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AUSTRALIA
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"Something About AJ" (2001) the film
10th Anniversay Edition now Available on DVD!
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It is now
Australian EST
YOU SAID IT
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Want to comment on this? HAVE YOUR SAY
Debra Kattler from Los Angeles, CA
I wanted to comment on the pediatrician's report. His conclusions and recommendations do not appear consistent with his findings. He finds that the parents are thin. He finds that that the baby's weight is in the 5th percentile and height is in the 10th-25th percentile, head circumferance is in the 10th percentile. In other words, weight, height, and head circumferance are all consistent with one another. And the child's genetics would lend one to expect thinness.
The conclusion that the child is underweight and the recommendation to introduce formula (and food at less than 6 months of age) does not follow from the findings. Bad science and medicine if you ask me!
Debra
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Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM from Orelia, W.A. Australia
While I think the FACS had been given reasons which would have legitimately obliged them to investigate AJ's well-being, the method and manner in which they conducted this investigation was appalling.
FACS, and its sister departments in other Australian States, have not had good reputations for many years. I believe this stems from several interacting facts:
1. Government bodies, especially service areas, have been progressively starved of funds and resources over a long period
2. Such bodies have difficulty attracting and keeping competent staff. This is not helped by the fact that many senior positions are held by persons with considerably less professional competence and relevant academic training then the people they "supervise". The resultant professional jealousies and insecurities add to stresses which are endemic to the job and the burn-out rate is high. Unfortunately burn-out rate is inversely proportional to authoritarianism and the thickness of the epidermis.
3. Professional training is poor and case-work accountability within the department focuses on quantitative measures [such as through-put] rather than qualitative measures of success. Governments and accountants prefer it that way.
4. Unlike other help professionals in Australia, Social Workers do not have to be registered in order to practice. Thus there is nothing to stop government departments from employing people with inferior or no training in Social Work in "Social Worker" positions - and they frequently do. A survey of the formal qualifications of FACS staff would probably be quite enlightening :-)
Another consequence of the absence of State or National registration of Social Workers is that there is no Ethics Committee or professional peer review of competence in the area. In most States, this means that there is nowhere for the public to complain about the competence or professional behaviour of a particular worker and no reason why individual Social Workers [or Welfare Officers or Child Welfare Workers or Child Case Managers] should maintain any kind of ethical or professional standard other than that expedient to the body for which they work. The only professional body has little power to wield meaningful discipline over its members and no control over non-members at all. The establishment of a licensing board for Welfare and Social Workers would go some way to improving the standards of the "services" which our taxes are supposedly supporting.
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Jonathan Logan from Brisbane, Australia
I think its sick that the government has got to the stage where it becomes a bloated, overgrown, tyrranical bureacracy, which acts as if there were no law higher than its own arbitrary dictates.
What ever happened to *justice*? Or does the government revel in an abuse of it's power? I will be e-mailing this page all over the world, to lot's of my friends so they can see what happens when tyranny comes to town.
How ironic, being the "free" land of Australia that this happens in.
Keep up the good fight for AJ my friends. Injustice should be combatted wherever it is found.
-Jonathan Logan Want to comment on this? HAVE YOUR SAY |
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