Calls for urgent reform in WA's child protection system after kids tell of horror foster care abuse
Josh and Oscar (not their real names) live in a residential group home in the care of the WA Government. (ABC News: Daryna Zadvirna)
Josh was two days old when he was removed from his parents.
The state of Western Australia became his guardian — responsible for protecting and nurturing the vulnerable infant.
But Josh, who is now 16, says government care was no safer than his troubled home.
More than 400 children in state care became victims of neglect or sexual, physical or emotional abuse in WA between 2020 and 2023.
Some have even died. These are their stories.
WARNING: This story contains details some readers may find distressing, including references to sexual assault and self-harm.
Loading...Josh says the family that fostered him as a baby favoured their biological children.
They caned him for 'discipline' and abused him in ways he is still too traumatised to share.
Loading...On his 11th birthday, Josh remembers being bundled into a government car and taken away from that family.
Loading...He never went back — and has been bouncing between group homes and juvenile detention ever since.
Loading...He bears scars — both physical and emotional — from his troubled journey through life.
The ABC meets Josh in a deserted car park at dusk, a few hundred metres from the residential care home he's living in.
There are 22 homes like this around WA, 14 of them in Perth.
Josh walks over with his hood up and his hands planted firmly in the pockets of his baggy tracksuit pants.
He's grown weary of repeating the painful and complex details of his short life.
This time, he says, eyes firmly on the ground, he hopes he'll be heard.
Josh's birth parents abused drugs, alcohol and all of his siblings.
When he was briefly placed back in the care of his dad, he was badly hurt.
The 16-year-old lifts his right palm to the streetlight and traces the thin white scar stretching from wrist to little finger.
He has another on his stomach.
"I was only with him for like a month and he did that to me," the teenager says, explaining his dad liked to hit him with a hammer.
"And then I went back to [WA's Department of Child Protection] and they told me it didn't happen. They told me I was exaggerating."
Josh struggles with his mental health and believes it has contributed to his stints in juvenile detention.
At 10 he received his first caution from police and at 13 he was charged.
"I broke into a restaurant to get food and after that, things just spiralled" he says.
Just a few days after we spoke, Josh was set to appear before the Perth Children's Court on an assault charge.
"I was coming down off the medications that they gave me and I'd kind of just lost my head," he says.
"Some bad things happened between me and another person, and someone got hurt."
When asked about the supports and counselling he'd received in state care, Josh looks down and shakes his head.
"I've asked for it, they told me they would sort it out, but nothing happens," he says.
"They just need to listen more — listen more and act on it.
"I need mental help, I'm mentally in trouble at the moment."
Josh’s friend Oscar is beside him, nodding along and occasionally patting the teenager’s shoulder.
Oscar has been in care for about a year.
He says he ran away from his abusive family and lived on the streets, before ending up in the "halfway house" with Josh.
The pair lean heavily on each other because they don't feel supported by the system.
"When you find someone you can trust, you stick with them," Oscar says.
"No matter what you're holding in, you go to the person you trust [and] you talk it out."
Deaths in care
In WA, children taken into care come under the responsibility of the Department of Communities.
Some are placed with foster families, while others live in supervised group homes with other young people.
Two years ago, a 14-year-old girl took her life at one of those residential care homes in Perth's east.
She is one of 14 young people in care who have died since 2020.
Josh knew her and thought of her like a sister.
"They put someone that far down in life … like there's no other option but to take their life," he says.
"That was one of my best friends."
The girl's mother told the ABC she couldn't get much information from the Department of Communities about the circumstances of her daughter's death.
The woman hopes an upcoming coronial inquest will reveal what happened.
Since that death, at least two other children in state care have reportedly died by suicide.
One of them was a 10-year-old boy.
Loading...The ABC has spoken to half a dozen young people who have also struggled with mental health while in the care of the state.
A former child protection worker told the ABC it was difficult to attract psychologists to work in the department and the wait times for children to see a psychiatrist were unacceptable.
He says in one case, a young boy had to wait eight months just to get a referral.
That worker left the department and became a foster carer several years ago.
Alice has been a foster parent through the Department of Communities for over a decade.
We're not using her real name because she's concerned she'll be banned from fostering if she speaks publicly.
A foster carer's story
She says seeking psychological help for even the most vulnerable children in government care has been a battle.
"They've been removed from their home because of some sort of trauma or neglect … but they don't receive any support, like counselling in an automatic way," she says.
"I think a lot of people assume they do."
She tells me about one primary school-aged girl she fostered who'd suffered physical and sexual abuse.
The girl had been exposed to pornography, drugs and alcohol in her previous placement.
"[She] was never provided with any counselling through the department," Alice says.
"I eventually … had to actually go to the district, the head of the district, to get that [for her]."
A few years ago, Alice looked after a teenage girl who had been raped at a residential group home.
"My understanding is the child was placed in a home with another child who was known to be a perpetrator of sexual assault," she says.
Alice says she was told the abuse happened on multiple occasions.
