CHILD PROTECTION

The young offender and child protection jurisdiction of the Youth Court are separate. The Children's Protection Act 1993 deals with its jurisdiction over children in need of care and protection. The Act is based on the premise that a partnership approach between the community, families and the State will provide for the care and protection of children. In any exercise of powers under the Act, the safety of the child is the paramount consideration and the powers must be exercised in the best interests of the child. There are a variety of strategies that can be used to protect children. If a child is at risk of abuse or neglect, the court can take away the parent's right of guardianship, and make the Minister for Families and Communities the legal guardian [Children's Protection Act 1993 s 38].

Serious consideration must be given to the desirability of keeping the child within the family, preserving and strengthening family relationships and where applicable preserving and enhancing the child's sense of racial and cultural identity. In addition, a child who is able to form and express views as to his or her ongoing care and protection should have those views sought and given serious consideration. The Court must try to avoid:

withdrawing the child unnecessarily from the child's familiar environment
interrupting education or employment.

Some of the features of the Children's Protection Act 1993 are:

family care meetings
investigation and assessment orders
limiting care and protection order to either twelve months or until the child turns 18 years old
the fixing of a mandatory 10 week time limit from a care and protection application to the start of trial
broad grounds for intervention for a child 'at risk'
special provisions for dealing with Aboriginal children, and the need for Aboriginal people and agencies to be involved in decisions concerning their children
special ethnic considerations to be taken into account, to ensure that intervention is culturally acceptable to the family and that the child's sense of cultural identity is preserved and enhanced.

Under the Children's Protection Act 1993 [s 6] a child is considered to be at risk if :

the child has been, or is being, abused or neglected; or
a person with whom the child resides (whether a guardian of the child or not) has threatened to kill or injure the child or has killed or neglected some other child or children and there is a reasonable likelihood of the child being killed, abused or neglected by that person, or
the guardians of the child are unable or unwilling to maintain the child, or are unable or unwilling to exercise adequate supervision and control over the child; or are dead or have abandoned the child or after reasonable enquiry cannot be found, or
the child is persistently truant from school, or
the child is under 15 years of age and is of no fixed address.

An important feature of this definition is that the child may be protected using the Act when in addition to actual abuse or neglect of the child, there has been a threat of harm to the child, or there has been actual harm to another child, by a guardian or other person residing with the child.

Except in an emergency situation (such as a child being abandoned or the immediate possibility of danger to the child), the first response when Families SA finds that a child is at risk is to provide a worker to work with the family to try to find a solution to the problem. Family counselling, material assistance and all the other resources and support services of Families SA (such as home help, budget advice, counselling and family day care) are used in an effort to improve the family situation so that proper care can be given to the child. Only after these efforts have proved unsuccessful or impractical will Families SA take steps to remove a child.

Contact points

Child Abuse Report Line (24 hr)

Telephone: 13 1478

Flinders Medical Centre Child Protection Unit

Telephone: 8204 5485

Women’s and Children Hospital Child Protection Unit

Telephone: 8204 7346