Hi Ponda,

How are your little guys doing ? Are you allowed loving motherly visits with them at present.

Have you been informed of the accident and just how it happened ?

Or are you being ignored as in the usual inhumane way they DoCS/HS/CS

Hope you are OK

PJ x

Lies by Child Safety Officers and their Team Leaders.
By Two grandfathers

After several years of experience with the (now re-named) Department we were the subject of perjury, repeated breaches of statute law and other outrageous behaviour by staff of the department. The two offices involved are Alderley and Stones Corner.
Primary documents sent to the (then) Minister and to the (then) Director General of the Department showing misfeasance by named officers resulted in the following main outcome: they sent a Christmas card to each of us. There was no investigation requested by them from the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission – even though criminal acts were documented to have taken place. What followed was well described by Caroline Overington in The Australian. Departmental Officers took revenge. She was reporting not on our experience but that of others.
This is a brief sketch of the background of the Survey we conducted of grandparents who were official Carers for their grandchildren.
The Survey and its results are now presented for you.

Survey of Grandparents in Queensland
In the first half of 2009 a questionnaire was circulated to grandparents who were known to be (or known to have been) official carers for their grandchildren.

The questionnaire was composed by 2 grandfathers who observed that officers of the then Queensland Department of Child Safety were taking actions (some unlawful) to the detriment of their grandchildren.

The idea to survey grandparents was triggered, by several articles written by Caroline Overington in The Australian newspaper and reinforced by the personal experiences of the present authors.

The distribution of the questionnaires commenced in the first half of 2009. Twenty five copies were given to grandparents who were (or had been) official carers for their grandchildren.
Of there 25, ten did not return the questionnaires and gave no explanation, 3 expressed concern at possible retaliation from the (then) Department of Child Safety if they were known to participate in the survey and one said that she found the questionnaire to be biased against the Department therefore not acceptable to her.

The official grandparent-carers are part of a legal process which begins with an Application by the Department, in the Children’s Court to be granted custody of children. The Application can be based on a variety of grounds: the children may be abused, neglected or in some sort of danger in their present home (if any). Once the Court grants it custody the Department needs to put the children somewhere. There are two main options: professional carers and family carers (principally grandparents). A Carer is an official position granted at the discretion of the public servants.

The Department is alleged to prefer professional carers (but there is a shortage of them). Grandparents tend to know their grandchildren, have strong emotional ties with then and resist the sort of bureaucratic interference which they know is to the children’s detriment. In turn, the public servants dislike grandparents that don’t agree with them and individual public servants engage in vendettas.

The above were observations of Caroline Overington published in The Australian newspaper – observations which strongly concurred with the personal experiences of the two grandfathers writing up this survey.

The Questionnaire: Questions and Answers:
Q1. (a) Were the children taken into custody by DOCS?
Answers:
11 said yes
(b) Was this done in a satisfactory manner?
Answers:
9 said yes, 1 said No and 1 stated that the outcome of the taking into custody was contrary to her specific requests.

Q2. (a) Were you provided with the DOCS officers’ affidavit(s) with which they obtained custody from the court.
Answers:
3 said yes
5 said no
3 were not sure
(b) Did you get hold of affidavits from someone else? Or did someone else tell you what was in them?
Answers:
3 said yes.
This means that 6 out of 11 grandparents were able to see the sworn statements of the DOCS public servants which were presented to Court. This means that the majority of grandparents – all of whom had intimate knowledge of what happened – were not allowed the chance to comment on how the DOCS public servant described what happened.
This was very serious.
In one instance the father of the child which was taken into custody was not even notified that DOCS had applied for custody and not notified of the date and place of the court hearing. DOCS were legally obliged to inform him. The child was unlawfully taken and placed into foster care. The grandparents were not notified either. The family quickly learned the child was gone and mobilised, discovered what happened, and despite DOCS unwillingness to redress the wrong, went to the Premier who referred them to the Children’s Commission who returned the child 10 days later.

In another case a grandfather saw the affidavits because they were lawfully served on his son. One DOCS officer said on oath that the son was on four criminal charges including attempted murder. He was actually on only one – a less serious charge. A second officer also perjured herself in this case.

