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ОглавлениеAN INTRODUCTION TO CHILD PROTECTION
For societies to flourish sociaIly and economicaIly, all children must have the opportunity to reach their physical, psychological, inteIlectual and social potential. For our most vulnerable children, including those at risk of abuse or neglect, we have a special duty of care. 1 —Professor Dorothy Scott, 2009
Child protection is a global challenge
Protecting children from exploitation and abuse is a global chaIlenge and an integral component of protecting their rights to survival and development. In 2009, UNICEF2 estimated that in excess of 300 miIlion children worldwide were being subjected to sexual exploitation and physical abuse, the worst forms of child slavery, prostitution, enforced child marriages to adult men, armed conflict (child soldiers) and harmful practices such as female genital mutilation. Some 1.2 miIlion children were known to have been trafficked worldwide each year and more than a miIlion children had been detained by law enforcement officials.
Child trafficking involves kidnapping children or deceiving parents that children will be given “domestic work” that is more likely to involve imprisonment in a brothel or a factory using child slave labour. Traffickers target the most impoverished rural families and those in debt. This is a highly lucrative business that is hard to address. Victims may be sent to western countries for child brothels and when located, they are arrested, detained then deported as illegal migrants. In 2009, it was reported that Australian and American families had unwittingly adopted Indian babies and toddlers who were not orphans but had been kidnapped and sold for adoption. UNICEF estimates that in Guatemala alone some 1,000 to 1,500 babies and toddlers are seized each year for the lucrative adoption market in North America and Europe.
UNICEF confirms that lax and uncaring community attitudes increase children’s vulnerability. Myths, such as the belief that HIV/AIDS can be cured through sex with virgins, sex tourism and the 4 billion dollar child pornography market have all added to children’s vulnerability to sexual exploitation3. UNICEF found that of the 1.39 million people involved in forced commercial sexual exploitation, 40-50% were children.
In addition, it is estimated that more than 130 million females have been subjected to primitive genital mutilation/cutting. This mainly affects girls from countries stretching from Senegal in West Africa to Somalia in East Africa and to Yemen in the Middle East, but it is also practised in some parts of south-east Asia. Reports from Europe, North America and Australia indicate that migrants from these regions take these practices with them4.
Child maltreatment in Australia
Children in out-of-home care
Every day in Australia, more than 30,000 children are living in out-of-home care. In addition, an unknown number of children are living with relatives. The number in care rose by an alarming 115% from 1998 to 2008. Most importantly, the rate of indigenous children in out-of-home care is almost nine times that of other children. Those found to have suffered sexual abuse or serious physical abuse or neglect can be removed from their homes by child protection authorities but this is usually undertaken only as a last resort. In 2008, 31% of children in out-of-home care were aged 10-14 years; 30% were aged 5-9 years, 25% were under 5 years and 14%, aged 15-17 years (2008)5. The increase in young children in care was attributed to (a) drug and alcohol abuse by parents and consequent mental illness and (b) immature mothers abandoning their children.
Ninety-five percent of children removed from their homes were placed in home-based care. The three categories are:
foster care – (50%) where care is provided in the private home of a substitute family that receives payment to cover the child’s living expenses
kinship care – (44%) where the caregiver is a family member or a person with a pre-existing relationship with the child
other “out-of-home” care such as motels, caravans and apartments with casual carers employed by private agencies. This is a major concern given that workers are often on 8-hour contracts and cannot provide continuity of care needed by young children. It is also a concern that minimally trained people are working with the most traumatised children in Australia. Cheap motels usually lack playgrounds. Children’s education is disrupted and they tend to eat in fast food outlets. School attendance may be spasmodic
Given the social factors involved, it is likely that the current trend will continue. Countless children are living with grandparents and other relatives because their mothers have been killed in car accidents, murdered or because they are immature and/or drug-dependent and have neglected or abandoned them.
Removal can provide safety in the short term but the child protection system can also be damaging. Children can be further traumatised when placed in emergency foster care followed by multiple foster homes supervised by multiple case-workers who organise multiple (failed) attempts to reunite them with their parents, often against children’s wishes. Worse, because of the shortage of foster placements, children may be housed in motels, caravan parks or apartments with minimally and inadequately trained carers employed by private agencies on daily contracts.
