Rebecca White is wrong – again. Her lack of understanding of the seriousness and complexity of child protection and her simplistic answers show once again she has failed to do her homework on this important issue.
The Liberal Government inherited a child protection system that was in crisis; a legacy of the Labor-Green government in which Ms White served.
We have committed to redesigning Tasmania’s child protection system to better protect our most vulnerable children, and that work is underway.
The Government is also actively recruiting to fill vacancies in child protection.
In announcing the redesign, meanwhile, I made very clear that the work of the Redesign Reference Group, led by Professor Maria Harries, would feed into the budgetary process, as is appropriate.
Ms White has called for arbitrary caps on case-loads, without showing any understanding of what this would cost or whether it would actually be an effective use of additional resources.
This is lazy. The fact is, as I explained yesterday, case-loads are not a particularly useful measure of workloads given they do not take into consideration the complexities of individual cases.
By highlighting that there are workers with higher than average case-loads, Ms White would have us believe that workers with lower than average case-loads – even if they only have one case, are not pulling their weight, which is just not true.
More complex, more serious cases clearly demand more time.
We are taking a considered, consultative approach to redesigning the State’s child protection system, and we will not be rushed into taking kneejerk action that is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the work.
Our child protection workers and, most of all, our children deserve better than Ms White’s attempts at political point-scoring.
Jacquie Petrusma, Minister for Human Services