The actual DPP charge sheet was obtained to document the perjury of the first officer and another primary document was obtained to prove perjury of the second officer of DOCS. The action of the Director General and of the Minister when they were provided with documents proving perjury was to send the grandparents Christmas cards.

Q3. Were the affidavits accurate?
Answers:
Of the 6 relevant respondents
1 said yes
1 said some were reasonably accurate
1 said reasonably accurate but amateurish
1 said part accurate
2 said No

Q4. Did they contain outright lies?
Answers:
2 said no
1 said no “but the outright lies came later”
1 (who answered “some were reasonably accurate” to Q3) said “many affidavits have complete lies to suit the author”
2 said yes.

Q5. Was custody obtained on the grounds that parents were on drugs?
Answers:
4 said no
1 said yes
1 said partly (drugs and other things)
5 said they were not sure or don’t know.

Q6. Were the parents tested for drugs?
Answers:
1 said no
1 said yes
7 said they were not sure or don’t know
2 respondents did not answer the question.

Q7. Did the Case Officer discuss the drug issue with you and how did you assess her/his knowledge of drugs and drug addicts?
Answer:
One comment: “we found they had light conversational knowledge but no more than that. To see if the Department had done anything to remedy this we contacted Prof. Sharon Dawe at Griffith University as she had more research grants and publications on this subject than anyone else in Queensland. She said she had had talks with the then Minister of DOCS to set up a course for DOCS officers”. (a few weeks later the Minister was sacked and presumably that’s where that ended)
A second comment:
“none of the six CSO’s I have had.. discussed drugs and alcohol…. Alcohol abuse knowledge has been completely absent to the extent they have told my son (who is an alcoholic) you can drink but do not drink too much! This would be laughable if it were not so sad. Children and babies are at stake in the hands of these people”.

Q8. Were the affidavit(s) biased in any way?

Answers:
Comment 1. “Yes. All have been in DOCS favour as it suited them and affidavits on several occasions have contained absolute lies by DOCS”.
Comment 2. “Apart from straight out of perjury, affidavits – whether they contained perjury or not – contained various degrees of spin. Of the categories of innuendo known to man, they nearly used the lot”.
Comment 3. “The incompetence, lies and deceit were disgraceful for want of a better word”
Q9. Were there further hearings in the Children’s Court?
Answers:
6 said Yes
1 said No
4 said don’t know/can’t remember/ no answer

Q10. Were the affidavits of DOCS officers tendered at the further hearings accurate or untruthful or biased?
Answers:
8 said don’t know/can’t remember/ no answer.
Comment 1. “Part of the affidavits were untruthful”
Comment 2. “Biased and contained many untruths”
Comment 3. “What they said was true or spinned truth. But what they left out were the important bits”.

Q11. Did the Case Officer do all that the law required him/her to do?
Answers:
2 said No
3 said Yes
1 said Yes as far as we know
5 Said don’t know/not applicable/no answer
The last category included this comment:
“I have never been told what is expected of the CSO. I have found only one of them to be helpful and open-minded”.

Q12. Who wasn’t consulted?
Answers:
Comment 1. “There were breaches of the relevant provisions of the Child Safety Act by two CSO’s. Complaints to their Manager meet with a written reply which showed she too was ignorant of the legal requirements which are that in formulating a Case Plan various people have to be consulted whether by way of a family meeting or otherwise. As grandparents we were supposed to be consulted. One newly appointed CSO told us what the Case Plan would contain before any consultations took place”.
Comment 2. “Biological father”
Comment 3. “During the last year…there were no Family Meetings…the only meetings I was invited to were the ones I, myself requested…The decision had been made before I was even invited into the room, much less invited to speak”
Comment 4. “Not just that they did not consult me about any Case Plan they used lies and subterfuge to take away two of my grandchildren, leaving me with the third”.
(There were no other answers to Q 12).

