New Child Protection Department boss Jackie Bray’s surprising opinion on drug-using parents

We sat down with the Child Protection Department’s new boss – and received some matter-of-fact responses to our questions.

Not all children living with drug-addicted parents should be “automatically” removed from those homes, the state’s new child protection boss says.

Department for Child Protection (DCP) chief executive Jackie Bray has also conceded she cannot guarantee no child will die under her watch.

Ms Bray took the helm of the department two weeks ago, after the resignation of former boss Cathy Taylor, who faced scrutiny over a series of high-profile child deaths.

Drug use by parents has consistently been among the top reasons at-risk children are reported to the department, which now fields up to 100,000 reports each year.

Asked to outline her expectations about when the department should intervene, Ms Bray – a former deputy chief executive of South Australia’s prison system and a drug interventions program manager in the UK – said she did not believe illicit drug use should “automatically” spark a removal.

“In my career I’ve worked with a lot of people that have had substance issues and … it’s about the risk (to a child) and the insight (into a parent’s drug use),” she said.

“I don’t necessarily hold a firm view on nobody that … (is) taking substances should have their children.”

In a situation where a parent with an addiction was undergoing treatment, had “supports around them” and “a level of insight” into the consequences of their drug taking, then the department could “very closely monitor to see if that safety issue for that child is addressed or not”, Ms Bray said.

“Removal is a last resort because we also know the trauma that that (separation) would be for a child.”

Jackie Bray is the new CEO of the Department of Child Protection. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Kelly Barnes

In August last year Child Protection Minister Katrine Hildyard told The Advertiser children should not be left with parents who are using methamphetamine after revelations that a two-year-old boy had been hospitalised with severe burns and bruising and doctors had found meth in his urine.

“I think most people would agree that, of course, we need to be not leaving children in that sort of unsafe environment,” Ms Hildyard said at the time.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Advertiser on Wednesday, Ms Bray said she could not “hand on heart say” that there would not be another death of a child known to her department.

“Some of them are not preventable. We’re not living in homes with children (24/7),” she said.

“What would potentially concern me is if part of our response to that (child) was inadequate.

“We need to ensure there are the right levels of support there … to try to ensure that, where possible, a preventable death doesn’t occur. They are unacceptable.”

Ms Bray described her new role as “the most important job that there is across government” and has pledged not to “sit here and wait” for at-risk children to be taken into care.

“I’m not sat there waiting for them to enter the child protection system,” she said.

“I’m going to go and be a leader across (government) agencies and communities to ensure that we can see children that are potentially at harm, and look at a level of intervention that is effective and seen as appropriate by the public.”

Ms Bray has been appointed for a five-year term on an annual salary of about $385,000.