A young boy with disability in foster care was rescued after being seriously starved and kept from school for ‘six years’.
NSW Opposition Shadow Minister for Family and Community Services Tania Mihailuk has questioned the state government’s priorities after the discovery of a boy, who cannot be legally identified and has been dubbed Boy X, who was allegedly maltreated, in the latest revelations of extreme neglect within the state’s failing foster care system..
As the boy was rescued, investigators also found a woman with disability who was ‘barricaded in her bedroom’ living as a prisoner in the same house at the hands of the abusive ‘carer’.
The case was a part of some documents obtained by The Daily Telegraph that reveal more abuse cases in the wake of the Girl X scandal, where a “high needs” 14-year-old was repeatedly raped by staff at a Wesley Mission foster centre.
Ms Mihailuk expressed her opposition in her assessment of the situation: “The Baird Government is prepared to hold a special commission of inquiry into greyhounds, but won’t stand up for the welfare of our most vulnerable children.”
“These cases are very disturbing and reveal broader systemic failures within child protection, which this government is failing to address. How many more cases like Girl X are out there that we just don’t know about,” she said.
A report on Boy X reveals that “both agencies knew that the young man was not attending school due to issues associated with his disability and health concerns, but failed to take action in response.
A secret task force was also set up to “monitor” how the Education Department and the Family and Community Services department allowed the abuse to happen.
The cases are expected to create more pressure on the Baird government and Family and Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard to outline specifically how the broken system will be fixed.
A spokeswoman for Mr Hazzard said the minister had “already committed to wide-scale reform” of the Out Of Home Care system, including “intensive intervention”.
Source: Dailytelegraph.com.au
