Page 396 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
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Several other Australian jurisdictions include leaving care sections within legislation. The Northern Territory, New South Wales and Western Australia have legislated in this area to increase the rights and supports that young people who are leaving or have left out-of-home care receive.
I am sure that everyone can appreciate that the circumstances that lead to a child being removed from their home and family usually mean that a child or young person has been subject to traumatising levels of emotional, physical or sexual abuse or neglect, and the impacts that this can have.
There is strong evidence that children need a minimum of five key experiences to succeed—that is, caring adults in their lives, safe places to live, a healthy start, effective education, and opportunities to help others.
Developmental and economic studies have linked these five experiences to better adult outcomes, such as improved health status, less dependency on government and the earning of higher wages. However, we also know that current research indicates that young people and young adults who have been in out-of-home care situations have much poorer life outcomes.
To date in Australia there has been limited public concern with the plight of care leavers. They are a small, dispersed and relatively powerless group. Nationally, around 2,000 young people aged 15 to 17 years exit the out-of-home care system. In the ACT that figure is around 40 young people annually.
Advocacy for care leavers has been led by a small but passionate and committed group of people, and this voice has generally been led by a coalition of peak child welfare providers, individual researchers, and some non-government agencies and community groups such as the CREATE Foundation. These groups have lobbied hard on human rights, practical and economic grounds. This has had limited success nationally but has been able to provide states and territories with research and information to make some policy adjustments along the way.
Perhaps one of the biggest barriers to the development of effective supports for young care leavers has been the well-intentioned but perhaps ill-informed view that young people are entitled to attain absolute independence once their statutory child protection order ends. It is legitimate to have concerns about unnecessary intrusion by the state. It may well be that some care leavers may not want further involvement with state institutions, either because they are doing well and no longer require help or because they are not coping and blame their problems on the past actions of the state care system. But we cannot allow this argument to be used as an excuse for withdrawing support to care leavers. We have a responsibility to develop an understanding with young people that it is okay to be interdependent with others and that there is a system to help them.
Most families in the community keep the door open to allow their children to return well into adulthood if and when they choose to do so. The ACT Greens strongly believe that the territory as parent should also provide support into adulthood as these
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