For several years, foster carers have been resigning at a faster rate than they can be recruited. In successive studies, they have registered dissatisfaction with conditions of service, inadequate compensation for essential expenses, bullying, lack of professional support and poor communications with predominantly young, inexperienced and inadequately trained case workers. They accused workers of failing to listen to and communicate with foster children, especially ignoring disclosures of re-abuse by their mothers and boyfriends on forced weekend visits6.
In addition, foster carers’ own children are at risk of sexual abuse if their foster children were victims of sexual abuse.
The child protection system in Australia
The protection of children in Australia is the responsibility of state and territory governments which fund departments, all using different and frequently changing nomenclatures. Children who come into contact with these departments include those who:
are suspected of being physically, emotionally or sexually abused, abandoned, neglected or otherwise harmed
have carers who are unwilling or unable to provide adequate care and protection
State child protection departments are legally required to provide assistance to these children through the provision of a range of government and/or non-government services that will provide practical, parenting or psychological help. Police make the largest proportion of notifications of child abuse to child protection services7. They are involved in cases of a criminal nature, that is, where there is sexual abuse or physical abuse or neglect that results in the serious injury or death of a child. Other government-funded services also play a part in protecting children. Paediatricians and health professionals are involved in the assessment of child abuse cases, and the delivery of medical and allied health care. Therapeutic and counselling services are often provided by child and youth mental health services.
Who reports child maltreatment?
All Australian, American and Canadian states have laws requiring certain professionals to report suspected cases and evidence of child abuse and neglect to statutory child protection authorities. Details of reporting requirements in Australia are set out in the Appendix to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s Annual Report, Child Protection Australia. Readers are urged to check the requirements for their state or territory and note the penalties for failing to report. In western countries that lack mandatory reporting laws, education authorities usually have regulations outlining the responsibilities of staff.
When reports of abuse are made, a social worker decides whether they should be dealt with by the child protection service or referred to family support agencies. The child protection service determines whether action is required. Family support cases are assessed and may be referred to non-government family services such as Anglicare or Barnados. At any point, the department can apply to the youth court to place a child on a care and protection order but that is usually a last resort when supervision or counselling have been resisted; where all avenues for the resolution of the situation have been exhausted; where removal of a child into out-of-home care is essential for the child’s safety or where family members are deceased, mentally or chronically ill, imprisoned or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for the child. A court care and protection order places children in the care of the relevant government minister but, in practice, social workers make the major decisions about their lives including where and with whom they live. Orders may be for a short period such as one year or may remain in place until the child is eighteen.
A child on a protection order may be placed in out-of-home care. This can include foster-care, relative or kinship-care (often with grandparents). Older children may live independently with minimal support in subsidised accommodation. Parents can have children placed voluntarily in foster care. This is a strategy that has been used by well-informed abusive parents to avoid child protection orders being made. Police may prosecute them but the department is unlikely to seek a court order if the child is already safe. These parents then retain some control over their children’s lives.
Australian child protection data
The Commonwealth Government provides one of the world’s most comprehensive annual child protection data collections in Child Protection Australia which is available on the internet8. The report provides annual statistics relating to the number of:
child protection notifications, investigations and substantiations
children on care and protection orders
children in out-of-home care
Minimal information is collected on intensive family support services. In cases of child sexual abuse, there are no data showing the relationship of the abuser to the child although details are provided about the type of family setting (e.g. single male/female led or two parent family) in which abused children lived at the time of the report.
An Access Economics9 report (2008) estimated that 490,000 Australian children are abused each year. The projected cost to the taxpayer over the lifetime of those first abused in 2007 was $13.7 billion but could be as high as $39.7 billion if the unreported cases were taken into account. The cost of child abuse includes paying the salaries of thousands of paediatricians, nurses, police officers, social workers, judges, counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, independent children’s lawyers in the Family Court, correctional services officers, court staff, prisons, hospitals and child protection departments. There is also a significant outlay in reimbursing and supporting foster carers and others who look after traumatised and vulnerable children.
Child protection notifications and substantiations
Given the different ways in which each jurisdiction handles and records child protection issues, statistical information must be treated with caution. The number of child protection notifications and substantiations recorded in Australia has increased dramatically in the last decade10. If a child was the subject of more than one type of abuse in the same report, the type recorded is the one considered by the social worker to be most harmful. Where a child was the subject of more than one substantiated case of abuse during the year, the type of abuse recorded was that associated with the first substantiation. Thus, it is difficult to measure the overall patterns of types of abuse that each child suffered.
