Urgent child protection cases languish as overworked Elizabeth office buckles under pressure
STAFF shortages are so dire at the Child Protection Department’s Elizabeth office that social workers have not been able to respond to the most serious reports of children at risk.
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STAFF shortages are so dire at the Child Protection Department’s Elizabeth office that social workers had to stop responding to the most serious reports of children at risk.
The union representing social workers has warned the department that the office is “in crisis” and workers do “not have the capacity” to respond to Tier 1 cases within the required 24 hours.
Tier 1 cases involve children, often infants, in “immediate danger or at imminent risk of serious harm” and require an “emergency response”.
They are often made by police officers or medical staff and have involved reports of infants with broken bones, sexual assaults against a child or someone else in their home, domestic violence in the child’s household or parents using or dealing drugs.
It is not clear how many cases have not been acted on but Tier 1 cases usually make up less than 10 per cent of reports in a year.
In one week last month, 13 Tier 1 cases were reported to the already swamped Elizabeth office.
Staff have been working until midnight and returning to the office at 9am the next day in a bid to cover the workload.
Last week social workers at Elizabeth stopped taking on new Tier 1 cases and instigated other industrial action, such as not completing administrative tasks, in protest over the high workload.
If workers took on new Tier 1 cases it would mean neglecting or closing open existing cases. In some cases workers have been forced to pull out of supervising access visits for children in state care with their parents to attend to new Tier 1 cases.
Child safety advocates have labelled the situation “completely unacceptable”.
The department has deployed extra social workers and support staff in response — but concerns remain it is not a long-term solution.
Public Service Association general secretary Nev Kitchin said up to 20 extra staff were needed at the office in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, where unemployment was higher than elsewhere in the city.
“Elizabeth is an area of social disadvantage so, compared to other child protection offices, it is the busiest,” Mr Kitchin said.
“The staff have been so accustomed to working under pressure for so long.”
The Advertiser understands workers at Elizabeth are managing 20-plus cases each, compared to less than 10 cases per worker in other offices.
In letters to Child Protection Department chief executive Cathy Taylor last week, Mr Kitchin asked for all Tier 1 cases lodged with the Elizabeth office over the next month to be diverted to other offices with more resources and for the department to ask staff elsewhere in the system if they would be willing to transfer to Elizabeth for six months.
In a letter responding to the union, the department said it had “already started” to send extra resources to the Elizabeth office “to provide critical support on an immediate basis”.
A high priority case was transferred to another office and “immediate assistance is being allocated” to clear a backlog of cases. A new supervisor has been installed and two staff from other offices transferred to Elizabeth.
Four positions are expected to be filled within a month and the department is recruiting a high risk infant worker.
Ms Taylor told The Advertiser that “attraction, identification and recruitment of staff takes time”.
“The department is working through this process, including a targeted recruitment campaign aimed at the north of the state already underway,” she said.
Child Protection Minister Rachel Sanderson said she was “receiving regular updates from the department” but blamed staff shortages on the former Labor Government.
Ms Sanderson said the Liberal Government was now accepting applicants to fill vacancies who had qualifications in health and human services, in addition to social workers.
Belinda Valentine, whose granddaughter Chloe died in 2012 after repeated reports were made to authorities about her welfare, said it was “completely unacceptable” that there were not enough staff to respond to the most serious calls for help.
“It’s not the fault of the children that they live in the Elizabeth area — they deserve better,” Ms Valentine said.
“After every inquiry (into the child protection system) we have been assured that more staff will be trained and hired, only to be given, when another problem arises, the same excuse of not enough staff.
“Who is looking at where the staff are needed the most and filtering the staff into those areas? If they can’t even get to the most serious cases then what hope is there for the rest?”