She's been advocating for change for the past decade but says she's had little success.
"I've tried several times with both the Liberal and the Labor governments to bring this to their attention," she says.
"But each time I met with either refusal to discuss it by the minister or their response is very … apathetic.
"I do think that the system is working with a shroud of secrecy to keep it from coming out.
"Our state would be really horrified to see … some of the things that that happen to children in care."
Several children who spoke to the ABC said they'd been sexually assaulted or knew children who had been sexually assaulted in residential group homes or other out-of-home care placements.
In 2021, the then-WA commissioner for young people, Colin Pettit, published a review of the department's policies and practices in the placement of children with harmful sexual behaviours in residential care settings.
The result was damning.
Mr Pettit found the department failed to consistently ensure that safe and high-quality care was provided to children in its care by well-trained and supported staff and carers.
The commissioner made nine recommendations and said he would track the department's progress in implementing them.
The current commissioner, Jacqueline McGowan-Jones, says "significant progress" has been made on the majority of those recommendations over the past 12 months.
But she says further discussions are being held on the need for "urgent intervention" to provide mandatory training for staff on harmful sexual behaviours and to establish oversight for "child-safe organisations".
Life after state care
Ben is sharing his experience of the child protection system for the first time.
At 18, he can share his identity and tell his story.
It's been just a few weeks since his release from youth detention and a few months since he lost a friend, 16-year-old Cleveland Dodd, after he self-harmed while in custody.
Ben spent close to a decade in state care, shuffling between foster carers and residential care homes.
Now, he's staying with Liz, a woman who volunteers all her spare time to help young people like Ben transition out of juvenile detention and the child protection system.
Ben didn't go to school very often and started using drugs at 12, when a group of children from his residential care home took him to what he describes as a "trap house".
"It was just a house, like rundown, not clean … doors kicked off," he recalls, sitting hunched over on a kitchen stool, clutching a vape in one hand and wrapping the other around his torso.
"[The people who owned it] would be like: 'You can do whatever you want to here, you can have all the drugs you want … there are no rules.'"
Ben says the adults gave him and other children drugs and alcohol.
The teenager recalls waking up with little memory on several occasions.
He takes a drag of his vape and jiggles his foot.
"Now I think back on it, now that I'm a lot older, I can definitely see … there was definitely grooming," he says.
"There's a lot of stuff that I'm just better off forgetting about."
Liz understands what Ben has been through.
She worked as a residential group home officer with the department, leaving in 2018.
In the same year, Liz received a letter from the department threatening her with a $12,000 fine or imprisonment for "harbouring a child".
She claims the letter was referring to a girl in state care who ran away from a residential group home in which she had been raped.
"I'd seen child after child be taken from [their] family due to a wide range of issues, including neglect, abuse," she says.
"Then I watched these children being put into group homes and experience more of the same issues."
Liz claims she was banned from fostering children after whistleblowing but she still tries to help those she can.
"These kids are not bad kids — these kids are struggling with real life problems that most privileged … kids in the suburbs of Perth have been lucky enough to not face," she says.
The ABC put a series of questions to the Department of Communities regarding the allegations from young people and carers.
In a written response, it said the "safety and wellbeing of children is always [a] top priority" and that kids have access to health services, including mental health support.
"The overwhelming majority of children and young people in out-of-home care live in settled, safe care arrangements with family or foster carers," a spokesperson said.
"It is important to note that an individual child may appear multiple times in the reporting [collected by the Productivity Commission] and incidents often occur outside of the child's care arrangement.
"In the majority of cases, the perpetrator is someone other than the approved carer, such as another child, or a stranger.
"WA has a high standard of care across all its carers and placement types and takes any concerns relating to abuse of children seriously."
The department also said the number of child protection workers has increased, "meaning there are now more case workers on the frontline than ever before".
System in 'dire crisis'
Young people and carers aren't the only ones raising the alarm.
The joint Community and Public Sector Union and Civil Service Association has been staging strikes designed to pressure the government to allocate more funding.
The union told the ABC that as of September, more than 1,000 vulnerable children — including those in state care and children potentially at risk with their families — had not been allocated a case worker.
"The … system in Western Australia is in dire crisis, and needs urgent attention," the union's acting branch secretary, Melanie Bray, said.
"It is clear that key decision-makers continue to ignore not only the demands of the workforce, but the needs of some of our community's most vulnerable children and families."
An uncertain future
Back in the car park, Josh and Oscar are eager to finish our chat before someone notices they're not at home.
Josh was under a curfew as part of his bail conditions and, at the time he spoke to the ABC, was set to appear before the Perth Children's Court.
As they disappear into the dark, it remains to be seen if or how they will overcome the trauma they've endured.
"We have other kids here that would love to help and tell their story," Oscar texts a day later.
But we were unable to get in contact with Josh and Oscar again.
Loading...Credits
- Words and photos: Daryna Zadvirna
- Illustrations: Mark Evans
- Design: Jake Sturmer
- Production: Phoebe Pin, Gian De Poloni