THE PARLIAMENTARY SELECT COMMITTEE ON CHILD PROTECTION MET
ON THURSDAY 2 DECEMBER 2010 IN THE LONG ROOM, PARLIAMENT
HOUSE, HOBART.
Ms ALISON JACOB, DEPUTY SECRETARY, HUMAN SERVICES, Mr MARK
BYRNE, CEO, CHILDREN AND YOUTH SERVICES, Mr MAL PHILLIPS, AREA
DIRECTOR, NORTH WEST, Mr MIKE WILLIE, AREA DIRECTOR, NORTH, Ms
ANDREA STURGES, AREA DIRECTOR, SOUTH WEST, Ms ANGELA McCROSSEN,
MANAGER CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, SOUTH-EAST AND Mr JEREMY
HARBOTTLE, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, CHILDREN AND YOUTH SERVICES WERE
CALLED, MADE THE STATUTORY DECLARATION AND WERE EXAMINED.
CHAIR (Mr O'Halloran) - Thank you very much for coming this morning. I know you have
received all the information we sent out and you certainly clearly understand the terms of
reference of this committee.
At the outset I congratulate you on the very comprehensive documentation that you have
provided for us. I found this very instructive and very informative and I know that others
have mentioned to me as well that that is the case, so thank you very much for that.
Just before we kick it off I need to remind you about parliamentary privilege. Basically,
it is a really important legal protection for you in that it gives you the ability to speak
with complete freedom so that we can get fairly fearless and frank information from you
to inform our decision-making process so that we can prepare a report. Parliamentary
privilege gives you legal protection in here so anything you say in here is protected and
you cannot be sued for things that you say, but if you repeat those things or anything else
outside of this room, then clearly that is not covered by privilege. I also need to point
out that this is a public forum and, as you can see, the media is here and it is open to the
public as well. Everything you say will be recorded on Hansard, which is a publicly
available document.
Ms JACOB - Thanks for the opportunity to make a few comments. They will be extensive
because I want to speak on behalf of my colleagues and put a few things on record. To
some degree it's a bit of a personal view as deputy secretary responsible for this area. I
base my comments on 34 years of experience in the public service and the fact that I will
be retiring in two weeks. So it is probably my last chance to put a few things on record,
knowing that I will be able to do so.
Before I came into the job in Human Service I was, like many of my colleagues across
the State Service and within the wider community, fairly critical about the way that Child
Protection Services were run, led and managed and all the rest of it. There is no shortage
of armchair critics of Child Protection. Having been in the service and been responsible
for the last five years, I really do see that now from a very different perspective. I think
it's very easy to be critical of a service when you're not actually involved in the day-today responsibilities it involves. The best quote that I have ever heard in that regard is,
'It's much easier to throw rocks at a house than it is to build one'. I suspect that that
probably applies to Child Protection.
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It's also an area where there is a lot of political scrutiny and media attention, and on one
level I don't think that's surprising. When things go wrong in Child Protection, they do
have devastating consequences and it is perfectly reasonable that that should be subject
to a huge amount of scrutiny and attention. Every Child Protection officer knows that
their decisions will be subject to that kind of scrutiny, and they expect that.
They also expect that there will be scrutiny by the media and by parliamentary processes,
and we all accept that's perfectly reasonable. What isn't reasonable is the lack of balance
that sometimes arises when there is particular spotlight on incidents that occur within a
period. That includes the politicisation of events or even demonisation of the Child
Protection Service. That situation is certainly not unique to Tassie. If you look at any
media websites across the world and in other States and Territories that situation does
arise from time to time, and that is simply a statement of fact.
I was interested in a Victorian ex-child protection worker who recently said, and I will
quote it because I think it's important:
'On the TV you see the pictures of those humanitarian workers going to
natural disasters overseas and helping out the community. They're
portrayed as real heroes and they are, and we're really proud of what they
do. What I'll tell you is that we do the same kind of work every day of the
week in child protection. We go into some terribly scary situations and
we've saved many kids, and we've helped many families recover, but what
recognition do we get? Zip. Nothing. Nil. Just criticism.'
I suspect many of the staff that we're all responsible for would probably echo that
comment. I think there are a couple of reasons for that kind of hype. The first one is that
most people in the community don't have direct experience of Child Protection. Unlike
services such as education and health, where they do have experience which can be used
to counter some of the claims that are made, in Child Protection normally they will
accept what they hear at face value. They often do not hear the other side of the story
because at most times public servants are unable to present that because of
confidentiality issues and so on. So often you do get a very biased view of individual
incidents.
I also think that sometimes people from other professions view Child Protection through
their own professional lens and sometimes they don't really understand the nature of
Child Protection Services. For example, recently we had a principal of a school who was
very critical of Child Protection. When we asked what that was about, we found that it
was because we had failed to intervene when a child had not been picked up from school.
They had been left at school and mum had fallen asleep and not picked up the child.
While that might have been a concern, that's not a Child Protection matter and it was
totally unreasonable to expect that Child Protection would get involved in that. So there
are examples like that.
Sometimes people assume that if there is any risk whatsoever to a child then Child
Protection should intervene and take some kind of action. Clearly that is quite an
erroneous conceptualisation of what Child Protection is about. Obviously Child
Protection can only intervene when there is a level of abuse or neglect that reaches a
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statutory threshold and that is determined in a judicial process. We are unable to
intervene in cases, many of which the general community do see that we should be.
The third thing is that Child Protection is often damned if we do and damned if we don't.
If we do intervene we are doing the wrong thing; if we don't intervene we are doing the
wrong thing. Often we are caught in that difficult dilemma between two competing
goods - family preservation and protection of children. That is a difficult balance
sometimes to get.
Finally, people get concerned because the very nature of Child Protection decisions
means that people will often feel aggrieved, angry, upset and they are going to want
some process of appeal about decisions that are made by Child Protection. That does
not necessarily mean that Child Protection is wrong, although sometimes we are and we
are fallible. I would point out that the recent report from the Ombudsman says that
about half of the complaints that were made about Health and Human Services came
from Human Services within DHHS, but only 10 per cent were substantiated. The fact
that people are aggrieved and make a complaint does not necessarily mean the complaint
should be substantiated. That point needs to be made.
A couple of things I want to put on record. The first one is that mistakes and poor
decisions do happen in child protection systems and they certainly do happen in our
Child Protection Services. They happen in every health and human service system in
the world. While there is a common response to any tragedy that basically says we want
to blame somebody and we want to identify who made the mistake, and that people do
want to see some sort of accountability for failure, most of the time we need to recognise
that this is just part of what you ought to expect in any system. I do emphasise that
where individuals, including ourselves, make mistakes and do the wrong thing and go
against professional standards or State Service standards or whatever else, it is
absolutely fair and reasonable that we should be held to account for that; there ought to
be sanctions and there ought to be consequences. None of us would recoil from that and
we would all accept responsibility when those sorts of errors occur. However, many
times decisions are made that, with the benefit of hindsight, prove to not have been in
the best interests of the child but were made in perfectly good faith, logic and rationale
at the time that decision was made.
Despite our very best efforts there will be times when Child Protection is involved with
a family and child and abuse and neglect still occur. That may have been due to some
missed piece of information, an overoptimistic assessment of the level of risk, or
something that appeared to be perfectly rational and logical at the time. It may have
been due to erroneous thinking.
Child abuse is not an exact science. Child protection is about assessment of risk and that
is based often on having to address issues which are absolutely bound with uncertainty.
We can never know for sure what is happening in a family and we can never predict
what is going to happen in the future. Although Child Protection officers are always on
the lookout for what is likely to happen, they do not have a crystal ball and they cannot
guarantee that adverse incidents will not occur. So, that is fact.
The second point I really want to emphasise is that because of that it is absolutely
imperative there are processes in place for the review of decisions and for practice to be
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scrutinised. Those practices need to be both internal and subject to external scrutiny
when there are serious incidents. None of us would object in any sense to that kind of
process. It is entirely appropriate that that should happen. We do have processes, such a
complaints-in-care committee that has external members, such as the Commissioner for
Children, that allows us to do that kind of scrutiny. We are also very supportive of child
death review processes, which allow that level of scrutiny to occur.
