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Australia has again been stunned by child neglect after a pregnant woman appeared in an Adelaide court yesterday on 10 charges involving criminal neglect, acts to endanger life and acts likely to cause harm.
She was arrested after authorities became alarmed at the condition of her 5-year-old son - rushed to hospital with hypothermia and malnutrition - and notified police.
They found 14 other hungry and ill-cared-for children in two squalid homes in the city's northern suburbs, either of which at any one time housed up to 21 children from two families.
Yesterday six of the children, aged between 2 and 6, remained in hospital as authorities and the courts prepared to determine their immediate future.
The appalling discovery of what South Australian Families and Communities Minister Jay Weatherill described as gravely ill children follows a series of tragic cases in New South Wales and the deaths from starvation of 18-month-old twins in Brisbane this month.
The infants had been dead for a week without anyone noticing, before their decomposed bodies were finally found and their parents charged with murder and torture.
Neighbours of the Adelaide woman told reporters they had not noticed anything extraordinary in the house, although one had telephoned the police several times because the children had appeared unruly and had played outside at night dressed only in their nappies.
Weatherill said yesterday that since June 2006 his department had been notified three times of child protection concerns, but they had been low-level reports involving the 28-year-old mother's health, absenteeism from school and non-payment of rent.
But the discovery of the condition of the mother's five other children, and the health of a further eight from a related second family has ballooned into a row between authorities in SA and Victoria, again raised concerns about gaps in the child welfare system and sparked urgent calls for greater community vigilance.
The mother, who was remanded in custody until July 2, had recently moved to Adelaide from Victoria, where she had been involved with the state's Child Protection Service.
Weatherill said that despite protocols requiring states to notify each other when such people move from one to another, there had been no follow-up when the family moved.
Victorian Department of Human Services spokesman Paul McDonald told ABC radio the department's involvement with the family ended more than 12 months ago and they were not subject to any of the protocols.
But Weatherill and child protection workers also said communities needed to be more vigilant and active in caring for children at risk.
"The situation does raise concerns about how alert we are about children in our community. We need to reflect on the fact that these children were in such poor health, but nobody chose to draw that to the attention of the relevant authorities," Weatherill said.
Dr Joe Tucci, chief executive of the Australian Childhood Foundation, said neglect was generally not considered to be as serious as physical or sexual abuse and tended to be treated as a welfare issue rather than a crime.
Because of a reluctance to involve the police, serious neglect often had to develop into a crisis before authorities would intervene.
