Department of Community Services Needs to Change

I have started this petition because I personally think that the Department of Community Services (DoCS) needs to change its ways.

First of all, DoCS needs to reconsider their Mandatory Reporting System because this system is clearly not working. It has made some, if not all, parents think twice about taking seriously sick or injured children to the Emergency Department of their local hospital.

Children in the care of drug takers/ dealers and alcoholics should be removed as soon as DoCS find out. The same goes for children in domestic violence situations.

Foster Carers should be more carefully considered, undergo extensive psychological evaluations and should NOT be advertised for in the Job section of newspapers.

Parents should be offered parenting courses, psychological treatment and relationship counselling (if need be). Parents that are known drug users to DoCS should be made to be clean for 2 years before having their children returned to their care.

When a serious case is reported to DoCS and JIRT are informed of the case, JIRT should thoroughly investigate the whole situation before making their decision on whether a child should be removed or not.

If a child is to be returned to its natural parent/s, all parties should be accessed with the child not just the foster carers.

Case workers for the Department should show more compassion and understanding towards parents that are doing everything in their power to better themselves to have their child/ren returned to their care.

Last but not least, the 18 year intervention order should be dropped to a reasonable 2, 5 or 10 year order depending on the circumstances of the case and they age of the child/ren because personally I think 18 years is just way too much, especially when a child is under the age of 12 months when removed.