Monday, September 12, 2011

What a start to life

The child welfare system at work in Australia:

A SIX-year-old boy placed in the care of a lesbian foster couple was dressed in girl's clothes and the humiliating pictures were posted on the couple's Facebook page.

One of the women was preparing for a sex change to become a man at the time, while her girlfriend was undergoing fertility treatment.

The boy and his 12-year-old sister have since been moved but former Children's Court magistrate Barbara Holborow yesterday called for a full inquiry into the decision to put them there. "Oh my God, what are we doing?" Ms Holborow, who has fostered eight children, said.

Families Minister Pru Goward has demanded a full explanation from child welfare service Barnardos, which had recruited the couple.

"I am seeking advice from Barnardos to confirm that care arrangements were appropriate and the wellbeing of the children was paramount," Ms Goward said yesterday.

The children's story, described as one of the saddest in the state, has been revealed in a Supreme Court judgment posted last month in Children's Law news compiled by the NSW Children's Court.

Their mother had tried but failed in the Supreme Court to win back custody of her son, given the pseudonym Campbell by the court.

His current foster parents want to adopt him.

Campbell was taken into care in November 2006 at the age of 18 months along with his four stepbrothers and two stepsisters after complaints of physical and mental abuse at the hands of the parents.

Campbell and his sister Abby, then 12, were placed with the lesbian couple in early 2009. The placement did not work out for Abby and after she was moved, Campbell was dressed in girl's clothes and his photograph placed on the couple's Facebook page.

The boy has his family broken up by parental abuse, traumatic enough in itself, and is then placed in a foster family with two lesbian women, one of whom is transsexual.

You would need to be strong to get through that start to life.

3 comments:

  1. I shudder to think what "socially aware" bureaucrats are doing to bring about cases like these. They can tell themselves that the placement of children with same-sex couples both helps a persecuted minority and helps couples who can never reproduce have a child of their own.

    I wonder how much of that favoritism is going on?

    Commenter Lydia Sherman at the Thinking Housewife blog once told this story:

    Two tragic events occurred in our area recently. Foster parents who were in the process of adopting a girl, found that the adoption was taken right from under them by a lesbian couple. It was found to be an inside job, where alternate lifestyle employees who saw the adoption coming up, quickly contacted people they knew and had them fill in their paperwork more quickly than the prospective adoptive parents. Another situation that brought even more grief was a grandmother whose daughter was not able to care for her toddler because of drug issues. The grandmother set adoption procedures in motion in order to be sure that her granddaughter would be able to live with her. Behind her back, on a Friday, she was issued with a notice that the child was already adopted out, and was to be taken to a large city on Monday, to live with two homosexual men. The woman did not know how to proceed, as the weekends do not offer any opportunity to intervene, with businesses and courts closed. The child had been with her since birth and was now four years old. One reason given for this sudden adoption is that the child had special needs and the male couple lived in a larger city where more medical help was available. The grandmother had previously been driving to that city for treatments and was glad to do it. This grandmother had given the child a stable life for several years. She was a homemaker, and could devote time to her. There was really no reason to adopt out either of these girls, There was an obvious bias going on here.

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  2. Have you seen this?:

    http://www.businessinsider.com/australia-adds-a-third-gender-to-passports-2011-9?utm_source=twbutton&utm_medium=social&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=main-contributor

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