I watched with some sadness the proceedings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse as it dealt with allegations of abuse in Victoria's state run institutions. The case studies given were heartrending for anyone who worked within that system in the 1960s and '70s. At the time I was in my first job as a youth officer in the social welfare department, taking young people out of Turana and Winlaton and working with them in the community.
The case studies given were not entirely a surprise. Life for most children in the system was brutal and unforgiving. What did come as a surprise was that some of the abuse came from very senior carers and managers.
It must have been particularly hard to watch for those who were managing and trying desperately to reform the system at that time. These were the great reformers: Ian Cox, David Green, Ken Williams, Mike Olijnyk, Lloyd Owen, Jim Murray and others; the people who will always be my professional heroes.
The 1960s were the peak of the baby-boom. Vast Housing Commission estates were constructed that stretched across the north-west of Melbourne from West Heidelberg to Sunshine and the south-east from Frankston to Dandenong. With the inner city high-rise flats, they were places where families with meagre resources worked hard to create a better life.
They also became places of concentrated disadvantage and inadequate services.
The social welfare system was unable to cope with the scale and complexity of demands. It developed large institutions, Turana for young men, Baltara for younger adolescent boys, Winlaton for girls and Allambie for babies and young children. The conditions were poor, the service model unsophisticated and focused largely upon containment, and the staff largely untrained.
Congregate and institutional arrangements militate against appropriate child development and safety. The individual needs of children become lost. Children and young people who have been exposed to trauma and neglect have heightened needs which require an individual response. Institutional arrangements rely upon structure and regimentation which discourage individual initiative and problem solving. Children develop a diminished capacity for independent action. Institutions have significant power imbalances. Where this is the case, child-to-child or staff-member-to-child abuse will take place.
Closed systems encourage abuse and the suppression of information. In the mid '70s Turana still had a population of more than 300. Most were not on a custodial sentence. Most young people were taken into care as being 'likely to lapse into