Victoria<\/a>.<\/p>\nBut it is not at all common for the carer to have had such a minimal pre-existing relationship with the child.<\/p>\n
Anne McLeish, director of Kinship Carers Victoria, says the regular changing of case workers and administrative delays and errors are persistent issues for carers. Photograph: David Sillitoe\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Anne McLeish, director of Kinship Carers Victoria, says placing such a young child in a family home would have been critical to the case workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they couldn\u2019t find family members and a foster carer, that child was going to go into an institution,\u201d McLeish says. \u201cAnd quite rightly, the department will do anything \u2013 beg, borrow, steal, do anything \u2013 to place a child with a family rather than have that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson from the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing said they were unable to comment on individual matters, but that the government has invested $4.8bn in the system \u201cto improve outcomes\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cFoster and kinship carers play a critical role in caring for and providing a nurturing environment for children and young people who cannot live safely at home,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
But the Community and Public Sector Union\u2019s state secretary, Jiselle Hanna, says evidence shows \u201cchild protection workers are experiencing ongoing burnout due to chronic understaffing and pressure \u2013 this is a structural issue, not an individual one\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen workers don\u2019t have enough time or support, it affects how often children are seen, how quickly cases are addressed, and ultimately their safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018She was so happy eating\u2019<\/p>\n
Sofie began seeing developmental delays in Lily almost immediately. She wasn\u2019t sitting on her own or moving around much, and the bottle Sofie gave her would slip out of her hands. \u201cShe was like a toy, a frozen baby,\u201d Sofie says.<\/p>\n
Lily\u2019s medical history was unclear and scant information about her allergies was contradictory. When Sofie and Nina sought clarity from child protection, their concerns were brushed off with the suggestion to just \u201cdo the best thing for the child\u201d.<\/p>\n
In some areas, they had extraordinary success.<\/p>\n
Sofie knew from the centre records that Lily had trouble sleeping. She did not know what foods the baby had been introduced to \u2013 that was not part of the centre\u2019s usual role. But with no guidance forthcoming from child protection, she began feeding Lily what she would feed any other child. Lily\u2019s appetite roared to life.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was so happy eating!\u201d Sofie says. And she began sleeping through the night almost immediately. She had been simply, profoundly, hungry.<\/p>\n
Other situations were more complicated. Sofie was assured Lily\u2019s vaccinations were up to date but the records showed they were overdue. Later, Sofie and Nina learned that a specialist had referred Lily for important blood tests and X-rays that the case workers said they would arrange with Lily\u2019s mother. Months passed, her case management team changed three times and the tests did not get done until Sofie organised them herself.<\/p>\n
double quotation markIn the car, Sofie and her husband, sobbing, decided maybe they could keep her for a little while longer<\/p>\n
Basic items \u2013 such as a cot and a car seat \u2013 that were supposed to be supplied by the department upon Lily\u2019s arrival at Sofie\u2019s house were also delayed by months. The case worker who dropped Lily off refused to leave the car seat, saying Sofie would be reimbursed if she bought her own. It was three months before Sofie was repaid. She borrowed a cot from the childcare centre that first night but the department did not provide a bed for Lily until six months had gone by.<\/p>\n
Lily had regular supervised visits with her mother during business hours and was ferried to and fro by a departmental worker. The workers were always different and appeared to know little about the child\u2019s specific needs, including medical appointments notified by Sofie and Nina. On multiple occasions, Sofie and Nina say, those workers turned up with expired department identification, no working-with-children checks, and sometimes with no ID at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just feels like they haven\u2019t been properly trained and the child doesn\u2019t feel like a child; it feels like a file to them. It just gets passed on,\u201d Nina says.<\/p>\n
McLeish says the regular changing of case workers and administrative delays and errors are persistent issues for carers. \u201cIt\u2019s as a direct result of ongoing cuts to the staff in child protection,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The shared care arrangement Nina and Sofie had proposed that Friday night, which the case worker had verbally agreed to, was scotched within the first week, amid disputes with Lily\u2019s case worker over the child\u2019s care.<\/p>\n
So Sofie and her husband have been Lily\u2019s primary carers ever since.<\/p>\n
Who pays?<\/p>\n
Then there is the matter of the childcare fees.<\/p>\n
Sofie works full-time, so a condition of care was that Lily\u2019s enrolment at the centre would be extended to five days.<\/p>\n
The case workers seemed not to understand that there would be a gap fee payable even with the federal childcare subsidies, Nina says. Then they would not tell her who was responsible for paying it. Eventually Nina sent the bill, nearly $900 by that point, to the department, where it languished for months until she threatened to withdraw Lily\u2019s enrolment.<\/p>\n
Sofie will soon take over the subsidy, after administrative disputes with the department and Centrelink, but is worried that when she does the department will expect her to be responsible for additional fees she cannot afford.<\/p>\n
The financial implications have been a point of particular anxiety for Nina, too. Late last year, the centre had two other children under child protection orders, who stopped coming without notification. In that case, months-long delays in paperwork from the department resulted in Centrelink reclaiming the whole subsidy and the centre losing more than $22,000 in unpaid fees.<\/p>\n
The situation also raises questions about the department\u2019s perception of these women\u2019s work and on whose behalf it is being performed.<\/p>\n
Sofie and Nina were approached as possible carers for Lily because they are educators at the centre she attends. But both women feel that the boundaries between their professions and their personal caring roles have been blurred.<\/p>\n
Sofie receives the lowest rate of carer payment. She had to take a week of unpaid leave earlier this year to care for Lily when the child was ill. Her paid leave had been exhausted after she herself was in hospital late last year.<\/p>\n
She and her husband are deeply fond of Lily. But around the time she was in hospital, Sofie was ready to stop. It was a responsibility that had come upon her without warning and she was fed up with the strain of dealing with the department.<\/p>\n
Lily had been in respite care with Nina while Sofie was in hospital and, when Sofie and her husband came to collect the child, she ran towards them with her arms open and a huge wide smile \u2013 \u201cso happy to see us after a week!\u201d Sofie says.<\/p>\n
In the car, Sofie and her husband, sobbing, decided maybe they could keep her for a little while longer.<\/p>\n
The plan and hope have always been to reunify Lily with her mother. But the thought of Lily going to another foster home unsettles Sofie. \u201cMaybe they are not going to look after her like we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lily has thrived under their care. She now walks and talks, and plays and laughs, and even understands Spanish.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou treat her like your own child,\u201d Sofie says.<\/p>\n
* Not their real name<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The baby arrived at Sofie\u2019s house at 7pm on a Friday night, along with a few bags of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":702742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-702741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/702742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}