I would say though that we do have to be cautious about professional decision-making
by Child Protection workers to be constantly subject to second-guessing by people in the
community who, with the best of intentions, want to get involved and believe that they
can perhaps make a better decision. One of the really concerning things that has
happened in Tasmania in the last six months, probably longer, is that people have
become involved in trying to second-guess Child Protection decisions, but who are not
qualified and who do not have the experience or expertise to do so. In my view that's
not only inappropriate but also extremely dangerous. Whatever happens in terms of
external scrutiny we have to very careful that we don't undermine the kind of
professional decision-making that Child Protection officers make because if we do we're
actually going to undermine the entire system, and that's not in anybody's best interests.
Processes for looking at what is good practice, for being able to learn from adverse
incidents, ought to be interpreted as being good practice and a normal part of what
happens. They should not be interpreted as indicating that the system is in crisis and that
it is failing. That's a really serious misconception within the community. As soon as we
do a review, as soon as we make public recommendations for improvement, it is
immediately interpreted as, 'The system has failed, we have another crisis. Let's do a
review. Let's throw everything out of the window and let's start again'. That is entirely
inappropriate and really unfair to the people who are working in the system.
There have been a number of incidents which have coincided in the last three months in
terms of coronial inquiries, release of reports and the imminent release of the report by
Lupo Prins - which will no doubt attract media attention. The reports and reviews have
happened very quickly but those incidents actually occurred over a fairly long time
frame, a period of about three years. There has been a misconception that suddenly
we've had all of these incidents and therefore the system is in crisis. What I want to
emphasise is that although those reports have all been released in a relatively short time
frame, they actually relate to incidents that have happened over a long time frame.
Let's put those in perspective. Over that three-year period there were about 7 500
notifications to child protection, between 700 and 800 children living in care on any
given day, about 1 000 children admitted to out-of-home care, and about 750 children
discharged from out-of-home care. Now, in all of those cases a decision was made about
the relative protection and level of risk for that child. In the context of that number of
decisions and that number of children who have been in and out of the system, that
number of families involved, the number of adverse incidents that have attracted
attention - although they're extremely regrettable and absolutely tragic and nobody is
saying they're not - are in fact a very small proportion.
Child protection is not an easy business and if we think there will be a quick fix or any
silver bullets, then obviously we're mistaken. It is a complex area and any solution will
be long term. There are many factors that contribute to children coming into the system,
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but I really want to emphasise some of the most prevalent. Up to about 65 per cent of
the carers, the parents of the children who come into care, have some sort of history of
drug and alcohol abuse. About 50 per cent of them have some kind of association as
perpetuators of family violence. About 50 per cent of them have a history of mental
illness and about 10 per cent of them have an intellectual disability. These are not
problems that are solved overnight or easily sorted.
I draw your attention to a similar inquiry to yours into some of those long-term issues
that really contribute to the kind of intergenerational situation which is often perpetuated
in families. The report was published in the UK, and it's called Early Intervention: Good
Parents, Great Kids, Better Citizens. That was a bipartisan report, a non-political
statement. It was really saying there aren't any quick fixes. I will quote from that report:
'There's no one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, there needs to be an
integrated approach to tackling disadvantage and resolve that is shared by
people across the political divides. Sustained attention spanning several
terms of government will be required and the root issues need to be
absorbed into the social consensus and abstracted from the dog-fight of
party politics.'
I just wanted to really emphasise that point as well.
I think we have done some significant reform. You have the details of that reform. I
have provided a summary and I am really happy to provide my statement to the
committee in which I summarised the major things that have been achieved. It is easy
for people to be disparaging about that and it is easy for people to say, 'Well, you have
done all that work but things are still not working or are still going wrong.' I really want
you to know how much blood, sweat and tears has occurred from people on this side of
the table and their staff to achieve many of the improvements that have taken place over
the last five years and I do not think you ought underestimate that level of improvement.
I also want to say that the reform we are putting in place is absolutely in line with best
practice and if you look at any of the reports that have been published in other States and
Territories or internationally you will see that. It is quite frustrating for us to have visits
from our counterparts in other States and Territories looking at what has been achieved
and taking on board, particularly our Gateway Service and the Integrated Family Support
Service and so on, and yet to see that it is just not recognised within our own community.
Should there be further inquiries and commissions of inquiry, I just want to comment on
that and that is my final comment, although I would also later be very happy to table the
things which I believe could be done to further strengthen the committee's findings and I
would be very happy to do that. I do want to make the point - and it is made very well
by Professor Eileen Munro, who is currently doing a review of child protection within
the UK and who is probably one of the most foremost experts on child protection review
and child protection systems internationally - that you need to be really careful about
doing further reviews on reviews on reviews and adding on further sets of
recommendations into child protection systems. What she basically says is, 'It is
important to think carefully before producing more recommendations for change. There
are unexpected consequences that arise and which are experienced by professionals as
unhelpful, distracting and distracting from the clear focus on children's safety and
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wellbeing.' She quotes the British Association of Directors of Children's Services and
the quote is this:
'The perceived punitive effects and the impact of judgments of services in
terms of local media and political response are in danger of creating a
climate whereby you are managing for inspection, rather than managing for
quality and outcomes for children and young people.'
And I think we do have to be careful of that.
I would also point out that if you want people to continue to do the work that these
people are doing - and it is easy for me to say because I will not be here - you must
realise that they deserve your support and respect. You only have to look at Victoria at
the moment where one in four Child Protection workers has left the Child Protection
System in the last 12 months, or at the Northern Territory, where at the moment it is
impossible for them to recruit staff because people are not prepared to work in a system
which has been subject to such a degree of media scrutiny and politicisation. I think it is
very important that we recognise that the system needs to be supported and while none of
us would recoil from the need to make improvements and none of us would in any sense
try to belittle the adverse circumstances which have led to you being where you are
today, we would really want to emphasise the fact that we need to work together on this
in order to sort out some of those things.
So I am very happy later perhaps to table some of the things which I actually believe
could be done to strengthen the system and certainly I do believe that some
improvements are needed and things done which we all believe would further strengthen
and support our resolve to protect children. But let's not kid ourselves: we will never
have a system where adverse incidents do not occur and we will never have had a system
which will be perfect. I guess that we all need to be realistic about that.
CHAIR - So how will we progress Alison with this? Do we have questions of Alison in
general?
Mr GROOM - I have a general question. First, I would like to thank you for the overview
and thank everyone who is presenting here today.
I guess my initial reaction to that overview is a genuine concern for the difficulty of
those who work in the system. I saw a lot of heads nodding as you were going through
your overview. I think it is clearly one of the issues facing the sector. How do you get
the balance right between scrutiny and change? Every person, virtually, who has been
before this committee so far has identified things that are in need of a change of some
description, but how do you get the balance right with that and the scrutiny, but at the
same time ensure that working in the sector is sustainable, that people feel a sense of
satisfaction and so forth? I think it is one of the great dilemmas. One of the questions I
have is this: you get a sense of the frustration, just from having heard you, but you also
get a sense of frustration from those who deal with the system from the other end. You
get it from the parents, you get it from the grandparents and you get it from the workers.
One of the comments that I think has been the theme has been a concern about a
defensiveness from the department essentially. Some have described it as a sensitivity to
criticism in a sense. So it's a terrible dilemma, isn't it, because on the one hand you are
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dealing with people's lives and you're never going to have a situation where they're not
going to be passionately engaged in outcomes on which they have views. You can never
have a system that denies them the opportunity to express those frustrations and
concerns.
Ms JACOB - Absolutely.
Mr GROOM - Yet on the other hand we, as a community, are expecting people to work in
public service in this area trying to deal with some very difficult circumstances. So how
do we address that issue? Can I specifically point to the concerns from people at the
other end of the spectrum about a sensitivity to criticism from the department?
Ms JACOB - Okay. I'll address the sensitivity issue. I think it's probably not unreasonable
that there's a sensitivity, given the barrage of all the hype that has Mr GROOM - I agree with that, that's the point I make.
