Staff urgently needed for child protection cases

The number of child abuse and neglect cases in the state waiting to be allocated a case worker has blown out 1100 per cent in a year. What went wrong?

URGENT calls for extra child protection staff have followed revelations the number of Tasmanian children who weren’t allocated a case worker in priority time frames skyrocketed last year.

As of December, 280 children had not been allocated a case worker within the government’s own priority time frames — a more than tenfold increase on figures from almost a year earlier — according to the latest data published by the State Government.

Robbie Moore, assistant state secretary of the Health and Community Services Union, said child protection staff were struggling amid a crisis.

“They’re really concerned they have to go home knowing there are children not being followed up,” he said.

“We need additional child safety officers and we need them now.”

Robbie Moore, assistant state secretary of HACSU. Picture: MATHEW FARRELL

Mr Moore said there was “not one factor” responsible for the increase but called for an audit of child protection services across Tasmania, to identify how many extra staff it would take to alleviate the situation and which areas were most under pressure.

Opposition child safety spokesman Josh Willie said the data showed Tasmania had become “one of the worst performing states in the country” for child safety response times and investigations.

“Investigations into the vast majority of reported cases of children at potential risk are not launched until 29 days or more after they are received,” he said.

“Only 20 per cent of reports were responded to within a week in Tasmania in 2017-18.

“The Government has focused on reshuffling the decks with a new shiny place to take calls but support for children and families has not improved.”

Child protection investigations are categorised into three levels, with priority one cases to be allocated to a caseworker the same day, priority two cases are to be referred within five days and priority three cases are to be referred within 10 days.

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A State Government spokesman said its Children’s Advice and Referral Service, which became operational late last year, “is expected to see earlier intervention and a reduction in overall notifications” and that no cases were left unmanaged.

“Cases yet to be assigned to a designated case worker are actively triaged, with oversight provided by senior staff who will escalate the urgency of allocation as required.

“As per policy, all priority one cases are commenced on the same day.”

Meanwhile, other data published this month showed the supported accommodation wait list for people with disability almost halved in the last quarter of 2018, while only 28 people with disability were waiting for a community access placement in December, down from 89 at the start of last year.

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