to warn anyone who has been more than an occasional reader of this blog to hold on. Because we are about to stand up for DoCS. Bet you never saw that coming, heh?
We regularly hold social work agencies and workers up to scrutiny for poor policy, poor performance, and poor people management. But we try to balance our rants with some constructive suggestions about what the preferred approach should be. And as we are foster parents in the system, we are actively putting our money where our mouth is. We’ve earned our right to have a say and it is an informed one. Right?
So we’ve been watching this week’s vitriol from the great uninformed about DoCS’ performance in relation to the 12 year old mum to be. If you follow us on Twitter (@fostercarer) then you’ll have seen some tweets (and if you don’t follow us on Twitter, give it a go. Pithy is good and we are at our pithiest there…)
Here’s the most recent, in depth (and we use that term loosely) article on the subject from The Daily Telegraph. It’s titled Shattered father failed by rotten DoCS system. That’s an award winning headline.
All fingers, including those of anyone who can type a comment on a news website, are pointing to DoCS as having failed the expectant child. Despite an order awarding custody to the mother, who was clearly not fit to care for the child or provide a safe home (so who made THAT decision?), when the non-custodial father raised his concerns to DoCS about the child’s welfare, they didn’t remove the child.
In work and life we believe you should cop it on the chin when you deserve it. But our sense of fairness is feeling a bit confronted.
Even Community Services Minister Linda Burney seems to have waved goodbye to the horse as it bolted past her out the gate, and has given up trying to provide any cogent explanation as to what really happened in DoCS when one of these cases hits the headlines.
So we applauded just a bit when we saw this piece from Tory Maguire on The Punch, entitled Blaming Government for rotten parents.
She writes: ‘Blaming the authorities has become the default position for so many people who don’t think the ultimate responsibility for the care of children lies with their parents.’
Spot on. We’re not sure who appointed DoCS as the only defence for children in this state, but they seem to be expected to pick up the pieces when it all goes pear-shaped no matter what the previous circumstances. If they were resourced, and structured to do just that, then we’d be leading the calls for accountability. The problem with all this is that slowly, relentlessly, we are accepting the idea that DoCS is ultimately and finally responsible. Not the parents. Not the community. Not the police or the legal system. Not the other support systems like schools and the medical profession.
Maguire points out that ‘there were children in greater danger than this little girl’ that took the available resources.
Do you know, at some point that could have been our foster child? We have a child in care because the decision was made that her birth family couldn’t care for her properly. She was at serious risk of immediate harm and enduring hardship, and a worker mobilised the system to remove her and initiated the decision to keep her safe. Her case was, in an over-taxed system, given priority.
So here’s a quiet round of applause for all the dedicated DoCS workers who make the right decisions. Credit where credit is due. It’s a shame that the positive stories don’t sell newspapers, isn’t it.
We regularly hold social work agencies and workers up to scrutiny for poor policy, poor performance, and poor people management. But we try to balance our rants with some constructive suggestions about what the preferred approach should be. And as we are foster parents in the system, we are actively putting our money where our mouth is. We’ve earned our right to have a say and it is an informed one. Right?
So we’ve been watching this week’s vitriol from the great uninformed about DoCS’ performance in relation to the 12 year old mum to be. If you follow us on Twitter (@fostercarer) then you’ll have seen some tweets (and if you don’t follow us on Twitter, give it a go. Pithy is good and we are at our pithiest there…)
Here’s the most recent, in depth (and we use that term loosely) article on the subject from The Daily Telegraph. It’s titled Shattered father failed by rotten DoCS system. That’s an award winning headline.
All fingers, including those of anyone who can type a comment on a news website, are pointing to DoCS as having failed the expectant child. Despite an order awarding custody to the mother, who was clearly not fit to care for the child or provide a safe home (so who made THAT decision?), when the non-custodial father raised his concerns to DoCS about the child’s welfare, they didn’t remove the child.
In work and life we believe you should cop it on the chin when you deserve it. But our sense of fairness is feeling a bit confronted.
Even Community Services Minister Linda Burney seems to have waved goodbye to the horse as it bolted past her out the gate, and has given up trying to provide any cogent explanation as to what really happened in DoCS when one of these cases hits the headlines.
So we applauded just a bit when we saw this piece from Tory Maguire on The Punch, entitled Blaming Government for rotten parents.
She writes: ‘Blaming the authorities has become the default position for so many people who don’t think the ultimate responsibility for the care of children lies with their parents.’
Spot on. We’re not sure who appointed DoCS as the only defence for children in this state, but they seem to be expected to pick up the pieces when it all goes pear-shaped no matter what the previous circumstances. If they were resourced, and structured to do just that, then we’d be leading the calls for accountability. The problem with all this is that slowly, relentlessly, we are accepting the idea that DoCS is ultimately and finally responsible. Not the parents. Not the community. Not the police or the legal system. Not the other support systems like schools and the medical profession.
Maguire points out that ‘there were children in greater danger than this little girl’ that took the available resources.
Do you know, at some point that could have been our foster child? We have a child in care because the decision was made that her birth family couldn’t care for her properly. She was at serious risk of immediate harm and enduring hardship, and a worker mobilised the system to remove her and initiated the decision to keep her safe. Her case was, in an over-taxed system, given priority.
So here’s a quiet round of applause for all the dedicated DoCS workers who make the right decisions. Credit where credit is due. It’s a shame that the positive stories don’t sell newspapers, isn’t it.
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