Ms JACOB - I know. And it is perfectly reasonable that people have the opportunity to raise
their concerns, to make genuine complaints and have them properly investigated and
properly responded to. So my response to that would be what we need are strengthened
quality assurance systems, both internally and externally to the system so people feel that
they do have a forum that they can take their complaints to, and get an assurance that
there will be some level of both internal and external attention to whatever that concern
or complaint is.
I guess what I'm saying is let's strengthen the processes that ought be in place in any
child protection system to make sure that complaints can be made, they can be dealt
with, investigated and responded to, and let's put that in place as being a normal part of
what is just good practice, rather than a sense being that every time that happens it
indicates that there is a crisis or a failure, or whatever else. If we don't get that sort of
sense that mistakes will be made, they must be learnt from, improvements can be driven
from that, then we'll never get a system that will grow and develop.
Mr GROOM - I might just deal with a few things there. Do you do stakeholder engagement
assessments? Do you assess what those who interact with the department feel about the
department in terms of the services, the quality of the services, et cetera?
Ms JACOB - I might get my colleagues in the areas because there are forums such as Area
Advisory Forums where all of the government/non-government stakeholder people come
together on a regular basis precisely for that reason, so they might want to talk about it.
Mr WILLIE - We have instituted an area planning process, which involves a lot of people in
the sector getting a view about how the services should operate and how we can
collaborate together and integrate services. I think, as Alison has highlighted, we need to
work in collaboration not only with the families but also with other service providers to
make sure that the best interests of the children are being served. Each of us in the areas
has been working this area planning process with area forums, which have also included
stakeholder engagement. But within the child protection system itself we have family
group conferencing, which I think is a critical part of getting the whole extended family
together and looking at what the issues are, and who within that family can assist in
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making sure that the children who are at risk can be appropriately cared for. So those
two processes are there.
The area planning process in particular is very new, but. I was just saying to Alison
yesterday that we have only been doing it since August last year, and already we are at
the point where I think we are becoming the lead agency in our areas in relation to interagency collaboration on these issues.
Mr GROOM - So through that process you do engage with those that interact with the
system. You get a sense of what their thoughts are, their concerns and so on. Is that
documented?
Mr WILLIE - Absolutely.
Mr GROOM - Is there some sort of overarching departmental process to collate that so that
you get a picture?
Ms JACOB - This was one of the major recommendations of the reform across the Child
Protection system, that there ought to be area forums where that local stuff can be picked
up and people have the opportunity to say this is not working, or there is a gap there or
whatever else. That then gets fed in to a statewide advisory group that includes
TasCOSS, various NGOs, a representative from the university, with the person in my
position chairing it. The idea is that the area stuff gets fed into a statewide plan and then
that starts to inform practice. That is the early stage. If you are saying do we hear the
criticisms and the concerns of other agencies, then I would say there are a number of
forums where that happens. That would be one, but there are a number of interagency
meetings and so on. I certainly get that on a regular basis. I do not go to any meetings
where someone does not tell me what is wrong.
Mr GROOM - I guess where I am coming from is slightly different. I am suggesting a
systematic process because to me it is just the brutal reality. The reality is that those
workers will be criticised, therefore I think some formal process where you get to see
that picture and are able to address it Mr JACOB - I really do think that is happening.
Ms STURGES - We have interagency support teams as well so while Mike talked about the
fact that we have actually have family group conferences, and bring together the relevant
services, we also have a formal inquiry including education and police, counsellors,
child carers, people that matter, that actually have snapshots if you like of what is
happening within a family. Those are mission critical because lots of noises happen at
those meetings and lots of concerns are raised. There is opportunity for really robust
discussions. So the information is there not only to take back and circulate across those
agencies for the child's file but also to enhance accountability about decision-making. It
clearly informs and changes some of our decisions. I know that my colleagues are as
committed as I am. I actually attend some of those so I get to hear what has happened.
Ms McCROSSEN - In terms of client complaints, we have a formal process when clients
would like their decisions reviewed. That would go to somebody completely separate to
the case for an objective opinion about how we got to where we got to and why the
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client was unhappy. We have also a central system now where complaints,
compliments, any client issues and staff issues are actually there to follow a process in
terms of the hierarchy if we need them to respond to those issues. We do also have a
central point of being able to see those and manage them.
Mr GROOM - And see what it looks like. That is what I am getting to - the snapshots. You
can assess it over time and develop strategies from it because it is never going to go
away.
Ms JACOB - We do now. Andrea has alluded to it. We have an electronic system that
allows anybody to log on and basically look at the complaints. Now with our electronic
system Mark has access to any case.
Mr BYRNE - When I arrived in 2007 there was no electronic system. Now - as of
1 September - we have a system where I can log into individual cases. For example,
yesterday I received a complaint from a grandparent in Launceston. Ordinarily I would
have no idea of anything about their circumstances. In that case I can go straight into
the system and have an informed discussion with that person and refer them to the right
place. So that is just a working example. I have to say clients are not backward in
coming forward to me. I have my mobile phone for anybody to ring so we are not afraid
of people, but in terms of a formal stakeholder collation of events, that is something that
we probably should work on.
Ms JACOB - We also think we could strengthen the capacity that Mark has to have a kind of
external scrutiny of what happens at the area level. He does have some staff who can do
that but if we had greater capacity that is probably where we would want the resources.
CHAIR - Alison, thanks a lot for those introductory comments. I actually found them quite
moving, very instructive and very supportive of people working in the sector. You have
probably heard me speak publicly about the unpredictability and complicated nature of
the territory, the fact that it's highly volatile, highly emotive. Having worked in
education myself - and I know that certainly Brian has - that's one tiny little part of this
bigger picture. I know how difficult that is where you're dealing with difficult kids and
difficult parents, where there are generational issues that need to be dealt with. I hope
you don't feel - I'm talking to everybody now - that this is necessarily a negative process.
This could well be a supportive process. The recommendations we make could well
support processes, all the really good stuff that's been put in place over the last few years
in particular. I just want to make that point for a start.
Too often we have a tendency to dwell on negative things and we don't highlight the
positive and good things that we do. This may be an opportunity to put a bit of spotlight
on some of the good stuff that's happening. I would just like to make that point and
hope you don't feel too down in the dumps about this.
Ms JACOB - Despite your best intentions and despite the positive nature and support you
offer, I guarantee that the reporting of this will be negative. That's the thing that gets in
all of our Mr WIGHTMAN - I am passionate about this area, as all of us are. I come from an
education base and have dealt with many of you in different ways. My feelings about it
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are that criticism and scrutiny and performance management in any public sector is
absolute key to improvement. What I take issue with, and I hope it is positive, Basil, is
the politicisation of this. I really hope that we in that regard don't make your work any
more difficult.
Ms JACOB - I do know that some of my colleagues, particularly in the non-government
sector, have said they're not going to appear or provide any evidence, not because they
don't want to but because they don't want to get involved in a whole heap of
politicisation and media hype. It is unfortunate.
Mr WIGHTMAN - We are community leaders and we have a responsibility for that. That is
a warning I pass on to everyone today.
My question is about on-the-job professional training that Child Protection workers go
through. Professional learning is a very important element. What role does that play in
their employment contract?
Mr BYRNE - Again, it was an area that was very underdone probably three or four years
ago. With the assistance of various States and Territories that made available their
training packages, we instigated a beginning professional practice for all Child
Protection workers. Up until that time people would access training on their own, if you
like, going on courses et cetera. This is a formal process where every child protection
worker, including those who have been around for 20 years, is put through a beginning
practice framework, which basically revisits all the main issues. We instigated other
training modules, but we believe that is an area we need to put more resources into. We
need to develop in particular our middle management group, our team leaders, who are
critical in decision-making and being up to date with contemporary research and training
that's out there. Equally, on an area basis, the area directors have a budget where they
can actually buy in some training. Indeed, you are having some people training staff on
resilience and how to work within this space. It is something for which we need a far
better program and a far better calendar, and we probably need to make some investment
in that.
Mr GROOM - What is the dollar spend per worker?
Mr BYRNE - Too small. I could find out for the committee what resourcing we have in that
space. We make available to our directors $30 000 for each area for professional
development and then there's a central five-person professional development team.
