The incredible DOCS (NSW child-welfare Dept.) again: They ignore feral parents and attack good ones

DOCS rips a good family apart because of an innocent smack. Today's story comes after another revelation yesterday that a six-year-old girl missed out on the chance of a stable family life after a DOCS bungle scared her loving foster parents off. And none of this double standard is accidental. As part of the Leftist class war, trainee social workers are taught in their university courses that tolerance must be shown to druggies etc. but "the bourgeoisie" are evil

Four young children have been wrenched from their grandparents home and fostered out to separate families because the grandmother gave a 6-year-old an innocent smack on the bottom. The move has horrified the foster care industry who are asking Community Services Minister Kevin Greene to explain how DOCS could leave 7-year-old Shellay Ward to allegedly starve to death - and then take four young children away from a loving home.

The couple in their 60s are official DOCS carers and have fostered the children on four occasions in the past six years without incident. Ranging in age from 18 months to eight years, the three brothers and one sister have grown up with the grandparents who stepped in to take care of the children when their own parents were unable to. But last October the siblings were split up and taken away without warning after a school-based DOCS assessment.

"The kids were asked if they were ever hit and said 'nanna smacks us'," the grandmother Catherine (not her real name) said. "I've smacked them on the bum maybe three or four times in one year - they don't need smacking, they're good kids. Most of the time you don't even have to raise your voice."

The Foster Care Association of NSW will use the case as part of their submission into the upcoming DOCS special commission of inquiry. "These grandparents have had all four children removed because the grandmother smacked a six-year-old on bottom," FCA president Mary Jane Beach said. "What we are missing here is accountability for DOCS - and the children are the ones paying the consequences."

The latest DOCS disaster places further pressure on Mr Greene, who has been faced with a string of horrific DOCS deaths including toddler Dean Shillingsworth, whose body was found in a suitcase in a western Sydney dam, four year old Tyra Kuehne, who was savaged to death by a neighbour's dogs, and Shellay Ward, who was allegedly kept prisoner in her parents' home. DOCS had been notified about each of the children before their deaths. Despite the catalogue of deaths and a scathing Ombudsman report that found 114 children known to DOCS died in 2006, Mr Greene has stubbornly refused to accede to impassioned calls to expand the DOCS inquiry into a royal commission.

The father-of-six has said in the past that he approves of non-harmful discipline for a disobedient child. Mr Greene was unable to respond it detail to the allegations but he said that a decision to remove a child from home was not ever taken lightly. "That decision is always taken in the best interests of the children ," he said.

The western Sydney grandmother said she smacked the three oldest children recently because she caught them throwing rocks and smacked her six year old grandson for climbing into a stormwater drain. "I just smack them on the bum, we were never told no smacking, I treat these kids the same as I treated my own kids, if they mucked up they got a smack on the bum," she said. "I've taken them to get every single one of their shots since the day they were born. I've been there for everyone first day of school, I've taken them to all their swimming lessons. "It is heartbreaking - their Christmas presents are still in the shed."

Opposition Community Services spokeswoman Katrina Hodgkinson said the Government should stop using the portfolio as a training ground for junior ministers. "Kevin Greene is way out of his depth with this portfolio," she said. "We have seen the most incredible bungles in this department and we can't afford to stop our calls for a royal commission."

Source






Leftist love of "unity" (Translation: Hatred of dissent) on display again

Post below lifted from Taranto. See the original for links

Andrew Bolt of the Melbourne (Australia) Herald Sun transcribes a revealing interview that Jon Faine, an Australian Broadcast Corp. radio host, conducted with Herald Sun editor Bruce Guthrie. As background, Australia recently elected a left-wing government to replace the right-wing one that had been in power for more than a decade:

Faine: I want to expand our discussion to another aspect of media which I think is quite intriguing as the Rudd Government is about to start its first session in the parliament, and that is whether or not the media needs to go through a bit of a rethink, as it would seem, according to last year's election, the nation has. Have things moved on and have some of the staples of the media in the Howard era worn out their usefulness as we enter a Rudd era? . . . I'm going to talk in particular about columnists . . . and Bruce you have some notorious ones of your own? Although I'm going to here, stick my neck right out, and say I think the Australian newspaper has perhaps the most loyal band of Howard supporters amongst its current crop of columnists. And you have to wonder how they're quite going to adjust, and cope, and fit in when the people they are so well connected to, are no longer in office.

Guthrie: Yes, I'd probably take issue with the word notorious Jon, by the way. I'd say notable rather than notorious . . .

Faine: But it's more the columnists [on the Australian], the sort of Christopher Pearsons and Janet Albrechtsens and Mark Steyn was the American columnist who was used in the paper yesterday and so on. And you think, well, it kind of represents the thinking that's out of step with the result of the election in a way, some of the material that those people are very much making their own and their own beat.

Guthrie: I guess it comes down to whether you think newspapers need to be in step with the Government?