It is important to note that about two-thirds of children in substantiated cases are under 10 years of age. This means that early childhood professionals have a particular responsibility for child protection, as they typically work with children in the 0-8 year age range. Although understated, available data show that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are over-represented in all categories of reports11.
In all jurisdictions females are more likely to be the subject of substantiated cases of sexual abuse than males and in some jurisdictions the figure has been three times greater. As later chapters will show, this does not mean that girls are more vulnerable than boys but rather that boys are less likely to make reports. Boys on the other hand are more likely than girls to be victims of physical abuse.
A comparatively high proportion of substantiated cases involve children living with lone mothers or those with partners who are not the children’s own fathers. This is especially evident when we look at non-accidental child deaths. There are several reasons for this. Lone parents are more likely to have low incomes and high stress levels12,13 and suffer from social isolation14, factors that are associated with physical abuse and neglect15,16. In addition, research has taught us that child sex offenders deliberately target the children of vulnerable single mothers.
The increase in reports is often explained as due to increased community awareness. However the United Nations confirms that child abuse, especially child sexual abuse and exploitation, is increasing world-wide, attributed largely to the promotion of paedophilia on the internet, the low value placed on children, the ease with which child sex offenders can contact each other and new avenues for locating victims through social cyber networks. The true incidence of abuse is also likely to be masked by the provision of family support services for less serious incidents. In addition, there have been occasions when genuine reports of abuse have been trivialised and not recorded by persons employed on child abuse report-lines.
So, what do we mean by substantiation?
You may have read that only about 20% of reports of child abuse are “substantiated”. In 2010 some 15,000 abuse reports were made by Queensland teachers to the Department of Child Safety, an annual increase of 40%17. Only 25% of reports were investigated and only 858 were “substantiated”. This was interpreted by media as thousands of allegations being false. “Unsubstantiated” means there was insufficient evidence of harm when the child was assessed by a department worker. It can also reflect a shortage of staff and the department’s inability to investigate all but the most serious cases. “Unsubstantiated” does not mean that the abuse did not occur; it may mean that the child did not feel sufficiently confident to disclose what happened to the assessing officer. In cases of child sexual abuse, children often remain silent because of threats that terrible things will happen if they “tell” or they may be simply too embarrassed to disclose the detail to strangers. If they were sexually abused by males, they may not be willing to talk to male police or social workers.
Unfortunately for the children in unsubstantiated cases, there is insufficient help to lessen the risk of re-abuse or stop neglect from becoming more serious18.
The need for a multi-disciplinary community approach
It is recognised that, to provide better protection for children, there has to be a multi-disciplinary community approach using early intervention programmes to strengthen families, reduce risks and the negative effects of child abuse after it has already occurred. This includes community and professional education to change damaging child-rearing attitudes and behaviours, recognise the early signs of abuse and neglect and give children sufficient knowledge and skills to recognise, escape from and report sexually inappropriate behaviour and cyber bullying. To achieve this, the capacity of the current and future workforce must be prepared across the range of child-related services, especially in education, child care, health, social work, the legal system, and psychology and counselling.
There is no instant fix for this enormous problem. Nurses and midwives are vital for preventing child abuse and neglect, given that some have contact with parents before or immediately after a child’s birth. Home visits are essential to locate vulnerable parents who lack and need support and practical assistance to develop sound parenting skills. In this way, nurses might be considered the first important professionals at the front line of child protection, followed by those involved in child care and education.
Most abused and neglected children attend school or early childhood centres. They give signs that an educated professional can identify. No other professionals spend whole days and weeks at a time with abuse victims. Carers and teachers have (or should have) a strong background in child development and as part of their professional role, they are expected to identify and respond to children’s special needs. The education sector undertakes preventive work through the implementation of child protection policies, police checks for staff and volunteers, child protection curricula for children (ideally with parent participation) and school-based family support. Some child care services, playgroups and multi-professional centres cater specifically for vulnerable children.
