NSW warned of funding crisis for kids in care

A senior bureaucrat in the ­Department of Communities and Justice warned the NSW government of a looming crisis in out-of-home care funding.

NSW Families Minister Gareth Ward. Picture: AAP

A senior bureaucrat in the ­Department of Communities and Justice warned the NSW government of a looming crisis in out-of-home care funding, pointing to a $140m budget deficit to try to prevent further funding being ­siphoned off to pay for other ­priorities.

Libby Stratford, DCJ’s chief fin­ancial officer, identified the large budget shortfall in an emailed response to a request from Families Minister Gareth Ward to find several million dollars in savings.

In emailed correspondence obtained by The Australian, the minister’s office suggested the savings could be sourced by slowing existing departmental programs or pulling funds from underutilised services.

The savings were requested at a time when children at risk of significant harm were being ­reported to authorities at record rates and attended to by caseworkers at a standard of roughly one in four cases.

The NSW government has come in for repeated criticism over its failure to improve the long-term outcomes of vulnerable children. A NSW Auditor-General’s report recently labelled an ambitious set of reforms to the sector as “ineffective”. A senior NSW Coalition MP, Matthew Mason-Cox, also spoke of his “disgust” in parliament last week, branding his government’s management of the problem an ­“abject failure”.

Out-of-home care is provided to children and young people unable to live at home with their families. It includes foster care ­arrangements, crisis accommodation and other forms of short and long-term assistance.

Mr Ward’s office said the extra funds were required to cover short-term contract payments for disability services until a longer-term solution could be ­established through the government’s yearly budget process.

In one email sent from Mr Ward’s office to Michael Coutts-Trotter, secretary of DCJ, a figure of $6.5m was mentioned as a starting point for the amount of savings to be located throughout the department. “Could we please ask for options (slowing other programs in Minister Ward’s portfolio, underutilised programs elsewhere in the minister’s patch, etc) to fund an extension of six months for disability advocacy funding,” the email, dated November 14, 2019, said.

This request was forwarded by the acting director of Mr Coutts-Trotter’s office, Blair Collier, to Ms Stratford. It included a note flagging the matter as a late-­notice addition for an upcoming meeting with the minister, and a concession that he had already attempted to hose down the matter because of the existing strain on resources.

“I have flagged the impossibility of this request, given the current savings task,” wrote Mr Collier. “He (the minister’s chief of staff) has said we should try.”

In reply, Ms Stratford highlighted the existing crisis in out-of-home care funding: “I’ll provide commentary that links $140m in OOHC (out-of-home care) forecast deficit to his portfolio as a gentle deterrent.”

A DCJ spokesperson declined to answer whether the forecast deficit had been addressed since December, but said $2bn had been invested by the government to support vulnerable young people and families.

Labor’s families spokeswoman Penny Sharpe said Mr Ward had failed to explain the “looming funding crisis” in out-of-home care.

“Even the government’s own MPs have castigated the failings in the child protection system,” she said.