Thousands of Australian children are placed in out-of-home care each year for a variety of reasons, and in these new homes the children often suffer abuse. “Across the world on any given day, it is estimated around 2.7 million children under the age of 18 reside in some form of out-of-home care”. This exploitation of children in out-of-home care is a growing concern due to the impact it has on their physical and mental wellbeing.

A child, according to the CSIRO, is “a person who is under the age of 18 years”. Child abuse, then, is an illegal act committed against someone under 18-years of age that hurts them in some way. Child abuse is any type of action that harms, or has the potential to harm, a child in a physical or emotional way. A type of abuse that they could suffer is sexual abuse, which is, “every form of sexual interaction with a child between 0 and 17 years of age against the will of the child or without the possibility for the child to refuse the interaction”. In Australia, each state has their own system of out-of-home care for children. This can make it tricky at times when the government needs to interfere in a case because the laws change across the different territories. “Children may be placed in either kinship or foster care … if maltreatment is suspected". Out-of-home care is when children are removed from their current family home and placed under the guardianship of someone else who is deemed fitter to take care of them. The different types of out-of-home care are home-based care, family group homes, residential care and independent living. The Act for Kids website claims that “one child is abused or neglected every 11 minutes in Australia”, and this is why it falls to the government to take measures to protect children across the country. It is their responsibility to ensure that all children are safe from abuse and neglect.

The different types of abuse children can suffer in out-of-home care are emotional, physical, sexual, and neglect. Emotional abuse is when someone uses unsuitable words and actions to try and hurt a child over a period of time. Jessica Smart says that physical abuse is “any non-accidental physical act inflicted upon a child by a person having the care of a child”. Smart went on to say that sexual abuse is when the person in charge of taking care of the child shows the child, or tries to include the child in, sexual acts. Finally, neglect is “failing to provide the child with conditions needed for their physical and emotional development and wellbeing”. The main point to take away from these different definitions is that all of them result in a child living a hurt filled and sad life which leads to major psychological trauma. A young boy born in the 1960s said that his foster family would “… punished me severely for the slightest thing they regarded as unacceptable or unchristian behaviour”. This type of abuse is common for children in out-of-home care. There has been plenty of research around abuse in out-of-home care, and in one study it was found that around 79% of guardians were giving the children under their watch drugs. This demonstrates another form of physical abuse, where the person in charge of caring for a child chooses to give them drugs as part of their lifestyle. It was also estimated, by Smart, that during 2015-16 there were around 200,000 children in Australia who might be suffering abuse in out-of-home care. In this figure there are a significant number of children who have a disability, and it was found that there is a higher risk of them being assaulted because they are more dependent on their carers. Research has suggested that boys are at greater risk of being abused by people that are not family, whereas girls have a higher chance of being sexually abused. The Contemporary Out-of-Home Care Final Report (hereafter referred to as the Final Report) wrote that the types of sexual abuse children suffered include “penetrative and non-penetrative contact abuse, violations of privacy, exposure to sexual acts and material, sexual exploitation, and combinations of these forms of abuse”. ‘Kat’ told the Final Report that she was put in a variety of out-of-home care where she often felt extremely unsafe. In one of the homes she became friends with a girl who “… told me she was having dinner with her boyfriend and his mate at his parents’ house … So, I went … and it turned out that the girl had conned me, and I was actually gang-raped … that’s how I lost my virginity”. From being gang-raped to beaten with a belt, these children often go through immense pain in every part of their body and mind.

