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Working for the Best Interests of Children; A Community Caring Approach : Reflections of Mr Justice John Fogarty
Attendance at this year’s Annual general Meeting of Family Life is important in two respects. The first is the importance of an Annual general Meeting itself and the second, this year, is the opening of the Children’s Services Centre.
Annual meetings for organisations such as Family Life are extremely important. Whilst those working directly within the organisation will be familiar in a daily way with its work, its successes and failures, most of its supporters cannot have that continuous stream of information, and knowledge of the workings of the organisations is tremendously important.
Volunteers working in the Op Shop on a quiet day, or those who recently toiled in difficult weather to make the open garden show such a success may sometimes wonder how significant and effective their work is.
The importance of the Annual General Meeting and the Annual Report is to provide that information. People should be able to see from reading the report where their efforts and money have gone and how successful the organisation has been in our community. In more recent years Annual Reports have been much more user friendly in that whilst necessarily providing the basic statistical information, they also go to the trouble of giving the work which it does a much more human and accessible face. It is important that people come away from a meeting or from a reading of the report feeling that their organisation is not just working satisfactorily at a financial and administrative level but also that it has fulfilled its fundamental task which is working in the community with a particular emphasis upon the best interests of children.
The second aspect of this year’s meeting gave great impetus to this. It was the opening of the Children’s Services Centre and there are a number of important aspects of it which could be briefly dealt upon.
The first is to recognise the enormous planning and energy that went into its construction, and the remarkable circumstances that the money necessary to pay for it was able to be raised. Whilst in this particular instance Family Life was fortunate to have such a magnificent bequest which contributed so grandly to this project, nevertheless there were great community efforts and contributions which enabled the construction of such a satisfactory centre.
The second matter, and which appeals to me in particular, is the naming of the centre with its emphasis upon services to children. Although both the name of Family Life and its work emphasises an holistic approach to families and children it must be constantly borne in mind that in the final analysis it is services to vulnerable and needy children which is its reason for existence.
Normally assistance to parents and other family members in their roles as carers of children is the obvious way to approach this issue. That is, difficulties in that particular family, whether it be financial, violence, drink, gambling or just general dysfunction, and the controlling of those will inevitably elevate the best interests of the children who are the members of that family. But in the ultimate it needs constantly to be borne in mind that it is the welfare of the children which ultimately counts. Any tendency to diminish the concentration on the children in an attempt, often unsuccessful, to make the family viable must be avoided.
There are two further things which are worth emphasising.
The first is that the centre must continue to adopt a community caring approach. Its work will not be successful if it is seen as a one to one situation between the centre and an isolated family. Community support both direct and indirect to that family and its general encouragement is tremendously important. In addition it is important to the community itself that it is seen to be involved in this way. It is important in our community that we don’t see ourselves as living our own small insular lives concerned only essentially about ourselves, making sporadic donations to charities from time to time. A community is enhanced if members of that community can feel that they have contributed to the betterment of its individual members.
The second matter which I should refer to briefly is that important changes in this area have occurred over the last 12 months or so. The Children and Young Persons Act has been significantly amended and most of those changes are to be commended. Secondly there has been an increased financial recognition by the Government of the importance of work in this area.
But the third aspect of success in Victoria is the capacity of the Department and the non government organisations to rise to these new challenges. Amongst the reforms there is intended to be a greater involvement of non government organisations in families who are operating at a low level. Until now they either fell within the child protection net or they were lost to many services. Now there is a greater capacity for the Department and non government organisations to pick up these families and provide them with assistance before they deteriorate further.
Finally and in a slightly different context I should refer to the centre’s involvement in the Commonwealth centre established at Frankston relating to the resolution of disputes between separated parents about their children. The Commonwealth has place great emphasis upon this in recent times, but it is a difficult task and we all wish Family Life success in this new enterprise.