Ms McCROSSEN - In addition to that there are internal training opportunities, so a Child
Protection worker can't remove a child from a family without doing beginning practice
and then an additional level of training which is provided internally as well.
Mr WIGHTMAN - When you get a new Child Protection worker, and hopefully you can
recruit a new person into your organisation, are they just left to go on their own?
Ms JACOB - Absolutely not.
Mr BYRNE - They go through the filter of the Beginning Professional Practice. What we've
not done well enough is actually calendarise that, tie our recruitment to the calendar of
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beginning practice. That's what we probably intend to do next year. I hope members of
parliament don't start to think we've got a recruitment problem. We're going to run
regular adverts so we can actually build up a recruitment pool and then tie our beginning
practice to that.
Mr WILLIE - Each of us would have performance development agreements. I have one
with Mark and conversely also have one with each of the service areas I'm responsible
for in the north, including child protection, and that cascades down. So the Child
Protection manager there has performance development agreements with each of their
team leaders and each team leader then has performance development agreements with
each of the members of their teams, because Child Protection in each area is divided into
teams. So when people put forward applications to engage in professional learning it has
to map back to those PDAs. So we have quite an integrated system around this area.
Like a lot of other things, we've been working on these things that have a two- or threeyear time frame. We're just starting to see some of the outcomes.
Ms PETRUSMA - One of the complaints that we have had from staff is that they're joined in
this system but they feel that they don't have a mentor or someone who is working
alongside them. If they have serious issues they feel that the department is a bit riskaverse. They don't feel that they're in an environment where they can actually speak
about their concerns. So are there systems that have been put in place to address that?
Ms McCROSSEN - When a new worker starts they would be buddied up with somebody,
whether that be their team leader or a senior worker within their own team, so they're not
going anywhere without somebody else with them to walk them through the processes.
We will gradually build up their caseload so that they are able to get familiar with
processes, legislation and the issues that Child Protection experience.
Ms PETRUSMA - Is this a recent thing, though?
Ms McCROSSEN - No, I started as a Child Protection worker 11 years ago and it was that
way in terms of induction.
Ms PETRUSMA - The sense that we are getting from people is they feel like they're not Ms McCROSSEN - We have teams of about five workers under one team leader and within
those teams there are senior workers. I've felt that internally it's quite a supportive
environment. In a lot of the exit interviews that I do with staff, they say that the people
are very supportive. The bureaucracy and the difficulties of the job are the reasons
people leave, not necessarily about direct support. In terms of feeling supported as an
agency, you often hear people negatively speak about that, but in terms of direct
relationships Mr WIGHTMAN - Do you have internal data? I'm thinking of things we did in schools,
such as surveys in regards to your staff and their feelings.
Mr GROOM - Employee engagement?
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Ms STURGES - I have had more than 20 years in Child Protection, Mental Health and
Disability Services and for me we run satisfaction surveys with 360-degree feedback.
I've actually just done one on our Manager for Child Protection and he survived.
Mr WIGHTMAN - I've been through that myself.
Ms STURGES - I actually think that's really good for developing his leadership and
mentoring him in areas because our perceptions of ourselves are very different. I also
have recently surveyed four students by face-to-face interview with a view to knowing
what we need to stop, start or keep doing. We took these students on in placements and
two of them have translated to permanent Child Protection workers. Clearly there are
rude noises and rubs, and people are disgruntled about policies and procedures because
we have to be so compliant, so accountable. That can be frustrating because it is very
time-consuming sometimes for staff, but certainly we are always open to systems
improvement and remaining connected to the ground level and what is happening; that is
critical. As Alison was saying earlier, child protection and decision-making is a bit like
deciding whether - in Eileen Munro's words - a tumour is actually a headache or whether
it is a tumour. It is a very difficult context.
Mr BYRNE - Child protection is a small part of Health and Human Services, so the
department as a whole has lots of surveys of staff and we do use those results when they
are broken down into a Child Protection space. I think again we could do something
more directly with the statutory Child Protection workers because the job is so unique.
Mr PHILLIPS - Child protection is one of the most highly supervised disciplines in terms of
scheduled supervision as well as consultation that occurs around assessments and visits.
You could walk into a Child Protection office and never access a team leader because
they are always consulting one of their workers. We keep records of that supervision. I
have often had comment that this is such an extraordinary amount of supervision for staff
around practice and planning.
Mr GROOM - But that is the point; to me that is helpful information. To have a systemic
approach to the employee within Child Protection would again be a very helpful snapshot
that you could then trace over time and put in place processes to deal with it.
Ms WHITE - I have a few questions about the different phases involved in operating the act,
because there have been concerns raised with us. Legal orders may be necessary to
protect the child, and medical and other appointments may be essential to get a full
picture and to help with future plans. Is there a move to make all those things essential
because it is something we have been hearing about in terms of substantiation of harm
and risk? This is a decision made within about a month of the start of the investigation.
Wouldn't it be important to have that done immediately? Is there a move within the
department to have that as an essential component of any assessment?
Ms McCROSSEN - Substantiation?
Ms WHITE - Yes.
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Ms McCROSSEN - In terms of the time frame it obviously depends on the issues, the
information that needs to be gathered to get to that decision. So you could substantiate
very early on that we need to look into something, but in terms of actually substantiating
that somebody is responsible for abuse and neglect, that is obviously a significant
decision for a family member. It is within those 28 days that we would know whether or
not abuse or neglect has occurred.
Ms WHITE - I ask it because some people have raised concerns that a child has accused
someone of abusing them, for instance sexual abuse, and that they did not get a medical
appointment until a fortnight after that was raised. Is there is a move to make access to a
medical appointment much more immediate.
Mr BYRNE - I am obviously here to give good news as well. One of the positive things
about being in the Department of Health and Human Services is that we have managed to
employ a community paediatrician, who is rather ambitious, but in the first year she
intends to screen 500 of the children who are in care. She commences her duties in
February of next year. She is highly experienced. So we are looking for that to improve.
Her response won't be just to see kids in care but to also oversee their health needs
through the normal health structure.
Ms PETRUSMA - Did you say she is a paediatrician?
Mr BYRNE - Yes.
Ms PETRUSMA - Okay. Alongside that, it has also been suggested that each child needs a
counselling assessment as well as soon as they enter care. Is that something that you are
looking at to run alongside?
Mr BYRNE - You would be aware of the Australian Childhood Foundation.
Ms PETRUSMA - Yes, but there is not much money for it, is there?
Mr BYRNE - That is exactly right. It was a small budget and we have used it - half a million
dollars. I think Mr Tucci was on Stateline on Friday and he said it was probably about 30
per cent of what was needed. Actually, it probably meets about 15 per cent of the need.
So we are looking at that and we are looking to grow those programs, but equally we are
looking to our colleagues in Mental Health to come and help us in this space and also to
free up some of the demand. The whole point of the reform was to free up a lot of the
demand that was coming into Child Protection that was not actually child protection. We
have to then re-educate and retrain our staff in actually providing that counselling
service. We have psychologists, we have social workers, we have a whole range or
professionals so we have to posit those into that place.
Ms PETRUSMA - A lot of the foster carers are saying to us that the care plan that they are
getting does not have enough information in it, and that they have no idea about the past
history of these kids. It is not until a few months later they find out - when the kids
might open up and say that they have been sexually abused or some behavioural
problems start to surface. They really feel that as soon as the child comes into care, they
should (a) have a really good care plan and (b) have those initial counselling assessments
so that a plan could be put in place for that child.
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Mr BYRNE - That counselling may not give you the disclosures early on. They will come
later.
Ms PETRUSMA - But it can still outline a few issues that may be underlying because a
trained counsellor can actually assess a child and determine if they are Mr BYRNE - I would say, first of all, the case plan, yes. Foster parents should have a case
plan developed. Any child within our care system should have a case plan that develops
what the areas should be and foster parents should have that. I am probably similar to
Jeremy - I think it is the same with trauma counselling. You do not embark on trauma
counselling immediately after the event because the child is in capture, so you have to do
it at a time when it suits. I would suggest that that would be at a later date rather than an
earlier date. We are in discussions with the paediatrician about how we can actually
screen for psychological wellbeing in that kind of process and that is a discussion that we
are having.
