I am the President of a registered incorporated charity in Queensland called Susan Britt Foundation Inc we support children and youth in the care of their grandparent family carers on a full time basis due to family crisis.
We support these children, youth and their grandparent family carers giving them hope, pride and dignity to help keep these children within their family unit and to keep them out of the state foster care system. These grandparent family carers do a very hard and emotional job caring for these vulnerable children and youth with very little if any help from the state. These family carers do a wonderful thing with the children that are in their care.
I do not have any children in my care that are under state child protection orders however I have family law court custody of my grandson due to the death of my daughter on the day of his birth.
The following comments are not in relation to grandparent family carers they are about children under Queensland child protection orders that are living in foster care and NGO (non government offices)
I am shocked and very concerned about these children and youth that are living in foster care and NGO (non government offices) placements within Queensland and it is one of the main reasons that the charity was founded to try to keep these children and youth within their family unit receiving love support and directions in their lives from their biological families.
The child protection system in Queensland is dysfunctional and out of control and the children living in state care placements of foster care or NGO placements are not being protected.
These children have no boundaries, direction or discipline.
The carers are told by the children what they want to do or where they want to go and the youth workers let them do as they want.
The children are not made to attend school if they do not want to go and every excuse is made by the NGO or CSO as to why they shouldn't have to attend schooling. If we as parents did not send our children to school the state would take our children and place them into care. These children are not told to go to bed a a set time and stay up until 5am if they choose to and then do not go to school. I have had phone calls from schools asking me if I know where children are that aren't attending school that are living under child protection orders in NGO houses. I ask who protects these children from our state?
Children at 12/13 years of age are let walk the streets day and night for days at a time without any contact with the youth workers they are in the care of and most times are not reported as missing persons to police.
On far too many occasions now I have had children placed by the state into NGO placements arrive at my home after living on the local streets for days and upon me contacting local police the most the carers might have done was have a flag put on them and not reported missing by their carers. When I have tried to contact the children's government carers they do not answer their phones for hours. At times when the NGO youth workers arrive at my place to collect these children the child refuses to leave with the youth worker so they just leave them here and tell me that they can't make them go home.
It has been myself and the local police that have had to look for these missing children on all occasions. Children are committing suicide and being abused in the current system and there needs to be a royal commission before more children are deceased or in detention centers, I am very concerned for our future generations that are in care of the state child safety system.
At 4.30am to-day I was woken to a loud knocking on my front door when I answered it was a 13 year old foster child asking me to phone his NGO youth worker at the house he stays at to pick him up from my place.
This child lives nearly a 1 hour drive from my suburb and he'd been dropped at the next suburb to my place at a park with friends yesterday and was left there because he'd turned his phone off and could not be contacted by the youth workers. Here he is at 13 walking the streets on his own at 4.30am on a Sunday morning.
I was told by youth workers last week that 2 boys at the NGO house slept in the house car over night out the front of the house.
The child safety system needs to be made accountable for these children in the care of our state. How many more children have to die in state care before changes are made to this dysfunctional system.