The psychological harm children can experience through out-of-home care is disturbing and is why steps are being put in place to try and reduce this. “Child abuse can affect a child’s physical, psychological, emotional, behavioural and social development through to adulthood”. From the ages of, roughly, 0-16, a child is still growing and developing physically and mentally. Abuse committed against them can then harm their physically or mental development, scarring them for life. This is then something they can carry over into adult life, and can affect how they interact with other people, form relationships and think of themselves. The Final Report says that the reason so many children are now being committed into out-of-home care is usually due to “socio-economic disadvantage, parental mental health and drug and alcohol use affecting parenting capacity, and domestic and family violence”. The children who go into the system often have quite difficult and complex backgrounds, and then may enter out-of-home care where they are abused in a number of ways. All of these negative experiences mean that when the children leave the out-of-home care system, they “face this transition to adulthood without family support and with significant extra barriers such as poor mental health, intellectual and physical disabilities, and developmental delays”. The Final Report conducted interviews and research into the sexual abuse children suffered in out-of-home care and found that most children were abused by the adult who was in charge of taking care of them. They went on to say that there were a variety of factors which could contributed to children suffering abuse, such as previous experience of abuse, no connection to their family, or a lack of understanding as to what abuse is. “If these children are sexually abused while in out-of-home care, the compounding experience of abuse may result in complex trauma and cumulative harm”. This trauma and harm often emerges when they leave the out-of-home care system and can result in the experiences listed before.

Child safety is the “measures to protect children from abuse”. The goal of the Australian government is to put methods in place to ensure that children in out-of-home care are safe and effectively cared for. The reason children go into out-of-home care is because there was something wrong with their original home life, and so the aim is to make sure that the out-of-home care houses are safe spaces. The Final Report wrote that even though there have been reforms to the system across Australia, there are “persistent weaknesses and systemic failures that continue to place children at risk of sexual abuse”. These weaknesses mentioned are constant relocation, lack of information being shared, inadequate responses to children’s claims of abuse, and lack of training for staff and carers. One big step that the government is trying to ensure happens is that children are being placed in homes which are with family or kin. The 2015 Consultation Paper of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (hereafter referred to as the Consultation Paper) conducted research and created six principles to put in place to protect children in out-of-home care. Point 1 is that the government and organisation responsible for the child needs to ensure they are making decisions centred around the interests of the child. The second principle is the “child-focused complaint handling policy” which is called the ‘Complaint Handling Guide: Upholding the Rights of Children and Young People’. This was created in February 2019 in line with the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, and showcases the way staff and carers need to go about investigating and lodging a complaint if a child tells them about abuse. Principle 3 is for a straightforward and available process whereby children know how and where to make a complaint, and that their complaint will be taken and investigated seriously. The fourth point is that out-of-home care organisations should maintain relationships with child protective services and the police to ensure that any investigations they need done into abuse claims will go ahead thoroughly. This will also ensure that the safety and wellbeing of the child can be protected. Principle 5 states that “all staff members, volunteers and others involved in the complaint handling process [will] receive adequate and ongoing training”. The final principle is that there must be constant evaluation of the policies and procedures put in place by the organisation and government surrounding abuse in out-of-home care. These steps are being put in place across out-of-home care organisations to ensure that children are as protected and safe as possible.

The point of the article was to examine the nature and extent of the problem and impacts of abuse on child victims, and analyse steps being taken to address the issue. The piece argued that the statistics of abuse against children is far too high and greatly impacts a child’s physical and psychological wellbeing. The essay first examined key definitions of a child, child abuse, and out-of-home care. It was vital to look at these definitions so that the following information would make sense. Next, the piece looked into how children can end up in out-of-home care and the role the Australian government has of ensuring that Australian children are protected and safe. The writing then studied the four different types of abuse children can suffer and provided statistics and personal stories to support the argument that the number of children getting abused is too high. The paper then scrutinised the psychological impact abuse has on children, and how they often take that mental scarring into their adult life which affects them socially and economically as they often struggle when eventually out of the system. Finally, the article critically analysed steps that are being taken by the Australian government and out-of-home care organisations to try and ensure that child abuse is stopped, as often the children in the system have already suffered from their original home situation, and deserve to be safe with another family.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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NOTE: This article is written based on an assignment I did for my university unit Crime, Victims and Justice