Sadly, the number of reported child abuse cases represents only “the tip of the iceberg” although in some Australian states, one in every five children is the subject of a report to statutory child protection services before the age of eighteen19. Child protection services are overwhelmed with escalating demands while staff retention problems curtail investigations and support for families, foster carers and foster children. In some states the annual staff turnover of child protection officers has been 40% and the average length of service has been as little as six months.
Child protection departments respond to reports using family support services, rather than through a formal investigation. This can lead to substantial decreases in the numbers of reports recorded, masking the statistics relating to the rates of child maltreatment.
Australian students are urged to refer to the most recent copy of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s Annual Report, Child Protection Australia.
Family support services
Many of the reports to child protection authorities involve parents not coping with their lives in general and their child-rearing responsibilities in particular. Some will be former state wards and survivors of childhood abuse who lacked good parenting models in childhood. Because of their circumstances, they are often poorly educated, unemployed, unwell, impoverished, victims of intergenerational violence and substance abuse. Child protection authorities focus on trying to help parents and most governments have increased funding for family support and early intervention services, which are seen to be effective in reducing the need for more intrusive actions. Strategies have been introduced such as “Families First” in New South Wales, “Child First” in Victoria, “Keeping Them Safe” in South Australia, “Referral for Active Intervention” in Queensland and “Common Assessment Framework” in the ACT. These strategies attempt to assist families in a holistic way, by providing better access to services and coordinating service delivery.
Australia has moved away from the identification and investigation of evidence and the removal of the child towards an assessment of whether a child has suffered harm and whether the family can be assisted. However, as shown in the next chapter, unless it is well supervised, children will fall through the gaps. When non-accidental child deaths occur, it is often revealed that the family was well known to the department but attention focussed on the needs of parents rather than the safety of children.
Children re-abused
Child protection services are now concerned about the increase in re-notifications and re-substantiations of abuse, indicating that large numbers of children continue to be victimised after reports have been made and investigated.
The Victorian Department of Human Services undertook a detailed analysis (2002) and found that the child protection system failed to deal with parents’ chronic problems20. The report noted that helping these families required more sustained and less intrusive support than was being provided. It highlighted the need for stronger prevention and early intervention services as well as improved responses for children. If intervention does not create a change in the parent’s behaviour and the plight of children is ignored, the consequences can be fatal. In 2011, the Premier of Victoria initiated a further inquiry into the failing child protection system.
Since the 1970s, child protection policies have emphasised family re-unification. Out-of-home carers complain that this often forces children to return to abusive homes against their wishes. When the family breaks down again, the child is sent to another foster home and the pattern is repeated. This practice was condemned by the National Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse (NSPCC-UK) as long ago as 1973 in a report entitled Yo-Yo children 21. Furthermore, the practice of moving children to foster homes without careful preparation was shown to be psychologically harmful by (London) Tavistock Centre’s Drs James and Joyce Robertson as long ago as 1967 in their Young Children in Brief Separation Film Series 22. While their work led to major and rapid reforms in the care of children in hospitals, it appears to have had little impact on child protection services.
There has been a recent push in some countries to seek greater permanency for children who are unable to live with their parents, through either adoption or long-term parenting orders. Both the United States and United Kingdom use adoption as an avenue for security, permanence and stability for children. Unlike adoptions in the past, these children can maintain contact with family members and their family histories.
Attitudes to child maltreatment
Child abuse is a highly emotional subject. The most commonly expressed emotions are as follows:
Denial: A major barrier to protecting children is the priority we give to our own feelings. A very common self-protective response is denial. Many people accept that sexual abuse occurs but they reject information that involves priests, paedophile groups, bizarre, satanic or ritual abuse or an offender they know. For years, police dismissed reports of satanic abuse as the imaginings of mentally ill people. Partial denial is referred to as “discounting”. This can interfere with responding appropriately to child victims. Discounters may say that:
child abuse doesn’t happen – children make it up
it happens but victims “ask for it” or “it does them no harm”
it may happen elsewhere but it doesn’t happen here (so I can ignore it)
media exaggerate it (so I don’t have to do anything about it)
I don’t know what the fuss is about; it happened to me and I’m all right (males only)
child abuse is a problem but it’s not my problem and there is nothing I can do
it isn’t nice so I don’t want to know about it
OARS, the organisation catering for families of prisoners, has concerns that the partners of jailed child sexual offenders are especially likely to deny that the men are guilty or did any harm. Blaming victims, they are unlikely to be able to protect them from further abuse23.
