Pubdate: Wed, 15 Mar 2000
Source: Illawarra Mercury (Australia)
Copyright: 2000 Illawarra Newspapers
Contact:  http://mercury.illnews.com.au/

CALL FOR PARENTAL DRUG TESTS

Parents with a history of substance abuse will be drug-tested as a 
condition of keeping their children under a NSW Government proposal to curb 
child deaths.

The move follows a special investigation by the NSW Child Death Review Team 
which found 86 children died between January 1996 and June last year while 
in the care of drug-addicted parents.

This was despite up to 70 of the 86 already having been notified to the 
Community Services Department.

Community Services Minister Faye Lo Po' said in some cases it was already 
known parents were drug-addicted.

However, she said authorities had been forced to accept the word of parents 
who had made hollow promises to give up their destructive habits.

She said further advice from the drug and children's courts would be sought 
on how drug-addicted parents known to the department as abusive could be 
tested before magistrates and judges decide on a child's future.

The testing would occur where a child already removed from the home was 
being returned.

"We've taken the word of the parents that they are no longer on drugs, that 
they are going to go clean and so on but it hasn't worked," Mrs Lo Po' said.

"We are investigating ... a system where we actually have parents undergo a 
drug test to make sure that they are free of drugs before we give back 
their children.

"You either keep your habit and lose your children or kick your habit and 
have your children back."

Mrs Lo Po' said she would "take on" civil libertarians who threatened to 
object to the scheme.

NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People, Gillian Calvert, said 
drug-addicted parents often left their children unsupervised while 
searching for substances.

Most of the children who died had been infants who were dependent on their 
parents for survival, she said. 
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