Child Safety Service Tasmania: Changes to case management an abject failure, Leanne McLean report finds

Changes to the case management system for children and young people in care reflected a chaotic system that was not properly arranged or resourced to uphold their rights, a report has found.

Leanne McLean Tasmania's Commissioner for Children and Young People. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Changes to the case management system for children and young people in care created a chaotic environment that was not properly arranged or resourced to uphold their rights, a report has found.

Tasmania’s Commissioner for Children and Young People Leanne McLean has released the results of her investigation into a government decision to shift the management of children in case from dedicated case officers to teams.

The change was introduced by the then Department of Communities to combat chronic low staffing.

Ms McLean’s report found that “under team-based case management, Child Safety Officers found it challenging to meet the needs of children and young people allocated to the teams”.

“Child Safety Officers assigned to work on the teams were required to respond to requests about children and young people that they did not know,’ it said.

“This created chaotic environments in which there was little time for proactive work.

“Instead, as one Child Safety Officer put it, their work was ‘putting out spot fires’.”

She said that children in care were not consulted or listened to about the proposed change before it was made, a breach of the the Charter of Rights for Tasmanian Children and Young People in Care.

“The Tasmanian child protection system is chronically under-resourced, and I acknowledge

that the change to case management was made while the Child Safety Service was experiencing significant pressures on service delivery,” Ms McLean said.

The state government erred when it made changes to Child Safety Service’s case management system, assigning teams cases, rather than individual officers, a new report has found. Picture: File

“Even so, failing to recognise and uphold the rights of children and young people in care, particularly their right to participate in decisions that affect them, is not acceptable.

“It is clear to me that our system is not appropriately arranged, or resourced, to fully

uphold the rights of children and young people in care.”

Ms McLean recommended that the Department for Education Children and Young People (DECYP) urgently develop and implement an evidence-based approach to case management that upholds the rights of children and young people in care.

Shadow Minister for Children and Youth Sarah Lovell said the report was “a stark reminder that there is an enormous amount of work to do to ensure Tasmanian children are safe, and that this must be a priority for the government”.

“Tasmanian Labor has been raising concerns about the government’s handling of Child Safety for some time, especially regarding the case management of children and young people in care,” she said.

“The government has had ten years to ensure child safety officers are resourced adequately, and children are kept safe.”

After the abolition of the Department of Communities, the responsibility for children in care was transferred to DECYP.

Minister Roger Jaensch said the report’s contents had been noted and would be acted on.

‘We know that the commissioner has been very clear and very strong on in particular about opportunities for young people and children in out of home care to have a say in decisions that affect their lives,” he said.

“We understand that we’re committed to that principle. It’s also reiterated in the commission of inquiry report.

“So it’ll form a key principle in the reforms that we’re taking forward.”