THE Government should consider encouraging families to have fewer children so less youngsters end up in foster care, according to a prominent Gold Coast paediatrician.

Bond University Dean of Medicine Professor Peter Jones said urgent action was needed to reduce the number of children, predominantly from disadvantaged backgrounds, being taken into “out-of-home care” including foster, kinship and residential care.

In an article published in today’s Medical Journal of Australia, the highly regarded Gold Coast academic said the commonly held Australian assumption that out-of-home care was the “safest option” for vulnerable children was wrong.

media_camera Bond University Dean of Medicine Professor Peter Jones says “urgent action” needs to be taken to reduce the number of children being taken into out-of-home care. Picture: iStock

“We need to ask politically charged questions, such as should we be developing policies that encourage disadvantaged families to have fewer children?” he wrote.

Prof Jones said the rate at which children were being placed into care was alarming and that increasing evidence showed this was often not the best outcome for children.

He said during the past 18 years, rates of Indigenous children placed in care had more than tripled and for non-Indigenous children, they had more than doubled. In June 2015, 43,399 children were in out-of-home care, each costing about $70,000 a year.

media_camera Rates for Indigenous children placed in care have more than tripled. Picture: iStock

“Everybody’s assumed that when they think of a child that’s exposed to an episode of abuse or neglect, the default position and the position of safety and less harm is to take that child away from its family and place them in home care,” the professor said.

“If foster care was a drug and had to be approved as treatment for child abuse and neglect, I think there’s a very high chance it would not be funded by the government because it’s highly expensive, doesn’t show any benefit and winds up doing real harm.”

Griffith University child protection expert Clare Tilbury backed the idea of supporting disadvantaged families but said the concept of encouraging poor people to have fewer children was “misguided”.

“There is no logic or academic evidence to suggest this would work,” she said.