Shock: A common response is “No, I don’t believe it. You must be mistaken. S/he wouldn’t do that”.
Distress and anxiety: “What will happen to me/us if he is jailed?” … “What will people say?”
Frustration: because of our limited ability to protect children in our care
Anger: with the perpetrator, the justice system and parents who didn’t protect the child
Guilt and self-recrimination: looking back we realise that we ignored or misunderstood victims’ signals or placed children in harm’s way
Blame: adults attack victims illogically because they didn’t behave as adults and fight back, albeit without an adult’s strength or knowledg
Revulsion: intertwined with shock. We have to make an effort not to think about what happened as it can affect the way we feel about the child All too often, professionals and parents recall disclosures of sexual abuse that they ignored because they were “too embarrassed” or “didn’t believe it could be true” or “didn’t know what to say or do”. The tragedy is that it takes a great deal of courage for child victims to report abuse to trusted adults and when their reports are ignored or rejected, the children may resign themselves to victimisation, convinced that they are helpless. This has a devastating effect on their self-esteem and emotional and social development.
When we receive information suggesting that a child has been abused, we have to conceal our shock and horror. We have to remind ourselves that the child is the victim and the child’s needs must take precedence over our own uncomfortable feelings. If we ignore our responsibilities and victims’ cries for help, we coIlude with their abusers.
We are angry if we trusted offenders and fell for the tricks and ruses they used to lower our guard, enabling them to have unsupervised contact with children. We feel angry with child protection authorities that dismiss a report as “low priority” when we perceive the child’s situation as in urgent need of intervention. We feel angrier with the justice system when a child abuser is allowed to go free on the basis of a technicality or because the child is too immature to give testimony in court or because a short non-parole period, good behaviour bond or suspended sentence was handed down by a judge. Anger is a normal and healthy response if it is channelled into a commitment to helping children or changing unsatisfactory systems.
The professional who reacts strongly to cases of abuse is primed for action. The emotion-induced readiness to act can be usefully channelled into the child protection education for self, children and parents. Anger and frustration can lead to low morale and burn-out but, paradoxically, they can become motivating factors resulting in a greater commitment to help children.
What if we were abused in childhood?
Some uncomfortable feelings will relate to our past. Most people experienced some form of abuse at some time in their lives. If we can recollect our own responses, we can begin to understand the traumatic stress of child victims and their need for support. If we deny our own abuse, we are unlikely to respond effectively to the needs of children in our care.
If reminders still produce strong feelings of anger, guilt, embarrassment or other powerful emotions from the past, readers should seek specialist counselling to work through their feelings in a healthy way. This is important because when children’s cries for help revive feelings which have not been dealt with, we may freeze and become incapable of responding helpfully. Survivors of abuse often need frequent reminders that children are never responsible for what adults do (or did) to them. If we can work through our feelings constructively, we are likely to emerge stronger, more committed and better able to help children than those who have had no abusive experiences.
It is important to recognise the effects of our emotions for several reasons. They:
affect the way in which parents and children relate to us, making us approachable or unapproachable
affect the way in which we receive information, accepting or rejecting it, being judgmental or non-judgmental, appearing critical or uncritical, shocked or helpful
are disclosed in verbal expression and body language and they tell children and parents whether we are likely to be helpful, or unhelpful, critical and punitive
affect our perceptions of what we hear and see and affect our capacity to help
affect our capacity to make sound judgments relating to real-life situations
As professionals, we are not concerned with judgments; our responsibility is to protect children and keep them safe.
Conflict in sympathy for children v marginally abusive parent
Few cases of child abuse and neglect are straightforward. The range of emotions they elicit is often contradictory and confusing. In marginal cases of neglect or physical abuse, we may find ourselves sympathising with the perpetrators as well as the victims. At this stage, “at risk” families can be identified and helped.
