The New South Wales government has announced reforms of the child protection system in that state, in response to the findings of the Wood commission. Notable amongst the reforms are a shift of some activities to NGOs (supported by considerable extra government funding), plans for better integration and information-sharing amongst the variety of government departments and NGOs, and a change in the threshold for mandatory reporting of children being abused, or thought at risk of abuse.
The current laws in NSW require the reporting of children suspected at being risk of harm. The new rules, based on the Wood inquiry’s recommendations, would change that threshold. From the government’s report:
The Inquiry recommended that the threshold for both mandatory and voluntary reporting to the Department of Community Services should be where there is a ‘risk of significant harm’, so that only those children who are likely to need the protection powers of the State under the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 are subject to it being exercised. This means that concerns about children will be addressed earlier and the right services put in place to meet their needs.
In a nutshell, the justification for the change (as I understand it) is that the mandatory reporting system, as currently implemented, completely overloads the Department’s resources to deal with them, and in most cases the intervention powers of the department aren’t required or desirable.
There’s some historical background here that’s worth noting. As I understand it, mandatory reporting was introduced over 15 years ago in Victoria, in response to the case of Daniel Valerio. Valerio was beaten to death by his stepfather, after repeated incidents of abuse. However, despite being seen by a number of doctors and other professionals in the lead-up to his murder, no action was taken to report a child who was clearly at risk. Hence, mandatory reporting was introduced, so that professionals (doctors, nurses, teachers, and so on) were required to report such abuse, or suspected abuse. It seems that, nearly two decades on, we’ve found a new way to not find children at risk of serious harm – lose them in a sea of paperwork.
Like shadow minister Pru Goward, I do worry whether changing the threshold for abuse reporting is going to mean more children slipping through the net. It seems entirely plausible that the reluctance of professionals to report suspected child abuse hasn’t gone away, and handing more discretion back to them might lead to serious cases going unreported. Maybe it would be better to increase departmental resourcing, and improve case management systems, to allow the system to keep track of its caseload. But I presume that after twelve months investigating the issues, Justice Wood has a better grasp of the situation than I do, and as I understand it these proposed changes are based on Victorian experience. Let’s hope it works.
UPDATE: Here’s a press release from Nathan Rees which goes into detail about some of the extra services, including a number of different early intervention programs to deal with cases of children at potential risk, but not in need of the kind of interventions that DoCS does.
Which means what? More bureaucrats who will do bugger-all.
It’s easy to take swipes at bureaucrats, but the problem of over reporting is a real one. DOCS has a lot of trouble filling vacancies, most people don’t want to work there. You could double the budget tomorrow and you still couldn’t get enough case workers to provide the service we all believe is necessary.
That means that the workload is a big issue, the case workers they have shouldn’t be following up people who’ve had their kids reported because of something trivial like head lice or scrapes from falling off a bike.
How about we, as a community, make the effort to look after those around us rather than simply laying blame on government departments for every social failure in the country.
thanks for the heads up and update Robert.
DFA – i know that DOCS and the Vic counterpart, Human Services, and the ACT’s Child Protection have a fair bit of troube filling vacancies, but they seem to have an even bigger problem keeping them. the last time i worked for Human Services, they had an average tenure of about 9 1/2 months.
Robert there are two issues that did not seem to be addressed int eh executive report and summary, well two issues that are dear to me apart from the tenure one. Firstly, there was no recognition of the particular loathing that is felt by most of the population towards DOCS etc. secondly the housing available for DOCS etc to use is inadequate, poorly funded and as often counterproductive as useful.
Sorry, could you explain the context of this “particular loathing” a bit?
As a Victorian, I don’t know that the local counterpart to DoCS, DHS, raises any particular emotions at all in the wider population.
DHS doesn’t arouse that kind of sentiment no, however I’ve heard multiple instances of people within Victoria referring to ‘DOCS’ as a generic term for child protection. That ‘particular loathing’ is fomented by low brow media coverage; people are not concerned with jurisdictional boundaries when they’re being fed who & what to loathe.
Robert re children “slipping through the net” the first question that has to be raised is why 3 times more children are taken into care in NSW than Victoria? Compulsory reading here:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23561867-5013946,00.html
In NSW, with ONE organisation only, mention the word DOCS and instant negativity. They’re the people who take the kids away.
The greatest villain in the picture in the whole sorry saga in NSW is not just the single structure of DOCS but the media’s moral panics generated when a child dies. The effect of NSW’s system, thanks in large part to the media’s moral panics, politicians lack of intestinal fortitude is effectively “better that 15000 kids be taken into care on minor risk than one child dies.” DOCS is under the gun. Children’s Court Magistrates are likewise under the gun and the subconscious influence of the media has (and I’m not blanketing all Magistrates as unfeeling uncaring judicial officers) MUST exert an influence on them to become the rubber stamps of DOCS. I’m not saying necessarily they are influenced, but that pressure is there. Parent’s legal representatives are under the gun in coping with the madness of the growing number of DOCs cases. Complex cases are like running a District Court trial for two weeks but without barristers, the NSW Legal Aid Commission cannot afford barristers in the Children’s Court.
