http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24702060-2702,00.html


Justice James Wood wants DOCS removed

November 25, 2008
Article from: The Australian

THE business of sheltering abused and neglected children should be taken away from government and handed to the private sector, with only the most serious cases, and those involving infants, handled by government welfare workers.

Private agencies, which operate on a fee-for-service basis, should instead take on the role of recruiting foster parents and managing the long-term care of children who cannot live with their parents.

The proposal is among the 111 recommendations of the three-volume Wood report, released yesterday after a year-long review of child welfare in NSW.

The report by retired judge James Wood QC suggests that the private sector could not do a worse job than the NSW Department of Community Services, which has 14,000 children living in out-of-home care after they were removed from their parents.

This includes more than 4000 Aboriginal children - four times the number that were in state care at the height of theStolen Generations period last century.

The report says the number of children in out-of-home care isexpected to rise to 19,495 by2012.

In contrast, numbers are falling in Victoria and Queensland, both of which have overhauled their welfare systems to give more responsibility to the private sector.

The Wood report says the non-government sector has "smaller and less formalised management structures and often (has) greater capacity to implement reforms and innovative service models more quickly than government agencies".

It also says that many clients - children, families and foster carers - "do not want to deal with a government agency".

The report says DOCS "appears to be the cheaper provider" of welfare services, since fee-for-service can cost up to $6000 per child, per week.

"This, however, is misleading as it does not adequately reflect the number of unallocated cases and the poorer quality of casework which inevitably occurs when a caseworker is faced with a greater number of children and young persons," the report says.

It gives one example of overloading of government workers, saying the private agency Barnardos provides services to 214 children, compared with one large DOCS in Campbelltown, "which alone was responsible for 615 children".

The report says children and young people move around the foster care merry-go-round whether in DOCS foster care or non-government foster care. "In 2006-07, 49 per cent of those in non-government foster care had three or more placements, compared with 37 per cent in DOCS foster care," it says.

The report is critical of the evidence that DOCS presents to the Children's Court, and says there is "little reliable research that tracks children and young persons" who have been taken away from their parents.

The report also recommends an end to the system of mandatory reporting, saying only children who are at "serious risk" of harm should be reported to the main welfare hotline, with other cases to be handled by special units in state hospitals and community health centres.

It says Aboriginal children who cannot live with their parents should be accommodated in boarding homes, and the use of night patrols in remote communities should be encouraged to ensure "children are not wandering the streets at night in circumstances where they might be at risk or (engaged) in criminal activities".

The report says there should be limits on the sale of alcohol in Aboriginal communities, and all families, regardless of their race, should face "management" of their welfare payments if there is evidence of child neglect.

It recommends that children who are not being taken to school should be transported there and those who are not being fed should get meals.

Children who are not going to be able to return to their parents should be placed in good, loving homes on a permanent basis.

The Wood inquiry was called in response to community outrage over the deaths of two children in NSW. A two-year-old boy was found folded into a suitcase, floating in a lake in Sydney's southwest, then a girl starved to death in her home in Hawks Nest, north of Sydney.
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and these frk offs, say, they are doing a good job, they are, they doing a good job in murdering families, in covering up.

The world is watching, I made frking sure of that.

good man. Keep up the work spreading the word of our new gospel!

(but who is our saviour?)

We are the result of Government laws
We are the result of Government democracy
We are the result of Government corruption

We are The Abused from Government
We are the one's that will stand up to Government.
Freedom is not a Choice, Its a RIGHT.

We are the R E D E M P T I O N

Good man? I think NOT!

The news reports are exceptionally misleading unless you bother with the actual fine print

If you read the entire fiasco Wood ran at his masters behest you may form a different view of this dodgy fool (lets remember that he let hundreds of dodgy police escape any punishment during his 97 Royal Commission)

He also allowed a paedophile caseworker named DZ escape ANY punishment for paying his child clients money to have SEX WITH HIM on the grounds of procedural fairness- bugger the CHILD victims altogether!

During the latest fiasco the "special inquiry" 600+ submissions from the public were suppressed by this wood puppet as it would embarrass the govt no end- the australian newspaper reported that the Inquiry had descended into farce. He's friends with Debus the former AG that shuffled off to Fed politics, but said he was giving Wood the easy jobs.

He also held 2 of these dodgy circuses at once- the one has D notices over all of it and nothing at all has come out of it- especially how much Wood was paid to run each of these PR missions.



Lets remember that he is the one who runs the NSW Sentencing council and simply regurgitates the govt's view- he is simply digging a hole of the govt's liability and moving it to another dept hopelessly failing and completely and utterly unable to keep its own end up according to the Garling Report. In short Sussex St has its hand up his @#*$e!!!!!

How independent can anyone be SEEN to be when they hold these other roles?

The only thing that will happen out of this Wood debacle is that there is now an absolute tangle between Mental Hellth and the brighter futures regime (that will ensure darker futures all round in reality)is that the accountability has been shuffled off DoCS books.

Doesn't mean that less kids will die- quite the contrary it means more will die and the govt will have a new run around policy regaridng accountability that's all- and less qualified people from dingbat local organisations that haven't the skills to cope will be foisted with the responsibility when the govt knows full well that they will not be able to cope.

Oh and finally he was the same "wise judge" that disallowed a HUGE amount of evidence against Burrell that killed those women. He would not allow key evidence into the 2nd murder trial whatsoever. Now Burrell is making an appeal and the stuff that Wood chucked out of being admissable can not be brought up against him in any appeal.

CLASSIC! Wood is on the side of the villains- make no mistake about it
And he is as dodgy as the day is LONG in the Artic summer.

I love the typo
"Mental Hellth"

Yours sincerely,

Nurse Ratched.

DRD: to me, and I could be wrong, it sounds as woods in a closet pedo ?.