Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

part of welfare practice. The format, formality and range of parties involved in theseconferences vary considerably. Family conferences are usually mediated by a socialworker from the welfare department. They may include the child, parents, extendedfamily, an Indigenous child care agency and other professionals such as health workersand the police.Where removal of the child cannot be avoided, family reunion is the primaryobjective in all jurisdictions. Where this is totally unfeasible, family contact at leastshould be maintained.In all jurisdictions it is necessary to obtain a court order if a child is to be removedfrom the family under child welfare legislation, although temporary removal without acourt order is lawful in emergencies. Care and protection applications are usually broughtby the welfare department or the police. The proceedings take place in the Children’sCourt where the order made must be in the ‘best interests of the child’. If the court findsallegations of neglect or abuse substantiated, a range of orders is available includingparental undertakings, alternative care and supervision orders. Before placing a child insubstitute care the court obtains an assessment report. At this point, in the case of anIndigenous child, the court may receive formal advice from an Aboriginal and Islanderchild care agency. Making the child a ward of the State is the last resort option.Welfare departments fund family based services such as intensive home-based careand respite care. They provide and fund placement services for children found to be atrisk. In all jurisdictions departmental policy is to deinstitutionalise out-of-home care, lookfor foster care options and, where institutions are used, support small home-likeenvironments. Several out-of-home care options are commonly used including fostercare, family groups homes, hostels and kinship care.PhilosophyMany children suffer abuse or neglect. The State or Territory has an obligation toensure their well-being and protection. The nature of the official response, however, hasvaried over time according to prevailing philosophies and ideologies.In Western terms, welfare as a form of child saving has its origins in late 19thcentury middle-class concerns about the ‘dangerous’ classes, single mothers andworking-class families in industrialised regions of England.Many child-savers saw poverty, destitution and the illegal activities of the lower classes as signsof biologically determined character defects. Under the influence of Lombroso, Galtin, Spencerand Darwin, the child saving movement became a moral crusade, seeking to correct and controlthe poor …The system [child welfare system] has been predicated on the view that children needed to berescued from those parents who did not have the innate qualities, right values, correct attitudes