Last week I received an email from the Department of Human Services recommending me to engage the services of second hand clothing shops if I wished to purchase school uniforms for any of our children in Out of Home Care.
Recommending second hand school clothes to families who are financially struggling may be reasonable advice, but for a child under state care, such advice has led me to wonder whether our financial priorities are right if we are required to resort to second-hand clothing to send children in state care to school in.
Learning the hard way.
Any child who finds themselves in care has a less than opportune start in life. Should not the system be more aspirational and ambitious for them? Whilst a school uniform, new or second hand, may not seem a big deal, but it suggests a government has an uninspiring view on the resources it is prepared to make available for the day-to-day needs of supporting children in State Care.
Despite the fiscal tight times we are told we are in, Governments rarely blink when it comes to lavishing funds for more police, desalination plants, more tunnels or more protective officers to train stations, even if they have not seen any crime in the last 5 years. Yet despite the bluster, for these children, arguably the state’s most vulnerable citizens, bureaucracies are left with little other option than to advise the purchasing of second hand resources to service children in care.
In NSW, $7000 per annum is provided for every child in care to cover the expenses of clothing, school expenses, recreational pursuits, and the other things that normal children have at their disposal if they were with a typical family. Yet Victoria avoids making this small financial commitment for each child in care and takes a more ‘Oliver Twist’ approach to providing for the daily needs in these areas.
Fitting in, finding their feet.
Ask any parent, or child protection worker what matters to a child. Along with the basic needs of food and shelter, it is how their friends view them. Children and more so young people, want to look good, and through that, feel good and through that feel they matter: feel that they are not standing out from the rest of their friends.
Ironically, it is the school that can potentially future proof them from the often negative implications of being in out of home care. Make school less important (like purchasing a second hand uniform for them) and they will see it as less important.
In simple terms, this is short sighted budgeting for longer term expense.
Let’s look at the statistics. For the 7000 children residing in state care, they are 5 times more likely to have mental health issues, 3 times more likely to not reach year 10, and 10 times more likely to perform poorly academically. By the time they leave care, 50% of them will either be homeless, unemployed, in prison or an early parent within the first twelve months post care. Post care expenses for Government magnify multi fold in the areas of homelessness services, prison expenditure, and intergenerational care if it short changes children whilst they are in care.
Rather than hold back resources for this group, we need to in fact increase resources to reverse this likely downward trajectory as a result of state care. For a child in state care to have ambition the state needs to be ambitious for them, to over reach for them in education, recreation and social pursuits. Without this their ability to rise above the odds is poor.
As seen by the research the implications of a life in out of home care can be debilitating. The ability to change is only limited by our vision and our preparedness to carry the locus parentis standard that the state will, with all its means, provide as equally to a child as a parent would.
This means endow these children under state care with opportunity, optimism and ambition because they need every chance they can be given to rise above the poor start in life that they have been born into.
Paul McDonald
Chief Executive Officer
Anglicare Victoria
