Online at The Advertiser today, Centacare Director Dale West says incoming child protection chief Cathy Taylor needs the full support of all South Australians to help at-risk kids.
TAYLOR Walker and Cathy Taylor share more than just a name.
Both face significant challenges that – handled alone – are insurmountable.
Just as the Crows captain cannot beat Sydney solo on Saturday night, the incoming head of the state’s new Department for Child Protection cannot, single-handedly, fix a system overwhelmed by demand.
Cathy will need a crack team around her in order to respond to the abuse and neglect of the young and vulnerable.
As a community, we need to decide what role we will play as a key part of that team, and what we will deem acceptable when it comes to our children.
This challenge will not wait.
Without a clear sense of where our most at risk fit in the pecking order of judicial, legislative and personal responsibility, children will continue to suffer on an unimaginable scale and effective systemic change will be restricted.
As a community, do we consider it acceptable that an eight-year-old child can be left alone in charge of two babies, aged six months and one year?
Does this constitute neglect? Is it against the law? If somebody alerts police, should they respond?
The answer might be ‘yes’ or ‘no’ but as a community, we need to decide.
We can no longer afford to hide behind red tape or rely on others to fix the crisis unfolding over the back fence.
How badly do we want change? Just enough to leave it up to the new child protection chief, or so badly that we pitch in by heightening our own levels of awareness?
Take breakfast, for example. We know increasing numbers of children go to school hungry. Do we retrace their steps home and find out why there is no food on the table or, do we just provide them with cereal and toast on the spot?
It is feasible breakfast will eventually sit alongside the curriculum in many primary schools if we keep feeding the assumption it will not be served at home. Is that what we want?
We can no longer afford to hide behind red tape or rely on others to fix the crisis unfolding over the back fence.
How badly do we want change? Just enough to leave it up to the new child protection chief, or so badly that we pitch in by heightening our own levels of awareness?
Take breakfast, for example. We know increasing numbers of children go to school hungry. Do we retrace their steps home and find out why there is no food on the table or, do we just provide them with cereal and toast on the spot?
It is feasible breakfast will eventually sit alongside the curriculum in many primary schools if we keep feeding the assumption it will not be served at home. Is that what we want?
The next time you’re at the supermarket and you see a child being physically or psychologically abused, will you look away or walk on or stop to challenge the behaviour?
If a parent leaves a baby in a hot car, bystanders are all over it like a rash. But if a parent leaves a baby home alone, is the community perception: it’s not our business?
It is Cathy Taylor’s business to put child protection structures in place to protect children, but they will not absolve parents, families or next-of-kin of their primary duty of care.
Child protection might not top everybody’s list of priorities but it shouldn’t and mustn’t be at the bottom.
Dale West is Director of Centacare Catholic Family Services.
