The former Coalition government handed the delivery of some foster care to the non-government sector in 2012, and a report by former senior public servant David Tune in 2018 found the child protection system was failing the most vulnerable families and not stopping entrenched neglect.
The latest Audit report revealed that in 2022-23, the department received more than 400,000 child protection reports and identified 112,592 children who met a threshold for presumed “risk of significant harm”, the report said.
“It’s going to take time to deliver the outcomes children and young people deserve.”
Kate Washington, families and communities minister
However, 75 per cent of those children did not receive a home-based safety assessment by a caseworker to confirm these risks.
“Their cases were closed without any follow-up services from DCJ and DCJ does not know the outcomes for these children,” the report said. The cases were closed due to the “competing work priorities” of caseworkers.
The number of children returned to their parents from out-of-home care has also declined over the past five years, despite the department’s objective being to “restore them to their parents when it is safe to do so”. DCJ has also not succeeded in “reorienting the child protection system to focus on early intervention support for families” despite the recommendations of multiple reviews.
In a separate report released on Thursday, the state’s Audit Office also criticised the department’s handling of Aboriginal children in the child protection system.
“Approximately 6500 Aboriginal children were in out-of-home care as at 30 June 2023, making up 45 per cent of the out-of-home care population. By comparison, around 7 per cent of children in NSW are Aboriginal,” the report said.
“The Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) is not effectively safeguarding the rights of Aboriginal children in contact with the child protection system.”
Families and Communities Minister Kate Washington said the two reports provided further evidence of the need to reform the child protection sector.
“For the sake of vulnerable children in families right across NSW, we are determined to fix the broken child protection system that we inherited,” Washington said.
“We have begun the work to repair the system, but as laid out in these reports, there are significant issues in every direction, so it’s going to take time to deliver the outcomes children and young people deserve.”
If you or anyone you know needs help, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 (and see lifeline.org.au), 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) or Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800.
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