Q13. Were your contributions to the Case Plan included in the Case Plan?
Answers:
Comment 1. “Our contributions were mostly completely ignored”.
Comment 2. “Half the time we weren’t consulted. One time they got up a piece of theatre with an outside convenor, a whiteboard and all the bells and whistles. Contributions were properly recorded, a Case Plan was devised and the record was duly signed and everyone got a copy. Then one of the signatories – a team leader – went on, in an affidavit to describe a meeting and an outcome meaningfully different from that recorded in the signed document”.
Comment 3. “I don’t remember them ever paying the slightest notice to anything I ever said.”
Comment 4. “Yes. This only occurred when I got the grandchildren after 6 months of fighting to get them.”
Comment 5. “No”.
(No other answers to the question)

Q14. Were anybody’s contributions ignored? (a) Why?
Answers:
Comment 1. “No not as far as I know”.
Comment 2,3,& 4. All grandparents were ignored.
Comment 5. “Yes…no interference will be tolerated by DOCS if it does concur with the decisions they have made”.
Comment 6. “Yes. Those were Carers 2 years 8 months. And grandparents: It suited DOCS to believe what they wanted to suit their purposes even when putting the children in absolute danger.”
(There were no other answers to this question)

Q15. Did you form the impression that the Case Plan was decided by DOCS before consultations began?
Answers:
Comment 1. “Completely. DOCS admitted this saying “the case is closed we have already decided”
Comment 2. “When the Case Officer rang me to arrange for a family meeting she said what “we have decided”
Comments 3,4,5 & 6. “Yes”.
Comment 7 “Yes definitely”

Q16. How long have you been a carer?
Answers:
This varied from 12 months to 3 years and 8 months. Seven respondents said either “2 years” or “about 2 years”

Q17. How many CSO’s did you have during that period?
Answers:
The answers varied from “2” (in one case) to “too numerous to remember “(in one case)
The most common number was 7 (in 7 cases) which, on average, meant that there were about 3 ½ different Case Officers handling each case a year.

Q18. How many CSO’s did you see often enough to form an opinion about them?
Answer:
All but 3 respondents got to know 2 Case Officers well enough to form an opinion.

Q19. Those that you sized up, how do you rate them?

A respondent who has 10 CSO’s rated
1 as being good 2 as average 4 as poor and 3 as awful. This respondent also commented on a Team Leader describing her as “the pits”.
At the other end of the scale, a grandparent/Carer said she could form an opinion about 2 Carers (from the 7 that she had) and described one as good and one as excellent.
The overall picture was this:
(a) Respondents could only form an opinion about a third of their Case Officers. The other two-thirds had too little contact with the grandparents to enable an assessment to be made.
(b) Close to two thirds of the Case Officers that grandparents got to know were thought to be good or excellent. The rest were mainly poor or awful. Few of the Case Officers were described as average.
Q20. Why?
Answer:
The principal criteria on which Case Officer were judged was the care they showed and their work ethic. Self opinionated officers were badly thought of as were officers who did not return phone calls.

Q21. How hard was it to get hold of your CSO?
Answers:
The vast majority of Case Officers were hard to get hold of. This was overwhelmingly true of “transient Case Officers” (who were the majority). On the other hand, officers who remained with the case for a meaningful period of time (a minority) were, in the main, reasonably easy to get hold of.

Q22. Were carer payments commenced on time?
a) Were they regular?
Answers:
Carer payments were slow to commence in every case. The shortest delay was one month after children arrived in the care of grandparents (one case only). The longest delay was 7 months (one case only). However, once commenced, the payments were regular.

Q23 & 24. Did you have additional claims on DOCS? (eg. Medical, dental, optical)
Were the claims met promptly?
Answer:
Two out of 11 grandparents had additional claims – on top of carer payments – which were submitted to their Case Officer. In both cases the outcomes were unsatisfactory. In one case three successive Case Officers handled the claim which took over a year to be finalised. In the other case, the claim was denied by the Case Officer on arguable legal grounds.

Q25. Did your CSO visit you monthly?
Answer:
None of the 11 grandparents were visited monthly by their Case Officer (but they were told that monthly visits was a legal requirement). One grandparent cited a gap of 7 months between visits. Another cited a gap of 8 months. Another banned the Case Officer from coming on the basis of prior breaches of the law by that officer.

Q26 & 27. Did the Children’s Commission officer/contractor visit you monthly?
How did you find the visits by that person?
Answers:
Children’s Commission Officers/Contractors visited at regular monthly intervals.
8 were rated as “very useful”
2 as “useful”
1 as “mainly useless”.

