Coroner given “unhelpful” evidence on Chloe: Weatherill
The man overseeing Families SA – Tony Harrison – inadvertently misled Coroner Mark Johns during the inquest into the death of four-year-old Chloe Valentine, Premier Jay Weatherill said today.
Weatherill told ABC radio that the Coroner had been “led into error” on the way Families SA uses the provisions of the Children’s Protection Act to remove at-risk children from their families.
He said Harrison had provided “very unhelpful evidence” to Johns about this issue and the department head would be writing to the Coroner to provide clarification.
“The evidence should have been supplemented,” Weatherill told ABC 891’s breakfast program. “But what Mr Harrison said was accurate as far as it went.”
The Coroner’s report into Chloe’s death due to the neglect of her drug-using mother and her mother’s boyfriend says that Families SA had ignored a provision of the Act which requires the agency to apply for an order from the Youth Court if the chief executive suspects a child is at risk as a result of illicit drug abuse by a parent or guardian.
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Coroner Johns quoted a statement from Harrison given in evidence that “I just tried to think as to how this could actually be applied, knowing the frequency of illicit drug use in our community and that frequency often connected with people who have children. So this needs to be explored in the sense of if this was to occur in accordance with the legislated requirements, it would have, my guess, a dramatic implication for resourcing and also I guess you would need to question as to the merits of actually adopting a must-do approach to something in this.”
The Coroner said this was “a damning piece of evidence. It was freely offered in chief. It was not a concession made in cross-examination. As a relatively newly appointed Chief Executive, Mr Harrison appears to have sat down and read the Children’s Protection Act and ‘identified’ the existence of this provision and concluded that it is impractical for the agency to comply with it.”
However, Harrison said yesterday that Families SA had been relying on a different section of the Act to apply for drug assessments of parents.
Today, Premier Weatherill said “there was inadequate information put before the Coroner in relation to this matter”.
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He said government agencies used a separate provision of the Act to apply for general assessments of families, including comprehensive drug assessments in about 100 cases a year. Overall, 300 children were removed from their parents each year.
The confusion comes after the State Government agreed to immediately accept most of the recommendations of the Coroner in response to the case.
Announcing the Government’s response yesterday, Child Protection Reform Minister John Rau said Harrison and the “absolute” support of Cabinet.
Also today, Weatherill accepted responsibility for the child protection system failures identified by the Coroner, saying “the buck stops with me”.
However, he said that the attitude of social workers was a key problem.
“Social workers who are responsible for caring and supporting a family can become inveigled into the idea that they don’t want to do things that will destroy the relationship between them and the family and encourage them.
“Social workers obviously use a model of unconditional positive regard – they seek to engage in a very positive (way) with the families who encourage them to change. That’s fine if you’ve got somebody that’s actually willing to change; it’s not good if you’ve got a criminal like we saw in this case who is criminally neglecting their children.”
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