Miranda Live: Pru Goward turning FACS ‘big ship’ around

FAMILY and Community Services Minister Pru Goward says the department is a “big ship to turn around” and can’t be expected to change overnight.

The mother (left) and grandmother (right) of BLGN and DG outside the Glebe Coroner's Court in Sydney on Tuesday. Picture: AAP

FAMILY and Community Services Minister Pru Goward says the department is a “big ship to turn around” and can’t be expected to change overnight.

Speaking on The Daily Telegraph’s Miranda Live radio show, Ms Goward was quizzed about how two Sydney babies that died when they were three months old while their mother went on methamphetamine binges were left in such appalling care.

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Ms Goward said she wasn’t able to comment until the Glebe Coroners Court released its findings.

“I really can’t comment on it before the Coroner,” she told Devine.

“I can say of course there are many, many families you will be horrified to learn who are in similar circumstances ... there’s additional complications of domestic violence and mental illness.

Miranda Live’s Miranda Devine sat down with Ms Goward. Picture: Brett Costello

Minister for Family and Community Services Pru Goward. Picture: Hollie Adams / The Australian

“These are very complex families. Every family is struggling in its own way and the job of our extraordinary case workers is to identify the ones where the children are really at risk and work with those families.”

Ms Goward said the department was “getting better” at identifying children who were most at risk. She said the department was now seeing one in three kids at risk of significant harm — when she assumed the role in 2011, the department was only seeing one in five.

“These are very complex families”: Pru Goward. Picture: Justin Lloyd

“Since then we have progressively invested — there’s now a record investment in FACS. We have very different practice arrangements, a very different approach to children at risk,” she said.

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“We’re now seeing one in three — not nearly enough, but we have managed to increase the number of children seen which means these children become more likely to be identified.”

Ms Goward said FACs was a “big ship to turn around and it’s not going to be overnight” but stressed there had been “an amazing amount of culture change, of attitude change”.

“Let’s wait until the end of the Coronial hearings before I make any further comment but to assure you that every day my burning determination has been since I was made the Minister first in 2011 ... is to make the system better,” she said.

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