Faine: Oh no, not with the Government with the electorates. . . . But within your newspaper, rather than asking you to speculate about other things, within your own newspaper, does the result of the election mean you rethink any of the component parts that make up your weekly diet? . . .

Guthrie: I think it's very, very hard to contribute a column on a weekly basis over a long, long period of time and so we're forever monitoring that.

Faine: Very interesting, so you're not going through a cleansing process?

Guthrie: Definitely not.

Media criticism on the right usually centers on questions of balance--of opinion masquerading as news, and of opinion on the right being given short shrift. Media criticism on the left tends to be more authoritarian--the complaint, as in this case, is that the other side gets a forum at all.

Presumably Faine would not argue that the election of a conservative government should lead to a purge of liberal commentators. Yet he seems to think that because one election went his way, the opposition no longer has a right to be heard. That's not exactly how a democratic system is supposed to work.





Three crooked top cops in Victoria

A DISGRACED former policeman, a suspended police union boss and Victoria Police's former media director all face possible criminal charges after a damning report to the state Parliament today. Charges of making a false or misleading statement and perjury have been recommended against former assistant commissioner Noel Ashby, Police Association secretary Paul Mullett and former Victoria Police media director Stephen Linnell. A further charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice has also been recommended against Senior Sergeant Mullett. The charges are recommended in the report by Victoria's Office of Police Integrity (OPI), tabled in parliament today.

They follow an OPI public inquiry last November which heard secret telephone intercepts alleging Mr Linnell improperly passed information about the investigation into an underworld murder in 2002, in which a crime squad detective was a suspect. It was alleged at the hearings Mr Linnell passed the information on to Mr Ashby, who in turn told Sen Sgt Mullett, who then told Police Association president Brian Rix. The target of the investigation was eventually informed, it was alleged.

Sen Sgt Mullett was suspended from the force and both Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell resigned their positions as the inquiry unfolded. According to the OPI report, Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell distributed sensitive information to advance their standing in the police force. "Both Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell knew the value of information," it says. "The strategic leaking of it gave them both currency with which to advance their personal ambitions."

The report says the spectacular nosedive of the careers of Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell should serve as a warning for other police. "The public should take comfort from the fact that aside from those named in this report, no other current Victoria Police employee appears to have been caught up in Mr Ashby's drive for power," it says. "However the thwarting of Mr Ashby's ambitions and the demise of his and Mr Linnell's careers should serve as a salutary lesson for others who may be tempted to ignore the responsibilities that accompany police office."

In tabling the report today, the Director of Police Integrity, George Brouwer, said the departures of Mr Linnell and Mr Ashby made it a better organisation. "Notwithstanding the deeply concerning matters revealed in this investigation, the corrupting influences were contained to a few individuals," Mr Brouwer wrote. "The resignations of Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell, in particular, should have a cleansing effect on Victoria Police command. "Without their behind-the-scenes manoeuvering, Victoria Police command, led by Chief Commissioner Nixon, is now in a better position to progress its strategic reform agenda."

Comment was not immediately available from the Police Association, or from Mr Ashby's legal team. Mr Linnell's lawyer, barrister Martin Grinberg, said he was yet to read the report or speak to his client.

Source




A great way to create drug-resistant bugs and unleash them on the community

Mass antibiotic treatment for Aboriginal communities planned

CANBERRA is considering mass antibiotic treatments in remote Aboriginal communities to combat the spread of sexually transmitted infections. An article in the Medical Journal of Australia suggests entire indigenous communities should be treated in places where infections are widespread. Report co-author Professor Frank Bowden says that in some northern Australian communities one in four young women is infected by either chlamydia, gonorrhoea or trichomoniasis.

Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon yesterday said she was alarmed by the situation and something must be done. "The current approach doesn't seem to be working. We haven't been able to reduce the number of STDs in indigenous communities - in fact they're increasing," Ms Roxon told ABC radio. "Obviously this is a serious public health issue and we do need to look carefully at how we can do things better."

The plan touted in the journal was a radical new approach to tackling rising STI rates based on a blanket treatment scheme similar to current practice for the infectious eye disease trachoma. The scheme would replace the current "screen and treat" programs, which have done little to improve the dire statistics showing one in four indigenous women has an STI. Under the plan, adults and children in indigenous communities with an STI rate over 10 per cent would automatically be offered a four-drug treatment covering chlamydia, gonorrhoea and a third disease, trichomoniasis - without being screened first to see if they have the disease. Treatment would start as young as 10 to combat rising STI rates in children.

Professor Bowden and Melbourne-based sexual health physician Katherine Fethers wrote in the journal that treating STIs in this way would be controversial because sex-related diseases were wrapped up in issues of morality, privacy, stigma, shame and discrimination. But they argue that the current health promotion approach for people in poverty and social hardship was problematic and even "dangerously naive". They said under-resourcing has meant that screening programs had had limited success in turning around rising rates. They said their proposal was in keeping with World Health Organisation practice for other types of diseases, and would be contingent on informed consent from each individual. However, the details of how it would be delivered would require "much debate and consideration", they said.

Source