State Campaign On Adoption Is Attacked By Church
The Age
Saturday October 31, 1992
A State Government campaign aimed at encouraging people to adopt disabled children was branded as ``dishonest" yesterday by the Uniting Church's largest adoption agency.
The executive director of Copelen child and family welfare services, Mr Peter Renkin, said the campaign misleads adoptive parents because it does not mention the high cost of caring for a disabled child.
A television advertisement and a video for interested parents was launched this week by the Department of Health and Community Services.
Mr Renkin said his agency supported the campaign's aim to recruit parents. But care-giver payments were too low and represented a trend among governments to get welfare on the cheap.
``For heavens sake if we're going to recruit families whose moral commitment is fantastic let's give them the true, real cost picture," Mr Renkin said. ``The video is misleading, dishonest, and fails to take these families seriously.
``You can't afford to trick people. The cost of real care is being underplayed in our society." A parent who adopts a disabled child aged up to seven years gets a State Government payment of $56 a week. A disability allowance of $66.20 a fortnight is also available from the Federal Government but it is means-tested.
Mr Renkin said the payments and allowance were not enough to cover the special needs of disabled children, such as speech pathology and other specialist services. The Uniting Church is the biggest non-Government provider of social welfare services in Victoria. The Copelen agency found permanent homes for 11 children with special needs this year.
They have 25 children who remain unplaced.
However, the manager of adoption and permanent care for the Health and Community Services Department, Mr John Prent, rejected Mr Renkin's criticisms. Mr Prent said the joys and difficulties of adopting a disabled child were decribed in the video. He said parents who rang the 008 number shown in the television ad would be invited to an information night in which the video would be shown and detailed information about the costs of such care would be provided.
Mr Prent said care-giver payments were adequate and had been increased by the former government earlier this year. He said the department would provide new annual grants of up to $5000 for each disabled child adopted to cover the cost of specialist needs.
The department has about 70 disabled children living in temporary foster care or residential care who need permanent care. The children are either wards of the state or from families unable to care for them.
© 1992 The Age