The Child Protection system needs society to trust them otherwise their intakes drop and so does their funding.
(NOTE: the information and depiction below is not a reflection of all situations. It is a hypothetical situation based on eye witness reports and victim statements.)
Reports to Child Protection Services (CPS) from the public by those such as family and friends against a struggling parent are essential to incite the Department to begin an investigation. However, reporting will cease to occur if every person who encounters Department of Child Protection is mistreated through the malfeasance, nonfeasance and misfeasance of department workers.
To keep the people’s trust CPS must have good outcomes, to maintain society’s trust.
Like any business, there are good and bad people; people who will skim off the top, so-to-speak.
Paul Whyte, Director General of Department of Communities (Child Protection and Family Support and Subsidised State Housing) in Perth WA, is just 1 very recent example of such corruption.
Paul Ronald Whyte was charged with 564 counts of fraud with a 27 million dollar gain from the public purse in WA over a period of approximately 11 years. He is now facing 12 years incarceration.
Some cases are designed to remain supported, positive and functional. They become recipients of the engaging and friendly staff who offer and uphold submissions of support. It is these cases that are relied upon to continue to promote the beneficent façade of child protection.
The sad reality however, is that many other families face extreme hardship, mental and emotional torture and abuse, gaslighting, intimidation and coercion.
The loses of the investigated parent, significantly outweigh any gains. Often only 1 hour of contact between the family and their children who are in out-of-home care are provided per quarter, during holiday periods.
In many of these situations, the child is also subjected to significant abuses and trauma, often advised their parent doesn’t want them love them or even care for them. The child often then retaliates out of hurt and frustration and the department has method of validation, which is usually false, that they need to cut the parent further out of the child’s life.
These are common tactics. Not many people are willing to research the facts, however, when we do the results are often shocking. What may appear to be decent and good faith in writing can be the smoking weapon you recognise in another matter.
Most information is available on government websites. You just need to be willing to look and when you do, have the time to follow it through. My experience spans some 40+ years with recent online research now reaching 10 years.
Here is just some of the most recognised criteria that is used to remove children from families:
- Family violence
- Sexual abuse
- Emotional harm
- Mental health
- Homelessness and living in low income housing
- Low or no income
- Substance abuse
- Lack of support
Now consider this:
A mother subject to years of physical assaults and beratements, finally chooses to leave with the couple’s children after police attendance. Police have a mandated compulsory responsibility to report to CPS in situations where children are involved.
The mother has no money and had been the stay at home parent while her husband earned the family income. Her lack of income made it difficult for her to leave previously, despite the history of abuse.
Her mental health is poor, she is suffering long term anxiety and depression with likely PTSD. She starts drinking alcohol to cope.
Her and her children are placed into emergency housing with the state and placed onto Centrelink payments.
CPS is notified by police of the family situation via mandatory reporting, and the mother is now under investigation for abusing and neglecting her children.
During investigations, CPS discover a child has alleged they were sexually abused by the father. The Department makes substations that the children have been subjected to emotional abuse and neglect, but it is the neglect of the victim parent for not removing the children sooner.
The children are then removed from the protective parent, most often the mother in this scenario, and investigations step up to another level.
The mother then has to,
1. Go to Criminal Court against her perpetrator.
2. If the couple are married, she needs to apply for divorce and property settlement in the Family Court.
3. She now is forced to attend children’s court to try and get the care of her kids returned to her, all the while dealing with mental health created by the ongoing situation.
4. CPS will then expect the mother to attend multiple courses, psychiatric services, contacts and meetings, which effectively prevents her working.
The mother will lose all friends being stigmatised by the system. People naturally trust that the system had a real reason to remove the kids. Her family will turn on her and she ultimately meets another criteria…lack of support.
Her Centrelink gets cut from Single Parent Payment – $870 per fortnight, to Job Seeker – $470 per fortnight (2021 rates).
Running to every expected court case, meeting, betterment course, hiring lawyers when legal aid rejection occurs, purchasing a computer, printer and still trying to furnish her home all adds up and food becomes a second thought.
She will lose her state housing for not meeting the criteria of filling the rooms available with her children, and because of her income, cannot secure private rentals.
She has been set up to fail. Yet many on the outside don’t ever see or recognise this side of CPS.