Queensland child safety system is failing the state’s kids

QUEENSLAND’S overstretched child safety system has been subject of eight inquiries. And as children continue to die, the staggering cost of checking on them has been revealed.

• Short life and death of baby Paul
• Minister’s admission on child safety
• Department ‘far better than it was’
• Boost for foster care funding

IT COSTS $14,000 every time a child safety officer knocks on the door of a dysfunctional family, with Queenslanders now paying $1 billion to try to fix an overstretched and under-resourced system that has faced eight inquiries in 20 years.

A breakdown of child protection expenses reveals each notification and investigation now costs Queensland $14,085.

The figure is well beyond the $9159 bill in Western ­Australia and the $3043 outlay in NSW.

The death of Caboolture toddler Mason Lee was a high-profile child protection failure.

Queensland will spend a staggering $930 million on child protection this year alone as the problems facing families – including homes rife with domestic violence, drug abuse and mental health issues – become increasingly complex.

Years of independent inquiries have laid the blame on “desperately under-resourced” staff, only for the next ­inquiry to discuss the same problem.

Child Safety Minister Shannon Fentiman said the task of keeping kids safe has been problematic “forever” and the strain on staff had forced the department to order a full audit of child safety offices.

“I think what happens is, over the years the work gets more complex and you have more and more children having to come into care,” she said.

“There is always more work to do.”

The Department of Child Safety came under fire in ­recent months after it was ­revealed that Caboolture ­toddler Mason Lee was sent home with his mother after doctors warned of suspected child abuse.

Months later, he died from a ruptured small intestine.

His tiny body was covered in injuries, and broken bones had been left to heal untreated.

But The Sunday Mail can ­reveal Mason is only one in a long line of children who died tragic deaths while ­overworked department staff ­struggled to keep up with demand.

Paul Homer died in similar circumstances to Mason Lee.

Paul’s mother Virginia Homer

Twenty-three years before the 21-month-old Mason was killed, another toddler died a similarly violent death.

Paul Robert Homer was the same age as Mason when he was bashed and bitten by his father while his mother was at work.

A Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect Team had order­ed an investigation but nothing was done and Paul died days later from bleeding to his brain.

Politicians declared it should never happen again and promised a full review of guidelines and procedures.

A team leader from the ­department told an investi­gator the same mistakes that led to Paul’s death “will be ­repeated … because nothing has changed”.

“In fact,” the team leader said, “it’s probably deteriorated in the fact that we have less staff and the incoming is high. I have a real genuine fear that this will happen again.”

Frontline workers have told The Sunday Mail that staffing has long been the biggest issue they face.

In a recent visit to a ­Brisbane child safety office with Ms Fentiman, staff said their most urgent requirements were “more staff and more money”.

“It doesn’t matter how many resources go to child protection – it’s never going to be enough,” one worker said.

“How long is a piece of string?”

Various members of Tiahleigh Palmer’s foster family are facing murder, incest and perjury charges over her death.

A Caboolture woman who worked in child safety for more than 20 years said workers were hamstrung by paperwork and enormous caseloads.

“Our staff had too many kids that we were responsible for,” she said.

“I had a worker who postponed their wedding because of case work that was coming up. Who does that?”

The woman, who asked not to be named, said she knew of case workers who had as many as 40 families on their books

“We can’t do our job,” she said. “And the job that we do, when we get it right, no one’s there to see us get it right.

“But when we get it wrong, everyone’s there, and you’re to blame. It’s not the perpetrator that did the abuse, it’s the child safety officer for not seeing it first, or not acting in the right way. We’ll get the blame hands down every time; you can’t ­defend yourself. It’s awful.”

Another former child safety employee said cuts to support staff in 2012 left already overstressed case workers with even more work to do.

The Newman government stripped the department of 225 positions. Funding for some new positions has been announ­ced following the change of government.

“There is a recommended number of (families) per case worker, but I don’t think they’ve ever reached that target,” the worker said.

“We couldn’t keep staff as new graduates couldn’t cope. We had case workers going to lunch and not coming back.”

Pallbearers at the funeral of murdered schoolgirl Tiahleigh Palmer.

The 2013 Carmody report – the most recent major inquiry into child protection – was praised by workers, but many of its recommendations are yet to be acted on because staff are already too busy.

In July, the Queensland Ombudsman found “serious shortcomings” in the recording of child safety complaints, with a “significant number” “seemingly lost”.

The report said staff “expressed the view that … they were too busy. As a consequence, (they) did not record everything regarding complaint work.”

Ms Fentiman said the ­Carmody report had been ­designed to roll out over a 10-year period but work was under way to address staffing issues.

She said the average caseload for a child safety officer was 19.

“The target in the last commission of inquiry is 15, and we are supposed to try and get there in a couple of years,” she said.

But a bigger problem was the growing complexity of the families that case workers deal with.

“So 10 years ago, they may have … visited a family and there may have been domestic violence present,” she said.

“Now they visit a family and there will be domestic violence present, there will be drug and alcohol abuse, there will be mental health issues.”

Workers told The Sunday Mail that a manageable number of families would be 10.

“We’ve got to turn things around,” Ms Fentiman said.

Inquiry after inquiry

1998-99: Forde Inquiry.
Forty-two recommendations made into child protection practices after abuse was found.

1999: Ombudsman’s report into brutal bashing death of three-year-old Brooke Brennan. Department knew Brooke was at risk but report found staff were “operating under considerable workload pressures due to a lack of resources”.

2003: Crime and Misconduct Commission’s Operation Zellow into the abuse of children in foster care found “wide-ranging systemic reform” was needed, with staff reporting heavy caseloads and a lack of resources.

2003: Independent audit held into the department’s response to complaints of abuse by foster carers. Data gathered was referred to CMC, which commenced Operation Ghost. That noted department “wrote off” child protection notifications in situations where busy staff had no time for full assessment.

2004: Ombudsman’s report into the death of 10-week-old “Baby Kate”. Ombudsman David Bevan said: “Every year my office receives thousands of complaints. The most serious are the relatively few in which it is alleged that a public agency’s actions or failure to act have contributed directly or indirectly to a person’s death.”

2004: Butler Report released after abuse of children in foster care inquiry. Recommended no more than 15 children per case worker. “The picture arising from all of the evidence is that the workload of frontline child protection officers is … at a very high and demanding level – a factor that may explain the significant number of notifications of suspected harm to children that have not been dealt with adequately.”

2013: Carmody Report again recommends caseloads be cut to 15 children per worker.

2016: Government ordered multiple inquiries into the death of Caboolture toddler Mason Jet Lee after allegations overworked staff failed to protect him from abuse. Months before his death, Mason spent weeks in hospital with injuries consistent with abuse. Reviews ordered into foster care approvals and Blue Cards after 12-year-old Tiahleigh Palmer’s foster father was charged with her murder.