Houel:”Sure kids die, it's terrible and tragic, I get that. But there seems to be this focus on denying children flawed but still loving parents rather than helping said flawed and loving parents to be better people. As you said, some child deaths are not predictable or preventable. Lets be brave and accept we cant save them all, and have the courage to help children have THEIR OWN parents a bit more safely rather than taking the easy route of denying custody under the excuse of 'safety'.”

You ignore the rapidly expanding number of companies that will benefit from denying children flawed but loving parents? Is it my paranoid thinking that every time I turn around some new policy or proposed change to law encourages the removal of children? And there is only one industry that looks to benefit from them?

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4124&page=1

If we do start helping parents then they have less income from foster children, which I suspect is their main income.

Woods Recommendations + Inflating abuse definitions = Secure position in the industry + Enable the removal of more children.

At a more practical level, who is going to stop them?

You’re right benk, looking at that one situation was silly, bit like looking at just one bridge jumper or child thrower.

R0berts postings made it clear that although tragic the number of child deaths by assault doesn’t appear to be a specifically male or female crime?

While the men and women decide who is to blame more children are being removed from both.

Sorry, I think I am crossing threads.

Pied Piper "And there is only one industry that looks to benefit from them?"

I think maybe you are too close to one of the industries and thankfully have missed another part of this. These amendments seem to be targetted at making shared care more difficult to obtain and relying on false perceptions of abuse of children to get back to maternal bias.

This article references the amendments which made shared care much easier to obtain and Elspeth is "Convenor of the National Council of Single Mothers and their Children". The amendments re shared care changed the system from one where maternal bias was the norm (even if not formally supported) to one where shared care was endorsed making it much easier for fathers to have a reasonable role in childrens lives.

The mothers groups have fought those changes using claims that they put's children's lives and safety at risk and the onus is on them to prove that has been what's happened. The fatal assault stats certainly don't support that claim. I suspect that they will be able to dig up some advocacy research to show examples of increased abuse but I'll be very surprised if there is material available which stands up to scrutiny..

My impression from the history of those supporting the proposed amendments and the things they won't talk about is that the amendments are not aimed at taking children away from both parents, just from the male parent.

There may be a side spin off for the NGO fostering industry but I don't think that they are the intended recipients of this.

R0bert

R0bert:” There may be a side spin off for the NGO fostering industry but I don't think that they are the intended recipients of this.”

Yep I have to admit to being too close R0bert. I should have said just the one industry I have found that appears able to benefit the most financially and I see the shared care issue as the spin off.

This shared care thing in a practical sense… well it doesn’t seem practical. Can either parent have a full career or the custody stuff has to be followed with Australia acknowledging parents need to be given the time to parent without limiting their chosen employment? I am assuming “shared” means “equal” have I got that wrong? I can't decide although this sort of says it...

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lawreport/stories/2010/2944292.htm

Richard Chisholm: “It has some language that has led people to think that there's a presumption in favour of equal time, that is, that the children should spend equal time with both parents, unless, for example, there's violence or child abuse. Now the Act doesn't say that, but it does have some hints in that direction. And it seems to me that in that way, the Act needs to be clarified.”

Pied Piper shared care won't always work and people who want to have an real role as parents will need to make some sacrifices and look at their priorities. As far as I'm aware the act does not force shared care if neither party want's it. It's clearly going to have some difficulties with very young children or if the parents are unwilling to make the personal sacrifices required. Some of those issues don't have neat answers in an adversarial system.

When my son was younger I had to make more use of out of hours care than either of us liked but plenty of the kids in the same facilities had two parents working. I've been in one way or another across the single parent spectrum, shared almost equal care, weekends only and full time care. Thankfully I managed to avoid the no-contact think except for a few's when my ex was upping the stakes to try and force a change in residency.

I've managed to maintain employment (with a fairly supportive workplace). I've not chased promotion's as I think that would be a bigger impact than is relevant.

When I was going through the mill my ex had the expectation that the residency split should be 80/20 (or less) which pretty much maximised the flow of child support and other benefits. It did not seem to matter that I'd been a part of my son's life every day up until that point.

There will be parents who can't be bothered with their children or who just won't make the sacrifices required. They should not set the standard or expectations for the rest.

R0bert

R0bert:”There will be parents who can't be bothered with their children or who just won't make the sacrifices required. They should not set the standard or expectations for the rest.”

True that.

I think me and my ex worked it out quite well. I kept the kids and the house, he paid the mortgage and so his child support was reduced.

Four years of it the govt probably wasn’t too thrilled at paying my solo mother (aka child abuser) benefit, it was 250.00 a week and what child support he did pay went to govt, around 15 years ago now.

When I remarried I bought another house with new hubby and signed old house over to him for free.

So I got free rent and he got the house after 7 years.

It worked during that time I guess because neither of us was under any pressure to do anything else.

His work wasn’t as supportive, I don’t think if we’d attempted shared care he would have got the career he wanted, the children at toddler and baby stage and neither of us approving of daycare at all. Maybe that is parental alienation via employment.