Children in danger

should be removed from that danger if it is at all possible.
I know someone who provides "emergency accommodation" for children at severe risk of harm. The social welfare services can ring her at any time and ask if she can take in a child or children - she has room for two if they are from the same family.
She has been doing this for years. When her husband was alive they long-term fostered two children with severe disabilities and a limited life expectancy. 
It isn't the sort of thing many people want to do and even fewer can actually do it. Most of their family and friends thought they were "mad" or "crazy" or "stupid". 
They were none of those things. They just cared. And she still cares. She says she is getting too old now, too old to take in severely traumatised children who need the care and attention she knows they need. 
I have seen the bedroom a child will sleep in. There is a small wardrobe and a chest of drawers. There are two beds. The beds are made up with waterproof covers on the mattresses. She expects the children to wet the bed. There isn't much else in the room because some children will be destructive.
But she has made up for that with quilt covers that feature cartoon characters the children are likely to be familiar with. She keeps a supply of the "trauma teddies" she has made and, where appropriate she will leave one on the pillow and tell the child, "That's yours to keep."
Yesterday I saw her. She sounded depressed. She had done an emergency over-night care for two children. "Dad's in prison. Mum took an overdose of something.  Their gran came to get them but she smelt of drink and I don't trust that husband of hers."
"Gran" had come with the social worker of course. Gran is family so she is the one who will now look after the children. When their mother has recovered the children will go back to her. An overworked social worker will  be assigned to the family - if there isn't already one. Nobody will do anything because there aren't the resources to do anything and the policy is to keep children with family at whatever the cost.
We briefly discussed the far more distressing case of the two year old in the Northern Territory who was so badly sexually assaulted she had to be rushed to a hospital far from home. 
     "All this bit about keeping the kids at home whatever. It's wrong," she told me, "Taking kids out of danger isn't stealing. It's the parents and the others around them that's doing the stealing. They're stealing our kids lives. It'd be better for the kids if they were moved right out and put somewhere  where they actually got fed and made to go to school and the like."
Yes, this woman is indigenous. She has no time for the "Stolen Generation" arguments. For her the first priority is the welfare of the child. With her vast knowledge of the indigenous community she tells me she doesn't know anyone who was "stolen". She knows much older people who were removed from their family situations in the past because they were not being cared for and even one or two who were sent away to school by their parents. But, she knows of nobody who was removed simply because they were indigenous. One of the current social workers once told me,
    "Present policies make it almost impossible to remove a child from harm's way. We have to keep families together. I have a great-grandmother caring for three school age children. She's not coping but she is the only available relative and I was told that family comes first."
She was looking for help from me. One of the severely traumatised children in that family had not uttered a word at school. He was simply too afraid to say anything. He didn't need a communication board. He needed a loving, stable environment.
What angers me is that all this is happening in a country where we should have the resources and more to deal with these situations. We should be loving and caring for children. We shouldn't be prevented from giving them the help because of a politically correct notion about "family". Yes, family is important - but not so important that children are harmed because the family does not function. 
Children have the right to be cared for.