Child Protection in Queensland Australia - Essay Example

? CHILD PROTECTION IN QUEENSLAND AUSTRALIA By Lecturer: of Affiliation: and Child Protection in QueenslandAustralia Introduction Child protection is the social practices that involve preventing and responding to issues affecting children such as violence, negligence, exploitation and child abuses such as sexual exploitation, child labour, child trafficking, and female mutilation among other practices (Barker and Hodes, 2007). A number of government and non-governmental organizations have been formed to provide social responsibilities or duty of care towards the protection of children's rights. One of the organizational contexts where child protection practices occur is Queensland child protection system in Australia. This system was established to describe in a user friendly manner varied ways through which each phase in the child protection system, the decision making process in the departments and the key necessary actions, which should be taken into considerations in the department to improve the safety of children in the society. The framework was established to offer a common understanding of the Queensland child protection system; thus, enhancements continue to be advanced across the framework in order to improve the overall child protection system. The purpose of this paper is to identify the various dilemmas and challenges that the social worker in this environment has faced, and the evidence based and theoretical frameworks that have been developed to improve the child protection system in Australia. Legal and Practice Guidelines with Regard to Queensland Child Protection System The legal aspect in regard to the Queensland child protection system is to identify the children either who have suffered harm or an in risk of suffering harm, protecting them and providing after-protection support. According to Cassidy (2006, p. 112), the universal policy of Canadian and Australian governments of removing indigenous children from their families and settling them in varied institutions have been well acknowledged. However, the revolution of the policy was removed after the revelation of the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission that argued that the policies did not meet the interests of the child (Lee and Svevo-Cianci, 2009, p. 768). Australia is a signatory of the United Nations on the Rights of the Child; thus many principles within the convention are embedded within the child protection legislation (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2010, p. 12). Therefore, together with the policy frameworks which reveals the nature in which child care services and interventions are offered, legislative and practice guidelines reflect the service objects to which government aspires in achieving the interest of the child. Issues and Dilemmas Encountered In Maintaining the Best Interests of the Child Social workers encounter varied issues and dilemmas when working to maintain the best interest of the child in the Queensland child protection system. The main issues that have been raised against child protection programs are under protection, over-protection and ignorance of parental rights (Williams, 2004, p. 41). In Queensland protection programs, the safety of the child is over-emphasized to an extent that the parental rights are completely down-trodden. Although the program ensures the safety of the children, the social worker’s code of ethics does stipulate that the parental rights must be upheld while still maintaining effective intervention for the good of the child. This has posed a great dilemma to social work professionals who have to choose between the children's rights and the parental rights. For instance, children who are at risk of being offended by violent parents are isolated from their parents, which sometimes lead to permanent deprivation of the parent’s rights to see their child. At worse instances the children may suffer from stress for not seeing their parents for a long period, making their educational performance. Though these policies may seem to protect the children, they may end up causing unintended harm to the children’s life. This has posed a lot of challenges for social workers who have the role to adhere to the policies while still upholding their professional code of ethics that. The challenges that face social workers have garnered a lot of interest from various researchers. Gillingham (2006, p. 87) argues that risk assessment in child protection practice has become a flawed process and that because of its centrality to practice, it has killed the initial purpose of child protection programs. The risk assessment procedures have raised ethical concerns because of their contradiction with the ethical standards that define the nature of a child at risk (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2010, p. 14). For instance, professional ethics dictate that while assessing the risk of a child suffering harm must maintain confidentiality of information whereas the legal policies of the child protection systems insist on information disclosure. In such a case, an instance of approximate dilemma arises and the social workers have to make a hard choice. In essence, the right of child information privacy may be violated if the legal requirement is implemented. In the child protection practice context, a number of strategies can be implemented to discount the best interest of the children during implementation of the protection schemes. According to Lonne, Parton, Thomson and Harries (2008, p. 79), there is an urgent need to harmonise the professional code of ethics and the legal obligations of the social workers. In this respect, any contradictions between the ethical concerns and legal obligations should be neutralized in order to ensure that the rights of the child are honoured while protection is guaranteed. Another way in which child welfare can be optimized is the use of critical decision making tools to choose the best practice that achieves the ultimate goal of the child protection programs. For instance, the social worker should make decisions by weighing the moral, legal and ethical dimensions of any dilemma they come across. Their motive should be to only to take steps that are best suited for the good of the child (Darlington, Feeney and Rixon, 2005, p. 241). Evidence-Based Strategies That Can Be Used as a Response to These Issues One of the evidence-based strategies that can be used as a response to these issues is the practice-oriented collaboration strategy. Potito, Day, Carson and O'Leary (2009, p. 375) argues that practice-oriented collaboration framework can encourage a careful assessment of the challenging issues commonly experienced in collaborative endeavours such as communication issues, trust and power management. This strategy is vital because it enables workers to interact well, find solution effectively to challenging issues and also make significant decisions to difficult ethical issues. Another evidence-based strategy that can be used in responding to the issues is the informed consent strategy. The ethical issue of informed consent has generated a debate on research about child protection (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2013, p. 11). The informed consent rests on the key principles including consent for an explicit act and the need to act voluntarily without coercion. For instance, the child protection forums must obtain a voluntary consent from the parents while providing care and support for the child (Tilbury, 2007, p. 67). Theoretical Frameworks Underpin These Strategies The evidence based strategies are grounded on numerous theoretical frameworks that explain about children, youths and families. Simmonds & Coleman (2002, p. 33), argue that any child centred protection mechanism must have an in-depth knowledge of children, youth and family welfare issues if the child's interest is to remain a top agenda in their policies. Another theoretical framework that underpins the above strategies is the duty-based or deontological approach. This theoretical framework suggests that one must uphold the sense of duty while evaluating the morality of an action while still adhering to the laid down policies. The idea of this theory is that the social worker regards their duty more important than rules in the principle of doing good acts during their service delivery. The duty of child protection must be guarded to maintain standards of services that are beneficial to the child in the long run. Ethical guidelines are significant because they help in reducing the potential risks or harm resulting from the decision making process or data collected by social workers. Therefore, duty-based strategy takes the ethical position that the right actions are those which treat people as ends (Jamrozik, 2001, p. 115). All theoretical frameworks seem converge to one idea that social workers should possess virtues such as honesty, kindness, courage and justice to break the dilemmas posed by their career. In short, vast theory regarding child, youth and family protectionisms have backed up the evidence based approach in regard to the challenges experienced by social workers while executing their duties. Challenges Faced When Responding To Indigenous Issues There are numerous challenges that are faced when attempting to respond to the indigenous issues in Queensland, Australia. The gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal remains wide and advancing the health status of aboriginal people has been a challenge to the Australian government. The aboriginal citizens, who form the minority group, have high vulnerability or risks to long-term consequences such as mental illness, drug addict, violence and other harmful behaviours, which are passed from one generation to another (Child Family Community Australia, 2013). Research has proved that child protection policies have failed to provide, cultural, emotional support and physical protection to this minority group due to poor strategies to deal with the indigenous trends. Developed theoretical frameworks have supported the idea of reforming the child protection policies in an effort to defend the minority groups in the society (Parton, 2007, p. 277). The idea of these frameworks is Child protection services can be enhanced if only the responsible staff engage in community-centred, family inclusive approach to solve the problems that have emerged while addressing child protection concerns in a country with indigenous concerns. In brief, social workers should not only adhere to ethical codes of conduct but also employ effective strategies that can enable them to accomplish their goals efficiently of children, youth and family protection. Bibliography Australian Association of Social Workers, 2010, Code of Ethics. 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