The Hodgman Liberal Government is committed to fixing the broken child protection system we inherited to better protect our most vulnerable children.
We have already announced a comprehensive redesign of child protection services in Tasmania, which will be unveiled within the next six months.
We have also moved to immediately action all 11 recommendations made by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) following his report into
As I have said many times in the past, some practices in the North-West were outside the procedures in the CYS Practice Manual and contrary to practice undertaken in other regions across the State.
Documents released today as part of a Right to Information (RTI) request confirms the information released in September in my Ministerial Statement.
The RTI provides raw data on the case-loads for staff in each regional Response Team. While this data confirms that CPS in the North-West had, on average, lower case-loads than the North or South teams, the data also shows inconsistent patterns across each region, and across each worker.
This is further evidence that an arbitrary case-load, called for by both unions and the Opposition, is not practical and does not take into consideration the complexity of the case or the experience of the worker.
Child protection is one of the most complex and challenging areas of government service delivery, with all jurisdictions across Australia facing similar challenges. Child protection workers rarely get thanks for the work they do, yet they take on the challenge of working with some of the most vulnerable members of our community.
There are good, passionate, dedicated people working right across child protection services, but they are being let down by historic poor systems.
As the North-West report states, there is a long history in Tasmania of reviews, reports and analysis of the Child Protection Service, most of them pointing towards a requirement for systemic, structural reform.
Unfortunately, Tasmania has previously not been able to achieve the level of reform required to dislodge the entrenched issues identified in the reports.
A Redesign Reference Group, led by Professor Maria Harries, has already commenced the redesign of Tasmania’s child protection system.
Information was also released today through a RTI on the care of Tasmanian Aboriginal children through the Child Protection Service.
The DHHS supports and respects the principles of the Aboriginal Placement Principle, as outlined in the Act, and there is a constructive dialogue between the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre workers and child protection workers when Aboriginal families are the subject of a child protection notification, investigation or placement.
The Department will also accept a family’s claim of Aboriginality if they identify as such regardless of whether the TAC recognises the family’s claim.
Jacquie Petrusma, Minister for Human Services