Ms PETRUSMA - I come from aged care. In the aged care system when a resident comes in
we have to do a myriad of things. I am a paediatric nurse as well, and I know there are
assessment tools out there to assess a child's mental status very quickly and easily. So I
do disagree that it should be quite a while down the track. It needs to be done pretty soon
so that each child has a proper care plan.
Mr PHILLIPS - It is also understanding the broad nature of the risk and harm that children
are subjected to and the different age groups from infants to mid teens. There is a whole
range of issues.
Ms PETRUSMA - Exactly right.
Mr PHILLIPS - I do not disagree with you, but it varies case by case. Some young people
do not want to engage in counselling and some parents won't. It is a matter of managing
each case on its merits. There is this notion that, because you have statutory
involvement, these things must happen at a particular time, but we would need to engage
parents and work with them at their pace at times.
Ms WHITE - Just following on from what Jacquie has spoken about, and referring to your
family violence counselling: you mentioned in your opening statement that about 50 per
cent of children come from families where there is perpetuated family violence and your
CHIP program is operating there. What are the parameters around children qualifying for
referral to that service? Could you explain that please, because it seems quite necessary?
Ms JACOB - I know that was something that the Commissioner for Children raised in her
discussions with you.
We know that the CHIP program is one that is really successful and our evaluations show
that and we also know that there is a waiting list for that program and that we really need
to make it more widely available. Clearly, if there was resourcing to do that, that would
be something that would be done.
Ms WHITE - Is it money or people that you need?
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Ms JACOB - Both. People cost money.
Ms WHITE - But you may not have the appropriate people available.
Ms JACOB - I said earlier that if we had more money we could use it usefully.
Ms WHITE - But you see that as being one area you would like to expand?
Ms JACOB - I think that any child who is affected by family violence, given that there is a
high proportion of those children in our system, does need to have some level of
intervention - not all of them, but many of them - and that is a really well-documented,
well-evidenced program. We ought to build the programs that we know are working and
I would say that is one that is working really well, so we should be able to make that
more widely available.
Ms WHITE - Could you just explain the parameters for qualification at the current stage?
Ms JACOB - At the moment I think they actually have to be referred through Safe at Home,
don't they.
Ms McCROSSEN - Yes, they have to have evidence of a recorded family violence incident.
They need to be not in the presence of the perpetrator any more, so they need to be
removed from that. The other criterion, which is often difficult, is to be in a stable
placement.
Ms WHITE - So what does that actually mean?
Ms McCROSSEN - A primary carer, who can be part of the counselling sessions. With
children who have such difficult behaviour that they're breaking down placements quite
regularly, quite often that can stop Ms WHITE - And they might need this sort of program, but they can't access it.
Mr BYRNE - That is the Commissioner for Children's criticism about the CHIP program, it's
not working with those children who are actually in relatively minor unsafe places. The
family violence process is under review anyway; it's something that may be looked at.
Ms WHITE - Okay, that's good to hear.
Mr WILLIE - I guess the other thing to say about the CHIP program is grounded in Joe
Tucci's work. Joe Tucci was mentioned earlier and he had a significant role to play in
setting up the therapeutic model that the CHIP program operates on.
Ms PETRUSMA - The Commissioner for Children has said that we probably need another
$40 million, do you agree with her?
Laughter.
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Ms JACOB - I think you could pick any dollar amount out of the air and say put it into the
various services and that would have an impact.
Ms PETRUSMA - So what do you think is a reasonable sum Ms JACOB - I'm about to retire, I can give you any sum you like.
Laughter.
Ms JACOB - But let's be sensible about it. Let's be realistic and accept there will always be
a limited resource in any child protection system. What I would really caution about is
not being drawn into the unrealistic expectation that with money you will be able to
solve every potential adverse incident that will occur. Don't take money out of
prevention. Don't take it out of early intervention - everybody knows that's what will
make the most impact in the longer term. So I think what we're doing in terms of the
potential of child and family centres, if we do those properly, what we're doing in terms
of strengthening our Integrated Family Support Service - and we've already put in more
therapeutic parenting services and Youth At Risk services - will make a great impact. I
think we need to make child and family centres really work well and they're not going to
work well just by co-locating services. We believe we need to put a lot of emphasis on
how we can make those services really do a proper wrap-around early intervention with
the nought to fives and their families. If we did that we would, in my view, stop an
awful lot of kids coming into the system.
Ms PETRUSMA - But there is an increase in children projected - at least an extra 100
children across the forward Estimates - so it's a decrease in budget at the same time. So
with the Children's Commissioner saying we need more funding Ms JACOB - I'm saying that you could use any extra money if you targeted it properly to
advantage, and clearly there will always be a limit to the amount of money that is
apportioned to any service. That's a reality. That's a non-political statement. Whatever
political party is in power, there will always be a limit to the money. I guess what I'm
saying is that you have to really determine where that money will have the most effect
and what kind of benefits will be the most sustainable in the long term. Let's not,
because of reactive reactions to things, divert money from where it will really have the
impact. That UK report that I referred to basically reinforces that point of view. I will
quote the incident that the politician actually used that really triggered his doing that
work. It was the typical example - and I'm sure you've all heard it - of the 16-year-old
mother coming with babe in arms to get help for a huge number of intergenerational
issues around poverty and housing and social security, etcetera. And the politician
intervened and helped her with that problem. Sixteen years later the baby, now no longer
a baby, appeared with exactly the same list of issues and with a babe in arms. She was
going through exactly the same problems.
Ms PETRUSMA - Does that mean we need more money going into family support services?
Ms JACOB - Absolutely. It's easy to say the answer is more money; it's not. The answer is
to strengthen your services in a really sensible, sustained way and get best value, or best
bang for the buck out of the money that you do have available.
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Mr GROOM - That's not the point that the Commissioner for Children was making.
Ms JACOB - No, she was saying that we need more money.
Mr GROOM - Yes, she was saying it was underfunded.
Ms JACOB - Absolutely. I can give you a list of things which I think could be usefully done
that would take more money. I reckon if I were sitting in a Child Protection Review in
any State or Territory or in any place in the world, I could give you a similar sort of list
where more money Mr GROOM - But is it underfunded? That is the point that the Commissioner for Children
was making.
Ms JACOB - Any child protection system is underfunded from the point of view that you
want to do more, but you have to be really careful that you don't give the impression that
if you had more money things would necessarily get better. There has been some really
important national work done in the last 12 months, particularly for things such as outof-home-care standards, which I think will define what should be the benchmark
standard that our system should aspire to. What we ought be doing is saying, 'Okay, if
that's the standard and if we want to work towards that in terms of aspiration, then this is
the kind of resourcing that will be required to do that over a period of time.' That to me
is a much more sensible way of approaching it than that simplistic 'give us $40 million
and we'll spend it tomorrow' approach.
I've been in the system a long time and I've been in a situation many times where money
has suddenly become available and it has to be spent quickly. In my view that's not a
good way of directing long-term policy.
Ms PETRUSMA - There's a national program that's been out delivering a public health
model Ms JACOB - It is, but it's a lot more than that.
Ms PETRUSMA - Universal supports for the family - but that requires a lot more investment
into health and education to address what they want to happen with those national
standards.
Ms JACOB - Wouldn't you want to see that? Wouldn't anybody?
Ms PETRUSMA - So it does require more funding.
CHAIR - Alison, what you're saying is really important here. It's not necessarily a political
fix; it's actually a long-term fix in the best interest of the child.
Ms JACOB - And also, any budget that's put into this has to be sustainable over numerous
budget cycles and probably through numerous political cycles as well.
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CHAIR - You'll notice that one of the terms of reference is about prevention and early
intervention. You have mentioned some of the programs that are in place, and certainly
I'm into long-term sustainable solutions and robust Ms JACOB - I was really heartened to see that in the terms of reference, because that's the
only way that we're really going to address things. Quick-fix solutions in this field are
not going to achieve anything.
CHAIR - You've already mentioned the Child and Family Centres, which I think are a
terrific thing, but I noticed in the report you wrote that there is an early years parenting
support service. I want a bit more detail around that. I'm not real sure of what is going
on, but I certainly know, for example, that sex education in schools is pretty patchy. I do
not know what work is going on around parenting skills in schooling, for example, or
any other area through the system. I really think that's one of the areas where we can get
in early and do some work on prevention and early intervention.
