Parental Substance Abuse Child Neglect: The Kincare Crisis

The numbers tell a story that policymakers refuse to hear. Across the globe, millions of children grow up in households that parental alcohol and drug use ravages. In Australia, 1 million children live with at least one adult battling addiction. Furthermore, the European Union counts 9 million children with parents who have alcohol problems. Similarly, the United Kingdom harbours 2.6 million children of school age living with parental alcohol problems, whilst in the United States, more than 10% of children live with a parent struggling with alcohol use.

These are not merely statistics. Instead, these are children whose fundamental rights to safety, stability, and a childhood free from fear face systematic violation whilst society champions the “right” of adults to use substances without consequence.

The Carefully Curated Cover-Up

The Victorian Auditor-General’s recent report on kinship care reveals not through what it examines, but rather through what it deliberately excludes. Specifically, the audit was “at pains to ensure” that only a “harm management” process review took place. Consequently, the audit precluded the sources and origins of harm that necessitate Out of Home Care (OOHC).

This represents carefully curated obfuscation, essentially a systemic avoidance of identifying and addressing the source of initial abuses and neglects that place children in harm’s way. Moreover, the report discusses finding “stable homes” for children, yet the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) has not determined what a stable placement is, has not collected baseline data, and has not assessed its progress against intended outcomes.

Here is what we know about stability: substance use does not make for a stable home in which to raise healthy and psychologically sound children. Nevertheless, this truth, however inconvenient to current policy trends promoting “harm reduction” and decriminalisation, remains inescapable.

Parental Substance Abuse Child Neglect: The Evidence Linking Substance Use and Child Harm

The Addiction Conference Revelation

At the 2022 Australia and New Zealand Addiction Conference, Odyssey House presented findings that should have reverberated through every child protection agency: “Every Drug Rehabilitation programme must see drug use as Family Violence. These go together.”

The Causal Versus Correlate Smokescreen

Pro-drug and alcohol-defending advocates often wield the “causal versus correlate” debate to diminish substance use culpability. Essentially, they inform us that at worst, substances merely correlate with child abuse. However, we have enough data on record to know that alcohol and other drugs involve themselves more often than not in the frequency, intensity, and ferocity of abuses that adults inflict on children.

The Statistical Reality

The evidence is overwhelming. In the United States, mothers convicted of child abuse are 3 times more likely to be alcoholics, whilst fathers are 10 times more likely to be alcoholics. Additionally, more than 50% of all confirmed abuse reports and 75% of child deaths involve the use of alcohol or other drugs by a parent. Meanwhile, in Europe, 16% of all cases of child abuse and neglect are alcohol-related. Furthermore, children are 52% more likely to have anxiety or depression when both parents regularly consume alcohol.

The Alcohol Availability Connection

A groundbreaking study from Ohio State University demolished any remaining pretence that substance availability and child harm are unrelated. Specifically, research in Sacramento, California found that having one more off-premises alcohol outlet in a census tract related to 13.5% more substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect and 10.5% more entries into foster care. Moreover, a 1% higher per capita volume of alcohol consumed in a neighbourhood related to 3.2% more children entering foster care due to alcohol-related concerns.

Professor Bridget Freisthler, the study’s lead author, stated clearly: “We have to pay more attention to how the supply and availability of alcohol has an impact on child maltreatment if we want to make a real difference.”

The Push for More Permission

Yet as evidence mounts, pro-drug activists push for decriminalisation and “permission models” that would extend the same protections currently enjoyed by alcohol to cannabis, cocaine, mushrooms, and crystal methamphetamine. Indeed, the kincare industry in South East Queensland is reportedly “booming” because ice impacts parents’ ability to care for their children. Consequently, the insanity of promoting permission models for substance use whilst children suffer cannot be overstated.

The Kinship Care Explosion: Grandmothers Bearing the Burden of Parental Substance Abuse Child Neglect

When parental substance abuse child neglect reaches critical levels, authorities remove children from their homes and increasingly place them with relatives in kinship care. In Victoria, this has become the fastest-growing placement type, and consequently, the statistics reveal a system in crisis.

The Explosive Growth

Over 70% of all children in OOHC now live with a kinship carer. Furthermore, between 2017 and 2021, the number of children in kinship care grew by 33.2%, from 5,577 to 7,429, whilst OOHC overall grew by 25.2%. Additionally, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 20.1 times more likely to be in kinship care than non-Aboriginal children.

Who Bears the Burden?

Who are these kinship carers? The data paints a sobering picture: 94% are female, predominantly grandmothers and great-grandmothers, with an average age of 54 years. Moreover, fifty-nine per cent are grandparents or great-grandparents. Significantly, forty per cent earn under $40,000 annually, and 31% have not completed VCE or equivalent education. Essentially, these are women, often approaching or in retirement, who take on traumatised children whilst lacking adequate resources or support.