Mature adults who are also parents are the ones most likely to identify with marginally negligent and physically abusive parents, recognising that children can be exhausting and infuriating and, at times, unresponsive to affection and attention. We realise that, placed in certain circumstances, most of us are capable of hurting a child. Idealistic young professionals who have been sheltered from the harshness of the world are the ones most likely to hold hostile opinions towards abusive parents, regarding any form of neglect as unforgivable. Alternatively, when professionals think that child abuse is committed only by criminals and the mentally ill, and are convinced that “none of our parents fits into those categories”, they may miss signs of maltreatment. They may also ignore evidence when it involves middle-class professionals and private schools, colleagues, acquaintances and people who have the capacity to influence the community in which they work. If our sympathy for neglected children overrides concern for parents, we are likely to alienate the family. Conversely, if all our sympathy is with parents, we are unlikely to make reports to child protection authorities when reporting is necessary, because we value our relationship with the adults more than we value the safety of children.
Almost everyone has a strong opinion about child abuse. Denial is usually accompanied by anecdotal evidence to the effect that someone was falsely accused of incest by a child who later withdrew the statement. No-one pauses to question the societal, family and court pressures that might have been placed on the child to retract the allegation because the explanation conveniently fits the stereotype. When a sex offender is found not guilty, that is readily interpreted as “the child was lying”. People accept this explanation because it doesn’t disturb their comfort zone as much as accepting that some fathers do abuse their own children. Denial is an easy option because acceptance places an obligation on community members to do something about it, especially when their work involves children and young people. Even when a former colleague has been convicted and victims are suing the school, staff often adopt the attitude that, “It happened a while ago and he left so we can forget about it” and security becomes lax once again.
References – Chapter 1
1 Scott, D. (2009), Child abuse and neglect in Australia today, Australian Centre for Child Protection: University of South Australia.
2 UNICEF (2009), website updated 30 September 2009 http://www.unicef.org/protection/index_exploitation.html
4 UNICEF (2010), Facts on children, Child protection, http://www.unicef.org/media/ media_35903.html
5 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2009), Child protection Australia, 2007-08, Canberra, ACT: AIHW.
6 Briggs, F. & Broadhurst, D. (2005), ‘The abuse of foster carers’, The Australian Journal of the Institute of Home Economics, June. Briggs F. (2006), ‘Whatever happened to common sense?’ Keynote address for the Annual Conference of the Australian Foster Carers’ Association, Adelaide.
7 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2009), Child welfare, Series number, 45 (Table A1.5), Canberra: Child Protection Australia.
8 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2009), op.cit, (Table 2.8).
9 ‘The Cost of Child Abuse in Australia’ (2008), Report by Access Economics Pty Limited, Australian Childhood Foundation and Child Abuse Prevention Research Australia at Monash University.
10 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2009), op.cit.
11 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1997), ‘Bringing them home: Report of the national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families’, Sydney: HREOC.
12 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2007), ‘Young Australians: Their health and wellbeing’, Cat. No. PHE 87, Canberra: AIHW.
13 Saunders, P. & Adelman, L. (2006), ‘Income, poverty, deprivation and exclusion: A comparative study of Australia and Britain’, Journal of Social Policy, 35(5), pp. 559-584.
14 Loman L. A. (2006), ‘Families frequently encountered by child protection services: A report on chronic child abuse and neglect’, St Louis: Institute of Applied Research.
15 Coohey, C. (1996), ‘Child maltreatment: Testing the social isolation hypothesis’, Child Abuse & Neglect, 20, pp. 241-254.
16 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, (2009), op.cit. (Table 3.5).
17 Chilcot, T. (2010), Queensland schools file, ‘12,000 child harm reports but only 858 found to be true’, Courier Mail, 23 July.
18 Scott, D. (2009), op.cit.
19 Scott, D. (2009), op.cit.
20 Victorian Department of Human Services (2002), An integrated strategy for child protection and placement services, Melbourne: Community Care Division, VDHS.
21 NSPCC. (1974), ‘Yo-yo children, A study of 23 violent matrimonial cases by the NSPCC School of Social Work’, London: NSPCC.
22 Robertson, J. & Robertson, J. (1967-73), Young children in brief separation, Film series, Concord Video and Film Council. – (1967) Film: Kate, aged two years five months, in foster care for twenty-seven days. – (1968) Film: Jane, aged seventeen months, in foster care for ten days. – (1969) Film: John, aged seventeen months, for nine days in a residential nursery. – (1971) Film: Thomas, aged two years four months, in foster care for ten days. – (1973) Film: Lucy, aged twenty-one months, in foster care for nineteen days.
23 O’Keefe, Liz, personal communications with author, 11 August 2011, OARS Community Transitions.