Mr WILLIE - We have an early parenting support program operating in each of our areas. It
is based on the NEWPIN model, the NEWPIN program that was operating in Launceston
prior to the roll out of the early parenting support program. It works with the parent. I
think it relates very well to the report that Alison has already referred to, in the UK. One
of the key issues is to break that generation-parenting cycle that occurs.
I have made a point of attending all the celebrations that occur at NEWPIN at the end of
each year, after they've worked for 12 months with many of these young mums, and I
have to say that it is the most emotional experience that I have had in my four years in
the Department of Health and Human Services because, like Brian, I have a background
in education.
I think one of the things that was brought home to me very early in this work was that
many young mums in particular, who have had traumatic backgrounds themselves, have
never been taught how to parent. Many of them have a number of children and simple
things such as learning how to play with their children are things they have never
witnessed, never had modelled for them and never been taught how to do. So the
NEWPIN model, the early parenthood support model, is about working with those
parents with their children in tow. In Launceston it operates out of the old Ravenswood
High site that is now owned by the Zion Church. They have quite a large facility and
they operate it a bit like a family home. There are cooking activities, play activities those sorts of things - where the parents are taught how to engage with their children.
Some have been there 12 months; I think the longest participant has been there around
five years - so for those young mums to stand up in front of suits like me and talk about
how their life has changed as a result of engagement with that program really gets to the
point of that report from the UK. You have to work around the parenting issues and you
have to teach people how to parent because they've never had that opportunity in order to
maintain the family and build resilience and strength within families. All reports tell us
that taking children into statutory care is generally a bad outcome for those children in all
dimensions, whether it be education, social outcomes or health outcomes, so we really
have to address the core issue of building the strength of families, and that is a key
program in addressing that issue.
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Mr BYRNE - The other strength is that the young mums themselves actually support each
other. I always remember one of the best things I heard about NEWPIN when I was in
Victoria was where a mother had been reassaulted by her abusive boyfriend and rather
than call the police she rang the other women of the NEWPIN group and they came and
sorted him out.
Laughter.
Mr BYRNE - So it builds that strength and resilience in a positive way.
CHAIR - I was actually thinking more about before they become mums and parents. I am
looking at some of the data that has been provided - a statistical picture in Tasmania
around neglect -and it is scary stuff when you look at that.
Ms McCROSSEN - I think we really have good data now. The Kids come First database is
a really useful resource and you would want to use that for some of those stats on the rate
of teenage pregnancy, for example CHAIR - The rate of breastfeeding across different socioeconomic groups.
Ms McCROSSEN - Yes, breastfeeding, smoking, drinking during pregnancy. You can get
that data now, down to the level of local government and suburb area, and we have used
that data in all our area planning to be much more focused in what needs to happen and
so on.
It is absolutely true that Tasmania has a really scary rate of teenage pregnancy. In some
of our suburbs it is absolutely horrific and we certainly think that is one of the real key
risk factors - we know it is one of the key risk factors of the kids coming into the system.
The jury is still out on whether or not you can address that with education programs at
school. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that you don't really engage until you are in
a situation where you need it, so I think that would be something to talk to Education
about. It is not just a sex education problem, it is much more broader.
Mr BYRNE - I am also responsible for child growth and parenting, and we are having active
debates in that space about how do they best engage and build on the program, See you
at Home - for mums aged 15 to 19 - and actually extend that. I strongly urge members to
read the report that Alison is alluding to because it talks about that very issue - if you
don't capture that group and you don't teach them parenting, you are just going to have
intergenerational problems
Mr WIGHTMAN - To concur with Mike about NEWPIN, and rest in peace Heather Slater,
who did an outstanding job up there and was the kindergarten aide when I was at kinder many generations ago.
Laughter.
Mr WIGHTMAN - My question today is about the allocation or the FTE of Child Protection
workers across the State and how you arrive at that. How are the teams set up and how
are they allocated? Also, what is a typical team, what does it look like?
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Ms McCROSSEN - We have teams for different functions, so we have an intake team. I
guess the numbers of workers on each team varies - and I can only talk for the south-east
- but there is a team leader and underneath that team leader would be probably five or six
workers. So they basically manage the incoming applications.
Mr WIGHTMAN - What is the skill and experience mix of that team?
Ms McCROSSEN - We have made a deliberate move to have our most experienced or
senior staff in the area of notification take-in - because that's where the critical decisions
are made as to whether or not we're involved.
Ms JACOB - That was a key recommendation at the Child Protection review, that you
needed to have your best people making that initial decision about whether or not the
children go into the system.
Ms McCROSSEN - You would probably see the experiences across the other teams but I
guess we need quite independent staff to be the first point of contact for the public and
stakeholders.
The response team also have quite experienced staff because they're knocking on the
door - I guess exposing positions - and again the team leader managing that team would
probably have five staff.
Then we have four teams of case management workers - these are for children who are
subject to orders already - and again the ratio runs to about five workers. In terms of
skills and experience, as we recruit we try to match to any of the team leaders, skills and
experience available compared with the level of experience we already have in the team
so that they are not managing all brand new staff coming in who have just been inducted.
Mr WIGHTMAN - Under a team leader is there another senior position within that team?
So it is the team leader and then the caseworkers?
Mr WILLIE - We try to share the experience across the teams.
Mr WIGHTMAN - The first part of my question is about allocation of FTEs across the
State.
Mr BYRNE - There are 146. If you exclude all the other people who work in Child
Protection - administrative support, et cetera - there are 146 FTEs and then divided by
four, because through the work the KPMG did, they basically indicated the areas were
about equitable.
Over time that will have to change because some of our demand is shifting, particularly
in Angie's area in the south-east, which is under the pump a little bit because they cover
areas of poor socioeconomic demographics. So it is a work in progress, but we basically
try to work it so that those FTEs are divided by four. It is around 35 to 36 staff per each
area who are doing the actual child protection work.
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Ms McCROSSEN - Operationally we move positions to teams, depending on the demand at
the time. We have needed to build up our intake because we have such a large
proportion of applications coming through and so we vary that depending on time.
Mr WILLIE - In addition to that there is the senior practice consultant in each of the areas
and a lot of talk has been around the standard of practice. So we have an onsite practice
consultant that workers can go to for advice and consultations when they have complex
cases, and who do reviews when issues arise as to the management of the case or
complaints have been made. I think they are really key parties of concerns and are a
great assistance to the Child Protection managers.
Ms WHITE - One of the things that have been brought to our attention is that perhaps the
team leader shouldn't have their own case load so that they can give more) support to
case workers under their watch.
Ms McCROSSEN - They don't.
Ms WHITE - Is that a model that you can ever see yourself working towards?
Ms McCROSSEN - I guess generally we do. Certainly our team leaders will manage cases
when staff are on leave, but they are not responsible for a constant case load. We are
often stuck in their dilemma of having children that we are responsible for and staff
sickness leads to their having leave for short periods of time Mr WIGHTMAN - But team leaders aren't assigned cases in that regard?
Ms McCROSSEN - No.
Ms WHITE - Okay, so that was a misunderstanding.
Ms PETRUSMA - Because the CPSU said the team leaders had up to 40 cases.
Ms WHITE - That is a misunderstanding that has been brought to the committee.
Mr WIGHTMAN - It is good to get that balance, anyway.
Mr BYRNE - I can actually say that that isn't the case. I am happy to go on record - I've
seen the stats. It is a bit like teaching - and you guys would probably accept this - it is
important to keep your hand in with case work. You do not want your team mates to be
just administrators; you want them to get involved in case work, preferably alongside, to
give support.
Ms WHITE - The other thing that was brought up was whether there is capacity for an
administrative person to assist each team so that the case workers don't have as much
paperwork and they can do more field work. Is that something that is possible?
Mr WILLIE - In relation to that we have introduced a data management system in child
protection statewide, so a lot of the work that was done by paper is now done online,
electronically. We are going through a re-culturing exercise about how work gets done.
