Unsafe as houses: Child safety risk factors multiplying

UPDATE: THE State Opposition claims that Mason Lee may still be alive today had the Minister for Child Safety Shannon Fentiman acted more quickly on advice from her department.

THE State Opposition claims that Mason Lee may still be alive today had the Minister for Child Safety Shannon Fentiman acted quicker on advice from her department.

Responding to new figures revealed today in The Courier-Mail, LNP spokeswoman for Child Safety, Ros Bates said that Ms Fentiman was alerted to the crisis developing in the Caboolture region in October and failed to act.

“The Minister knew in October last year that frontline child safety officers were not being given the resources to deal with the concerns that they have to,” she said.

“The Minister knew in October last year that Caboolture child services centre had over 120 cases in backlog.

21-month-old Mason Lee was found dead on June 11 at a Caboolture home having received visible injuries “from head to toe.”

“Mason Lee came from Caboolture, if the Minister had acted in October last year, then maybe young Mason Lee may still be alive today,” Ms Bates said.

The numbers released today for the March quarter show the department continues to struggle with some response times to vulnerable children.

Ms Fentiman denied that the system was in “crisis” instead saying it continued to be “under pressure.”

Leader of the Opposition, Tim Nicholls said that the Government “has to be forced, kicking and screaming to release data.”

“This Government only acts when it is forced to,” he said.

“The Government is absolutely failing to take steps and failing to take action to protect our most vulnerable, the children of Queensland and it’s just not good enough.”

OVERNIGHT:

TWO-THIRDS of Queensland households where an investigation was warranted into a child’s safety involved a parent with a drug or alcohol problem.

Nearly half of all substantiated cases involved a parent who themselves had suffered abuse as a child.

New government figures, obtained by The Courier-Mail, show a substantial rise in the range of social problems associated with households where there was a need for child safety intervention.

These include the prevalence of drug addiction, domestic and family violence, mental illness and crime.

The figures reveal that in 82 per cent of households where there was a “substantiated” need to protect a child in 2014-15, there were two or more risk factors.

This was up from 55 per cent in 2006-07.

“The complexity of challenges that families are facing is huge,” Child Safety Minister Shannon Fentiman said.

“Part of that is there’s ... a lot more awareness around (issues such as) domestic and family violence ... but it also means our frontline staff have a much bigger challenge.”

It comes as child safety March quarter figures, to be released today, show the department continues to struggle with some response times.

While 90 per cent of investigations into high-priority cases were started within the ideal 24-hour period, only 29 per cent of “five-day notifications” cases and 21.8 per cent of “10-day notifications” cases were launched within those time frames in the year ending March 31.

“We’re not happy with where they are but they have been relatively stable for the last four years,” Ms Fentiman said. “The response time frames were the same under the previous government as they are now.”

In Queensland, every notification is investigated and is not counted as having started until the child is physically seen. The figures show there were 21,924 notifications during the 12 months to March 31, with 5983 investigations substantiated, a decrease of almost 9 per cent.

Minister for Child Safety Shannon Fentiman. Picture: Claudia Baxter

Ms Fentiman said “specialist investigation teams” would start rolling out this year and would help improve response times.

She also revealed there would be an independent analysis of child safety demand and “resource allocation” beginning next month.

“Given learnings from the reforms and case work reviews, together with recent data, the case load review will provide evidence about what roles and how many are needed, where and when.”

Ms Fentiman said the department had been striving to improve response times for investigations since October, with regional offices told to shift resources to where they were most needed.

Four extra staff members were placed in Caboolture earlier this year, including a manager to offer senior supervision.

The quarter figures also show a 2.2 per cent increase in the number of children subject to a child protection order and a 5.3 per cent rise in children admitted to out-of-home care.

But the number of “intakes” to child safety services dropped by 15.8 per cent in the past 12 months to March 31, which PeakCare’s Lindsay Wegener labelled a “promising indication”.

“That’s fairly significant … the system appears to be being reshaped,” he said.

He said while it made sense that officers were spending more time on each investigation, they also needed to “promptly attend to investigations when they are warranted”.

“If it’s something they need to attend to urgently, they should do it urgently.”

Ms Fentiman denied accusations from the Opposition that the system was “in crisis” in the wake of toddler Mason Jet Lee’s death, saying it continued to be “under pressure”.

Ms Fentiman denied accusations from the Opposition that the system was “in crisis” in the wake of toddler Mason Jet Lee’s death, saying it continued to be “under pressure”.

She said it was “under transition” as the Carmody Inquiry recommendations were implemented.

“There’s no overnight crisis,” she said.

The 21-month-old boy died on June 11 at a Caboolture house having received visible injuries “from head to toe”.

Ms Fentiman said she was unable to comment on the case due to legislation, but assured “we’re accountable”.

On Monday this week the Queensland Family and Child Commission Principal Commissioner Cheryl Vardon confirmed she had been asked by the Premier to conduct a review into the toddler’s case.

This is in addition to the internal departmental reviews ordered by Ms Fentiman and Health Minister Cameron Dick.

Ms Fentiman promised the Government had done “everything we can since that tragedy to make sure we absolutely find out what’s happened”.

“We’ll absolutely implement any of the recommendations. We’re absolutely prepared to say we need to learn from any of these tragedies.

“But first we need to know what happened. There’s a homicide investigation, our own reviews – and then implement them to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”