Child safety Qld: Investigation to look into failures of state’s $1.1bn program

The most significant investigation into Queensland’s “broken” child safety system in generations has been called to look at how suicidal and abused children are being exploited by the industry.

Child Safety Minister Amanda Camm will today announce Federal Court Judge Paul Anastassiou will lead the 17-month inquiry into shocking failures in the $1.12bn care industry. Picture: Steve Pohlner

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Suicidal and abused children are being exploited by Queensland’s failing billion-dollar child safety industry – prompting the government to call a rare commission of inquiry.

The inquiry has been touted as the most significant investigation into the state’s “broken” child safety system in generations.

The Sunday Mail can reveal Child Safety Minister Amanda Camm will today announce Federal Court Judge Paul Anastassiou will lead the 17-month inquiry into shocking failures in the $1.12bn care industry where children are suffering “generational trauma”.

A newly released 2024 Children in Care Report revealed, of the more than 3000 children in out-of-home care across Queensland, half had previously been physically abused and four in five had been emotionally abused.

The state government, Ms Camm said, had placed children into a system created “almost to re-traumatise” them and then turned a blind eye.

An increase in children entering the system since 2015 and significant decline in foster carers resulted in a major increase to the number of young people in residential care.

At December 31, 2212 children were languishing in residential care – a 240 per cent increase on the 650 kids in 2015.

Almost half of children in care experienced physical abuse before entering the system.

Ms Camm, for the first time, declared it was “absolutely” her commitment to reduce that number. The explosion of numbers in residential care has led to the establishment of for-profit private companies to service them.

These companies have been handed tens of millions of dollars to care for children, with little regulation or oversight.

Ms Camm told The Sunday Mail the child safety system had been turned into a billion-dollar industry “created for private companies to come in and profit on the back of vulnerable children”.

Almost half of children in care experienced physical abuse before entering the system, 11 per cent had been sexually abused, and almost all had been neglected.

Of the children in care, one-third have an undiagnosed mental illness.

Half of young people in care with a youth justice order have self-harmed and 40 per cent had attempted suicide.

Federal Court Judge Paul Anastassiou will lead the 17-month inquiry.

Almost half of all children in care transitioning to adulthood in the next 12 months have a disability, 38 per cent have limited intellectual functioning, and 54 per cent will need public housing.

The bleak statistics are despite funding for non-family-based care exploding from $200.7m in 2014-15 to $1.12bn in 2024-25.

The huge increase in expenditure has not resulted in improved oversight of the companies contracted to provide care.

Ms Camm sensationally declared she had “no confidence” the majority of providers were doing the right thing.

“The size of the contracts that I have been briefed upon that I now see is why I recommended to the government the need for a commission,” she said. “My concern is the quantum of funding that they are receiving and the heavy reliance on that. Those children’s experience is not one that is positive and that is as a result now of a system created almost to re-traumatise them and in fact put them at risk as well.”

The huge increase in expenditure has not resulted in improved oversight of the companies contracted to provide care.

A forensic audit is under way into one unnamed service provider that paid $5.2m in dividends to three shareholders after receiving “tens of millions of dollars” from the state government.

The company hiked its “management fees” by 1000 per cent.

Ms Camm said the government was almost powerless to act against providers exploiting the system.

“I can’t just go and move 90 children out of one placement with one company,” she said.

“I don’t have the foster carers there to take those children.”

The declining number of foster carers has correlated with an increase in the number of children in residential care. Ms Camm said foster care offered a better environment than a “youth worker on a rostered shift looking after a five-year old” in residential care.

“There’s nothing in this world as a mother that correlates to me as to why that would be a better designed level of care and at a cost of $35,000 per placement with foster carers who want to do this work … they’re amazing, doing amazing things,” she said.

“To have a bias towards placements that are costing over $300,000 per annum and not delivering the outcomes for children, and in fact putting them in potentially more vulnerable situations.

“I want to know when that started, who made those decisions … and why did no one intervene year-on-year as that was growing?

“They just continued to fund what is now more than a billion-dollar industry. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Government bureaucrats, stakeholders, providers and former Labor ministers are expected to be hauled before the commission of inquiry.

Shadow Treasurer Shannon Fentiman, a former child safety minister, said the opposition would work “cooperatively and collaboratively” with the inquiry.

She dismissed Ms Camm’s claims the former government abandoned children.

“We worked very closely with Foster Care Queensland committing millions of dollars in recruitment campaigns - in 2023-24 we saw an increase in the amount of foster carers,” she said.

“We continue to see overwhelming rates of children coming into the care of the department, you’re always going to be facing an uphill battle and I don’t know why the government hasn’t taken the opportunity to look at the root causes of why so many children are coming into the care of the state.

“Why are there so many parents who are unable to care safely for their kids?”

Ms Fentiman called on Ms Camm and Premier David Crisafulli not to use the inquiry “as a political point-scoring opportunity”.

“If we want to actually build a sustainable system that keeps kids safe, we have to be looking at the root causes of why kids are being collected in their homes and why parents are unable to care for them and that’s currently not in the terms of reference,” she said.

Originally published as Child safety Qld: Investigation to look into failures of state’s $1.1bn program