The Reunification Failure

Between 2016 and 2021, the percentage of kinship placements that ended in reunification with parents declined from 37.8% to 34.7%. Each year, thousands of placements end, yet only about one-third result in children returning home. Therefore, the implication is stark: parental substance abuse child neglect is not temporary. Rather, it is entrenched, chronic, and growing.

The Invisible Epidemic: When Society Fails Children

The Unwitting Abuse

HSE addiction specialist Marion Rackard, who experienced parental alcohol abuse as a child, issued a stark warning: parents who regularly drink three or more drinks daily could be “unwittingly” abusing their children.

Children, even infants, can sense when a parent or caregiver is not attuned to their needs due to substance use. Indeed, this lack of attunement is a form of abuse that frightens children and damages their development. Specifically, Rackard identified children’s greatest needs beyond food and shelter: to feel safe, welcome, and special to their parents. Additionally, they need to belong to a family and know they are worthy of kindness and attention.

The Last Societal Skeleton

Alcohol and drug use systematically undermine every one of these fundamental requirements. As Rackard stated, alcohol abuse in the family is “one of the last societal skeletons,” comparable to sexual abuse and institutional abuse. Furthermore, she declared: “This is abuse within the family, unwittingly and unknowingly it’s abuse, it’s neglect.”

The National Study Findings

The Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS) generated the first nationally representative data on child maltreatment prevalence in Australia. Consequently, the findings confirm that child maltreatment is widespread, and Australians who experience it are substantially more likely to have severe mental health problems, severe health risk behaviours, and higher health service utilisation.

The Lifelong Toll: Mental Health Devastation and Cognitive Damage

The Mental Health Crisis

The wounds that childhood maltreatment inflicts, so often facilitated by parental substance use, do not heal with time. Indeed, research from the University of Sydney, published in JAMA Psychiatry, found that 40% of common mental health conditions can be directly attributed to childhood maltreatment. Specifically, this includes 21% of depressive disorder cases, 24% of anxiety disorder cases, 32% of drug use disorder cases, 39% of self-harm cases, 41% of suicide attempts, and 27% of alcohol use disorder cases.

Eradicating childhood maltreatment could prevent over 1.8 million cases of mental illness in Australia alone. Nevertheless, we continue to promote “harm reduction” policies that prioritise adult substance use over children’s fundamental rights to safety.

The Cognitive Devastation

Research published in The Lancet Psychiatry revealed that adults with objective records of childhood maltreatment showed pervasive cognitive deficits affecting memory, executive function, and processing speed. Moreover, these deficits impair educational attainment, employment prospects, and quality of life across entire lifespans. Ultimately, this is brain damage. This is permanent harm that adults inflict on children whilst society debates adults’ right to consume substances without interference.

The Price Tag: $40 Billion and Counting

A forensic analysis by La Trobe University researchers calculated that Australians impacted by others’ drinking bear a $20 billion annual burden. Specifically, this includes $1.6 billion for the child protection system due to an adult carer’s drinking, $560 million for alcohol-related domestic violence, and nearly $3 billion in lost productivity due to caring for drinkers.

When combined with costs directly attributable to drinkers themselves, the total annual bill reaches approximately $40 billion. Consequently, this represents money that could fund education, healthcare, and genuine support services for vulnerable families. Instead, society spends it managing the chaos that substance use creates.

Note carefully: the legal drug causes this carnage, a protected and commercialised substance completely engrained in our culture. Furthermore, pro-drug activists now want to extend the same carnage-inducing pass to currently illicit substances.

Children’s Rights or Adult “Rights”? The Choice Is Clear

All children have the right to grow up happy, healthy, and safe in a stable, caring environment. This is not negotiable. Rather, it is foundational to civilised society. The National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children represents unprecedented collaboration to protect children, placing their interests firmly at the centre. However, substance use policies that prioritise adult consumption over child protection systematically undermine this framework.

Policy discussions around substance use rarely centre on the most vulnerable victims, children who have no voice, no choice, and no escape. Indeed, their rights face systematic subordination to adult “freedom” to use substances. Without serious cultural interventions, including the prevention rather than promotion of substance use via decriminalisation and other permission models, these heinous harms will only increase.

Alcohol and other drug policies and community health policies cannot be siloed from each other. Therefore, a far more serious campaign of prevention and demand reduction is vital in this era of growing violence against children.

The kincare crisis is not merely a child protection issue. Instead, it is fundamentally a parental substance abuse child neglect crisis that policies masquerading as progressive “harm reduction” drive whilst children pay the ultimate price. Until we are willing to address the root cause and challenge the sacred cow of adult “rights” to use substances, vulnerable children will continue to suffer.

Our children deserve better. They deserve childhoods filled with wonder, happiness, and innocence, not trauma, neglect, and lifelong scars. The evidence is overwhelming. The cost is staggering. The harm is permanent. Consequently, it is time to stop the cover-ups, name the problem clearly, and prioritise prevention over permission. Our children’s futures depend on it.