Q28. Is the aim in your Case Plan stated to be “reunification”?
Answers:
In all 11 cases the objective of the Department was to take the children from the grandparents and hand them back to the parent or parents from whom the children had been taken initially.

Q29 & 30. Were you consulted in the process of preparation of the Case Plan about this aim? Did you agree with it?
Answers:
Three out of 11 grandparents agreed with the Department that the children be handed back. Another grandparent “agreed at the time” – the parent who was thought to be off drugs was in fact still taking them. The other 7 grandparents were opposed to the hand-over because the parent was unsuitable and likely to neglect and/or harm the children.
Q31. Did the CSO explain to you that “children had to be reunified with their parent(s)”?
Answers:
In each case grandparents were told that “reunification” with a parent was required by law.

Q32. Did you know that this claim was false?
Answer:
8 out of 10 grandparents were unaware that if reunification were to adversely affect the safety of the child then it was unlawful.

Q33. Have you objected to “reunification”?
Answer:
Of the 11 grandparents
1 did not answer this question.
3 did not take any steps to oppose the reunification.
The majority (7) opposed handing the grandchildren to their natural parents – three of these 7 stated their opposition to be “strenuous” “sustained” or “vigorous”.

Q34,35 & 36. On what grounds?
Were you satisfied that the CSO had done a thorough job assessing the suitability of the parent(s) to whom the child was to be returned?
Did you object to the return of the children on the grounds of parental unsuitability?
a) That the children would be neglected?
b) That the children’s safety would be threatened?
Answers:
The reasons for apposing reunification with the parent was the lack of suitability of that parent.
Of the 7 opposing reunification 6 felt the Case Officer had not done a thorough job of assessing the parent. The seventh grandparent was equivocal on this.

Q37. Any comments on anything you feel appropriate?
Answers:
3 grandparents elaborated on why the parents were unsuitable. All 3 cited quite different reasons.

_______________________________________
The overall picture that emerges from this survey is that the routine administration of the Department is defective in the 3 areas covered by the survey. There was very poor continuity of contact between Case Officers and the children/grandparents. One reason was that few Case Officers stayed more than a very short period. This turnover of staff was detrimental to the children. Where Case Officers remained for some time a satisfactory relationship in most cases was established with grandparents. This was strongly reinforced by the grandparent’s opinion of Children’s Commission Officers who stayed with the same family got to know the children/grandparents and were generally well thought of due to the development of relationships.

The inexperience of many Case Officers and the opinion of other officers that the Child Protection Act required “bending” to conform to practical reality meant that the law was ignored in many cases. Simply, the public servants either did not know or had a sketchy knowledge of what their legal obligations were. This was no more apparent than in the elevation of “reunification” to the status of a supreme legal requirement. Every Case Plan stated “reunification” to be the end objective. Never mind that the object of the Child Protection Act was the safety of Children! The public servants had no qualms to substitute “reunification” for child safety as their overwhelming goal. So, children who were removed from parental care for a variety of (usually valid) reasons were returned to those parents on the judgement of Case Officers who by and large had little knowledge of the specific case (and very little experience). The judgement they had to form was that the parent(s) had sufficiently changed as to no longer be a threat to the safety of the child. Except in the rare cases where reunification led to the death of a child the mistakes of Case Officers and their superiors were not subject to the constraints of media exposure. This is because the proceedings of the special legal entities that adjudicate on child matters are not open to media scrutiny. In brief, the public servants have invented their own law and there are no windows to allow sunlight to penetrate and for this fact to be exposed to the light of day.

The administration of routine departmental functions is also deficient – most phone calls ignored, visits not made as required, lost paperwork, payments delayed etc… These are also the by-product of a huge staff turnover and the prevailing attitude to law within the department. Yet there has to be within the Department a significant number of well-meaning individuals. Social work is a caring profession and those Case Officers who had sufficient contact with a family developed – in most cases – ties which were genuine and productive.
_______________________________

Good luck with this strategy.
Of course if you read Section 8 of the ICAC Act not doing your job properly is counted as corruption.
but when have you ever heard of anyone in the govt being charged with this?