Victoria has got it right. NSW is screwed. Hopefully change will come.
I have 5 DOCS care matters in my files, and that number is escalating. I cannot avoid DOCs cases even if I wanted to, given the dearth of lawyers in western NSW where I operate.
The legislation in NSW is fast becoming a human rights nightmare for parents. Once in care, DOCS has parental responsibility, even under interim orders. That’s administrative law and within the Administrative Decisions Tribunal arena, where in relation to access visits for example “arbitrary interference in the family” from Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights cuts no ice at all.
Don’t get me started on the admissability of hearsay evidence from non mandatory reporters who in many cases give trumped up reports simply out of spite, and whose identity cannot be disclosed by DOCS, whose evidence can NEVER be cross examined by the parents lawyers.
Sorry for breaking the 3 para rule Robert
There are the spite-driven vexatious claims and the horrified upper-middle-class claims, and genuine claims — and DoCS has to sort through them all. I also understand it is very difficult to work out which dysfunctional parent out of the many will actually kill or seriously injure a child.
My preferred option is for better coordination of records between DoCS, Justice, Education and Health. Problem is that cross-departmental dossiers are a nightmare wrt privacy, FOI and the rest. If you can’t access your records, that’s unjust, but if you can, you might not like what you find, and become uncooperative.
sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you Robert.
Too right Human services are held in very low esteme here in Vic.
apart from PK’s point that they are the mob that takes kids away, they are also the mob that takes good kids and churnes out bad kids.
When i was in the community sector here in Melb, if the subject of my employment came up, discussion would follow, often lively esp if it strayed into the area of prohibition. after i joined the department, DHS, telling people what i did would result in silence, usually pained and/or embarressed silence. it appeared that almost everyone i met had some story about contact with the department, usually bad.
Also i have never worked in such a violent environment. in the course of my work in the community sector, i’ve been held in doorways with knives to my throat, attacked with hammers, stallked and abused in loud and monotonous language. But in the DHS it was a step up, even to the point of death threats. there are entire employee safty sections devoted to parking when you go on a home visit; park facing out of any culdesac, call in before leaving the car, arrange for someone to call in ten minutes etc. most of it is common sense, but some of it is insulting, esp the calls in the middle of a home visit. it is amazing just how upset people can get when they realise that you have just engaged in a protocol that implies that they may be dangerous.
now i hope that you don’t think that i am just able to bag DHS, they do a thankless task with minimal resourses, and are often faced with generational disadvantage and elaborate codes of silence that protect violent perpetrators of many stripes. again sorry it took so long to get back to you, i plead newborns.
ciao
Thanks for the additional explanation, dylwah.
It sounds like the loathing you describe isn’t something that’s going to be easy to fix, either.
I am one of those frustrated parents.
I split from my ex of ten years four years ago, part of the reason that I split was ongoing verbal abuse. over the last six to eight months she has started subjecting my oldest daughter to high levels of both verbal and physical abuse. It has reached the point of my 11 year old daughter running away from home on numerous occasions, late at night on the train system in Sydney. I have seen her with scratches and massive bruises, police have been involved, the school has been involved, I have lost count of how many times I have personally called DOCS NSW.
The best I have ever got out of this is “we are trying to get her seen”, I have had instances of her being forcibly taken to her mums in hysterics by the police here, despite my being within a 1/2 hours drive from where she was picked up.
IMHO the police force should have a youth worker/social worker employed 24 hours at each station to IMMEDIATELY investigate these situations.
Now due to DOCS inaction my daughter has now run away again, this time to an aunts in robinvale victoria, (1000 km away!!!!), she secreted herself in the back of thier station wagon while they were visting sydney !!
What does it take to get help!!!
Can anyone explain to me why the Mandatory reporting for child abuse is different in some states of Australia?
Eileen, it’s a state jurisdiction, and every state and territory has its own legislation, and its own child protection service.
Thanks THR for your reply. It’s sad to think that we cannot all go under the same legislation. After all child abuse in one state is no different in another.
Would like to see more Government fundng go into Child Protection Agencies instead of sending money overseas…ho hum thats how things get prioritised in this country.
The problem, the various systems in each state and territory are all more or less dysfunctional, so there’s not a single one that could be used as a basis for incorporating the rest. There is an argument there for the Federal government to take it over, but I can’t see it happening any time soon. The different agencies are likely to be funded as much as it takes to get horror stories out of the press, and not a cent more. That’s how they basically work now – put out the spotfires, and let everything else go to hell.