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There is no shortage of admin support. There hasn't been any shortage of admin support
at a local level in Child Protection; it is just how that support is used.
Ms WHITE - Which is why we need to get the other side of the story.
Mr WILLIE - I think the introduction of more efficient electronic systems will enable the
work to be done much more efficiently and the information to be shared.
Ms McCROSSEN - And I guess the workers can't delegate file information, and that is a
large part of our role, documenting what we do.
Ms PETRUSMA - The admin person was more to make the phone calls, set up the
appointments, organise the support workers and everything else - do the basic stuff so it
frees them up to actually get out and about.
Mr BYRNE - I think we have too many admin people in the Child Protection budget. If we
could free up some of that dollar figure we could do something else in the support role.
That is basically what the review is trying to do about that.
I do think that Child Protection workers should be responsible for their own
administration. We have to explore ways to make it easier. We are in discussions with
our IT people at times about Ipads, so instead of having to come back to offices, they can
do their note taking in real time and live time - that's the age we live in and we have to
look at how we apply technology to free up some of those.
CHAIR - The complexity of the case mix is taken into account in terms of the caseload?
Ms STURGES - Yes.
Mr BYRNE - Ideally. There are times when things happen. That is when you have to try to
make sure you are actually managing that from an area of Child Protection manager
space because there are times - we have peaks and troughs - when people are under the
pump on a range of issues.
Ms McCROSSEN - There is case complexity and skill and experience as well. So the case
basically varies depending on how long a worker is mentoring.
CHAIR - Maybe we'll come back to mentoring later on, which is a thing that has been
brought up. It is probably over to you, Matthew, to do that.
Mr GROOM - I ask a question of Angela, and it relates to some of the observations that
have been made about frustrations at the case-worker level. One of the points that has
been made is that it is very bureaucratic, very hierarchical, and a frustration with
decisions having to be made up the chain. Could you describe what the level of relative
authority is, delegated authority, at the different levels?
Ms McCROSSEN - It obviously depends on the decision that has to be made but certainly
we have quite a robust quality assurance process for major decisions around removing
children, reunifying children, case plans and directions. I would see that as a
collaborative decision rather than a decision being removed from the worker so quite
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often, as a Child Protection worker, you would be consulting with your team leader and
seeing a practice consultant around those issues from the beginning and then having
input into that. In terms of the decisions about funding allocations, that needs to go
through certain processes and certainly Child Protection workers are aware that we have
guidelines for what is a reasonable expectation in care planning.
Mr GROOM - What funding decisions could be made at the case-worker level?
Ms McCROSSEN - None.
Mr GROOM - At what point in the hierarchy are they made?
Ms McCROSSEN - The team leader can make a decision to spend money up to $500 per
child.
Mr GROOM - Is that $500 per child a year?
Mr BYRNE - Anything more than $500 or an item requiring six counselling sessions needs
to be authorised.
Ms McCROSSEN - We have a panel now of a number of team leaders and Child Protection
managers to make decisions about those higher cost items, so that is up to $2 000.
Mr GROOM - At what level does that happen?
Ms McCROSSEN - Anything above $500 goes to the team leaders and Child Protection
managers.
Ms PETRUSMA - In what sort of time frame are those decisions made? We have heard
from some foster carers that they could be waiting for $40 000 - they are waiting for
large amounts of money for a long time. How quick is this process to get this approved?
Mr BYRNE - I can say, because I was the architect of this funding program - and I think Mal
and Angie agree with it - the systems in place were not robust enough. People were
basically overspending money. We have tightened up on that deliberately because we
know there is a limited resource and we have to make sure it goes to the right place. We
have set up the funding panels in the areas, which came on the back of the change to
foster care payments and which have been designed to include all daily living needs, so
that the only time we get requests for additional money should be when it is
extraordinary or beyond the pale, like orthodontic work. We have set up panels in each
of the areas that meet fortnightly, so the longest you should have to wait for a decision is
13 days. That is the benchmark. Obviously there may be occasions where the funding
panel decides, 'I have that cost and I need you to go away and get another cost'.
Ms JACOB - That is actually where the decision should be made, at that level of the local
panel. When I came into the system five years ago all those decisions came up to head
office and were made through layers of hierarchy, which was absolutely ridiculous
because those people did not have a clue about the kids or the families or anything else.
So we have really made a conscious effort to try to push that back down, but it does come
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to a point where you have to have some kind of financial accountability, otherwise we are
going to run out of money. You do have to have some checks and balances.
Ms PETRUSMA - Some foster carers have what they see as really high-needs kids and they
have some in their care who have been grandfathered and other new ones they are taking
in whom they perceive as being at the same level of care but they are not getting the same
amount of reimbursement. It has been an issue for them and they feel that there is no
incentive now for them to take on really high-level-needs children any more because they
are not going to be grandfathered; they are going to be paid a lesser rate. Is that being
looked at?
Mr PHILLIPS - We knew there would be some dissatisfaction with the change. There is
quite a culture with the previous method of funding carers and there were some
inconsistencies and this improves consistency. We're certainly conscious in the areas
with funding of people who have been used to a certain income and trying to manage
that and not bring too substantial a change to someone's situation. We knew that there
would be a little bit of dissatisfaction, but this model brings more consistency and equity.
Mr BYRNE - Can I just say with some pride, that Tasmania is the second-ranked State on
the highest foster carer payments? My take on a lot of those funding submissions and
those funding arrangements is that they are quite historical. People were very strong in
their lobbying and probably the extra funding they received was actually inequitable with
other foster carers. So this process has been brought in so that everyone is on an even
field. It's very simple. The assessments are very simple and the pay rates include every
daily activity. Mike will remember that when he first took over he was getting foster
parents asking for 50 cents for bus tickets and it was actually a culture whereby
everything was acquired for them and that was an expectation. Mal was saying
yesterday that foster parents are still coming in asking for movie tickets, but that's part of
the normal care arrangements for kids. So it's a culture change we've got to move as well
in this and at the same time teach our staff that they live in the real world; there is an
economic bottom line and you have to make rational decisions on that.
Ms PETRUSMA - Speech pathology seems to be something that we've heard about a few
times, in that there are a lot of children receiving speech pathology but it seems that over
the last few months a lot of these children aren't receiving it anymore. Is that something
that's not being funded anymore?
Mr PHILLIPS - No, it is still being funded.
Ms PETRUSMA - It's just that we've had four foster carers say the same thing.
Mr PHILLIPS - It's not unique to the profession of child protection, but particularly in the
more remote and regional areas it's difficult to attract particular professions. We've
worked hard in the north-west to attract speech therapists but we've had difficulties. I
mean, they need to be available; there are waiting lists.
Ms PETRUSMA - No, it's more about the department not paying for it.
Ms JACOB - Is anybody aware of funding limits for that?
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Mr WILLIE - No. I think what you might be alluding to is that there's been a change in
children's therapy in this State and we've now ramped up the delivery of children's
therapy services. In the north, for example, we had a child development unit in child
health and parenting, and as a result of the children's therapy review that function was
transferred to the non-government sector, namely St Giles, because St Giles was the
provider here in the south, so they are now one of the biggest providers of children's
therapy services and that's been a really great outcome. The feedback from St Giles is
that now people can be referred there, have their assessment and diagnosis and go
straight into services, whereas before there was another layer of process and huge
waiting lists and so on, so it's actually improved the throughput.
As to speech pathology per se, if the children are attending a public school there are
speech pathologists in public schools and they would access the speech pathology
service through the school system. Prior to attending school if they had identified a
potential delay Mr WIGHTMAN - I believe some of these kids weren't at public schools, but I could be
corrected on that.
Mr WILLIE - Weren't in public schools?
Ms PETRUSMA - Yes, and they were previously funded under their care plans but now they
aren't receiving funding.
Mr WILLIE - Obviously I'm not privy to information about whether private schools provide
speech pathology services.
Mr PHILLIPS - I couldn't imagine that, in a case where speech pathology is required and it's
not available through some sort of public system, Child Protection would refuse to fund
that.
