Let me confirm Cols view of one government department the one I worked in for 22 years.
Fig trees nine of them grown by that department, planted at the entrance to a town named after the Aboriginal word for fig.
Costs? well truly the budget said $7.000 each.
Within a year a young Lady informed me she wanted them cut down!
Traffic hazard she said, second week in her job too much power not enough information I answered it would be done but never did it.
Same place the senior union delegate for one sixth of the state ,me, asked that a constantly drunk on duty worker, not a boss be sacked.
6 years of counseling no results.
Remember I asked to have him removed before he killed himself, answer? we dare not! the union would kill us! I was his union delegate it was a formal union request.
So maybe we must take child welfare out of such hands results are all that matters surely?

Belly “Let me confirm Cols view of one government department the one I worked in for 22 years.”

What you wrote offends me as much as I am sure it is obscene to you; for its complete lack of "meaningful outcomes" (excuse my use of weasel words)

You must have had a permanent bruise on your forehead from banging it against a brick wall.

As I said

“However, that is no excuse not to rally against what needs to be done. it merely qualifies one of the challenges.”

And Yes Belly, I agree

“So maybe we must take child welfare out of such hands results are all that matters surely”

FrankGol “You beat those pseudo-intellectuals hands down.”

Belly has illustrated, far more explicitly than I could the problem

I am happy to accept your feint acclaim, despite the nature in which the line was thrown away.

The problems are as hard or easy as we seek to make them.

Unfortunately, too many “intellectuals” with monstrous egos, matching ambition but lack of real character, seek the security of government income and make the simple sound difficult to feather their own nests, whilst embellishing their careers at the expense of the service they are supposed to dispense (in this context the welfare of the children who they are supposed to be helping).

The tragedy is that Belly’s example is by no means unique or exceptional

Oh you asked me about my double reference to “neglect” simple. Matters like neglect can be the result of both parental deficiencies (absence of nurturing) and inherited deficiencies (a genetic fate of nature). Matters like parental separation can only be a parental deficiency (nurture).

You can complicate it all you want and intellectualise as much as you see fit but 9 times out of 10, you will find problems are attributable to one of those two root causes and the reason which you claim in

“a complex phenomenon like institutionalisation of children come down to "two issues, neither of them economic".

Is simply answered, any causation which presumes “economic circumstance” as significant, is analytically erroneous.

Frank Gol and Huffnpuff,
contact me on 'Forgotten Australians' thread, re reply from Senator Murray.

Sorry Belley to intrude on your thread.

The answer long term to Child Welfare is some control over who is having kids.
Our Welfare system has for years rewarded people for having children despite their ability to provide safe and loving homes.

The latest crazy move saw the Government give four thousand or so dollars for any women to have a child.

So many young girls as young as fourteen had children under the scheme.
Its wrong and totally irresponsible. Had the money of been paid towards higher education with it earning a percentage for that child that would have been different indeed.

We can’t blame the young girls for this only a very silly Government who used this new law to buy votes.

I am not sure if the Rudd Government has intentions to change this act however its one small thing they should do as soon as possible.

Children are the reasonability of parents and the Government responsibility is to control who are capable of providing safe home for kids and who are considered unfit to have children under their present living circumstances.

Perhaps Docs would be better working on checks before people have kids than trying to clean the mes up after.

Let’s face it to drive a car you must have a lience but anybody can go out and have one totweleve kids and very ften to different fathers and that’s considered legal...

We even encourage them to have more by giving more welfare payments.

The whole system is wrong IMOP

When I first looked at your post pale I though how offensive, yet you are not far from right.
Sorry if I offend some sounds like big brother telling us who can have kids.
But[ we can not go too far into cases before the courts] its getting to be a daily thing, dead children.
Dead damaged kids of parents who are unfit to have them.
I do not know the answers but as I took on the job of bringing up kids of a sibling , grown and gone now, I think some want the money not the children.
Some parents are not fit to even be in contact with their children.
No worries Banjo its public property.
Col Rouge yes we should take it out of such hands now.

PALE whilst I would agree with your sentiment, that parents who do not want or choose not to care for their children properly should not have them, I fear we are not going to resolve that until after

Every drunk driver hands in his car keys before he sits in the car

Every young girl does not make herself victim to some footballer or rockstar’s celebrity

Consenting adults do not get wrapped up in the each other and moment, foregoing the customary precautions.

Etc etc

In the context of the topic, the only thing I could think of which would be worse than the situation which requires government intervention to prevent child abuse or neglect,

Is the sort of society where, to become a parent, individuals are required to get some form of government licence and failure to be licenced would involve say compulsory abortion, sterilization, adoption or other aggressive authoritarian intervention.

I do believe natural parents are the best start any child can receive in life. Government intervention is there for when that does not work.

One of the problems with a liberal society is, it is a liberal society and produces some problems which would not occur under say a despotic dictatorship.

However, the sort of problems which attend a despotic dictatorship are far worse than the neglect and abuse of some children.

The problems of a despotic dictatorship include the neglect and abuse of all children and most of the adults.

As Belly referred to ad I agree with, “sounds like big brother telling us who can have kids.”