SA Child Protection Department staff ‘exhausted, disillusioned’ and leaving in droves
Staff churn in the Child Protection Department has hit its highest-ever rate – prompting calls for action before the tide of cases reaches a crisis point.
SA News
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Churn of “exhausted and disillusioned” staff through the Child Protection Department has hit its highest-ever rate, prompting criticism from the union representing its workers that authorities have “not done enough to keep good people”.
It comes as the system was swamped by more than 100,000 reports of suspected child abuse or neglect last financial year.
Morale has also been affected by high-profile deaths of children who were known to the department and the union says workers are “burnt out”.
Public Service Association of SA general secretary Natasha Brown is calling for increased efforts to retain staff and more funding for early intervention programs to stem the tide of cases reaching crisis point.
Across the department the turnover rate of staff hit 16.8 per cent last financial year which, according to a recent report to government by NSW expert Kate Alexander, “is the highest level it has reached”.
That would equate to about 393 of the estimated 2342 full-time equivalent staff employed in 2021-22.
The problem is worst in frontline roles working with the most troubled young people living in state-run homes.
The union says about 170 people working on those homes have left over the past three years.
The department says it has employed an extra 38 staff to work in state-run homes in the past year, but Ms Brown said there was “an acute staffing crisis, with a culture of churning and burning” workers.
In a letter to The Advertiser she said the department “needs to improve its capacity to attract, and work much harder to retain, enough suitably qualified workers”.
“The department has a sorry record of significant turnover … it has just not done enough to keep good people,” she said.
The department says a workforce plan is being developed to ensure sustainability of the workforce.
Child Protection Minister Katrine Hildyard pledged last month to “immediately seek to recruit” 42 social workers and 10 principal Aboriginal consultants.
Ms Alexander’s report stresses that department staff are proud of the work they do as they “knock on the doors of some of the most impoverished homes to bear witness to the bleakest of predicaments and partner with some of the most overlooked people”.
Department data given to Ms Alexander showed about five per cent of roles were vacant.
The department’s 2021-22 annual report says it hired 201 new child and youth workers for state-run homes, launched recruitment campaigns in regional areas and offers an Aboriginal cadetship program.
It offers flexible work arrangements, resilience training and staff supervision and external counselling, and also planned to start regular surveys of staff from late this year.
Latest figures from September show there were 2262.1 full-time equivalent staff employed by the department, 458.3 more than in mid-2017.
Budget papers show the department expects to increase its ranks by 70 workers – to 2412 – by July next year.
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