Mr BYRNE - I think it's fair to say that one of the things that I discovered when I came three
years ago - and all of us are fairly new - is that Child Protection is very good at funding
things when there is a need, but not at accessing universal services; in other words,
actually funding speech pathology in lieu of doing the hard work of making Health
respond to that. We've been quite vocal with our other colleagues that that is their
responsibility. We will advocate, as any parent would, to get that but we're not
necessarily going to fund it - or double fund, if you like - we just want equity of access.
We are also working on the Children and Youth Agenda to ensure that kids in care do go
to the front of every services queue. That's what we're trying to work for, so it's not seen
as a Child Protection kid, it's our kid. I know it sounds as if there's a bit of rhetoric in
that, but I actually mean that and if we're serious about it, they're the kind of levers that
we need to push, rather than have foster parents keep coming back to Child Protection
saying, 'You don't pay.'
Ms JACOB - Can I just also make the point that at a national level a research report has just
been completed that's going to the community services ministers on 16 December and
that provides a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction analysis of the financial and non-financial
support available to carers. So there will be a public document that will make it really
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clear what the comparisons are and what a benchmark should be for a reasonable level of
support.
Mr GROOM - When will that be happening?
Ms JACOB - I expect that the ministers will release it after their meeting on 16 December,
so it will be available. From my point of view, that provides a really good benchmark
for basically saying, 'If there are States that are doing it better, we ought to all aspire to
that level of provision'. We are not just talking about financial support but all of the
other levels of support that ought to be available to carers. From my point of view, one
of the things I wanted to recommend was that we make good use of those national
research reports and when they are available use those as the basis for what we want to
recommend for the Tasmanian system and where we want to go, because I actually think,
as Mark said, that there are probably some areas where we are doing quite well and
others where we are doing not so well. I think carers should have access to that
information, and one of the recommendations from that national work is that there
should be a database really easily accessible that any carer anywhere can go to and find
out what they are entitled to, what the benefits are and to make sure that they are getting
all the stuff that they need.
Mr PHILLIPS - I just want to say something quickly on Mr Groom's comment about
decision-making and his notion that Child Protection workers are waiting for decisions to
disappear and the bureaucracy to make them. The reality, whether it is about funding,
whether the children go home or plans for children, is that it's the Child Protection
worker who meets with the family, knows the needs of the carer, does all the work and
makes a recommendation. They go to different delegations in management and
generally those recommendations are followed because they know the need, so it's not as
if they're removed from the decision-making process. Sometimes they're tweaked but
generally the worker makes the decision initially. I just wanted to make that point.
CHAIR - Good. We have had quite a few foster carers and grandparents appear before us
and a number of issues have been raised. Brian, I will hand over to you.
Mr WIGHTMAN - How are we going with numbers of foster carers and the recruitment of
people to foster caring? What ongoing training do we give them?
Mr BYRNE - In terms of recruitment, we have 450 kids in actual foster care and probably an
active list of around 400 foster-parents. It is fair to say that we have an ageing
demographic, which is a serious problem. We are facing a serious fork in the road if we
don't do something to get the generation X and Y seeing it as their responsibility to come
in because they're not coming in.
Ms JACOB - That's not unique to Tasmania - that's Australia-wide.
Mr BYRNE - You would be aware that we used the Real Carers Really Needed campaign.
We could have done that better. We could have done some of the recruitment better, but
we didn't get too many people wanting to foster the kind of kids who need to be fostered.
You all remember the advertisements. They all wanted the little boy with the green top
and the curly hair and all that sort of nonsense. They didn't want the spotty adolescent
with the skateboard; no-one was interested in that sort of kid. We have a problem in that
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space, so part of what we have to do is look at how we do this. If the inquiry has any
ideas or can make a recommendation about how we bolster this essential foster care pool,
we would be eternally grateful.
Ms JACOB - We would recognise that there is a need for a level of support beyond the
normal fostering and that probably what we need is a new sort of being, if you like, who
would almost be a professional foster carer, for the children who are too complex, too
difficult and too demanding to be picked up. At the moment what we have in our out-ofhome care system is basically foster care and kinship care at the bottom of the pyramid
and at the top we have established our therapeutic residential carer who really is
supposed to deal with the really tricky, difficult adolescents who, frankly, demand a
really high level of intervention. We don't have a lot of layers in between, and this isn't a
uniquely Tasmanian problem; I suspect any system is going to need to really think more
about the layers in between and that will be an area where I would see there is a need for
us to develop our service because you're not going to get the average foster carer who
either has the skills or experience or is prepared to take on some of those kids.
Ms PETRUSMA - Would that be something that could be addressed through the NGOs?
Ms JACOB - Probably. Again, I think it would have to be well resourced. The people
would have to have the expertise and I think the people we have involved in our
therapeutic residential care are doing an excellent job. We have brought new expertise to
the State and I suspect there are certainly NGOs that would be very capable of running
some kind of professional foster care.
Ms PETRUSMA - Like professional therapy carer or something?
Ms JACOBS - Not so much therapeutic but more intensive. It is going to be a job that you
have to do as opposed to doing it as a volunteer.
CHAIR - Alison, I was really interested in that concept. I have been thinking about the
whole training of foster carers because the needs of foster children are very complex and
you would think it would require a level of training and education commensurate with
the complexity of the task. I am just wondering whether there might be best practice
models from around the world for training, or even university training. We really need
high-level training.
Ms JACOB - We probably ought to talk about the training and assessment that occurs
because it is actually quite intensive. One of the things with the recruitment campaign
was that there were an awful lot of people who made the initial call, but when they went
through the process they recognised that this was going to be really tough.
CHAIR - Yes, we heard about the drop off and all that.
Ms JACOBS - We do a fair bit of training in terms of assessment but we would absolutely
agree that there is a need for levels of additional training.
CHAIR - I really support that concept. I think it is terrific.
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Ms JACOBS - I keep harking back to the national stuff because I am really keen that we
actually leverage off work that has been done at a national level. One of the things that
has been identified is a need for some carers to get a lot more training around kids who
have been either the subject of sexual abuse or are exhibiting sexualised behaviour. That
is one of the really tough ones for any carer to deal with. That has been identified as
something where probably nationally we need to develop a training program that can be
available to carers, whether foster carers or professional carers. Things like that could be
done and certainly none of us want to put carers in the position where they are ill
prepared.
Mr GROOM - Do you make any assessment in the training?
Mr BYRNE - Obviously there is an internal screen. There is lots of internal activity, but it is
patchy thereafter. We fund Foster Care Association of Tasmania to do training and they
often broker with the Australian Childhood Foundation to do some training with our
carers. It is an area that we need to build upon.
Mr GROOM - You say you have training programs. Do you make, for the want of a better
description, qualitative assessments of how someone is going in the training?
Ms McCROSSEN - Yes. They complete the training first and then there is an assessment
process. That can often take about six weeks because there are levels of competency
around that. It is not only self-reported from the carers around what they think, feel or
would do; it is also gathering evidence from other people, referees and medical
questionnaires.
Mr GROOM - So what percentage would not make it?
Ms McCROSSEN - There are a lot that drop out at the training level. In terms of the
assessment, quite a few would be sent back for further clarification, particularly people
who are coming into the area who have experienced trauma themselves. We are
suggesting that they might need to link in with a counsellor or a therapist to deal with
that before coming back. Obviously we are not saying that they would be unable to care
for children but we want to make sure that they have dealt with their own issues.
Mr GROOM - Are there people that you would say Ms McCROSSEN - Yes.
Mr GROOM - Is it a lot or is it a small percentage?
Ms STURGES - Area south sits with me and I have had a discussion at work about this and
obviously there is variance in the figure, but it would be about 10 per cent over the last
12 months.
Mr BYRNE - One of the things we are going to do next year is establish a Tasmanian
accreditation panel for carers. That is building also the non-government sector as well
and having standard approval. We are in discussions with FCAT and the Commissioner
for Children who would sit on that panel, but essentially I would chair that panel and
sign off on all carers. Part of that would be an expectation that not only would we
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oversight the assessment but we would approve people for certain age ranges of kids.
Equally we will develop a training package because unfortunately some foster parents
claim that they do not need it. They have been doing this for 20 years so they do not
need training, but sadly they do. We have to turn that paradigm around, so part of the
accreditation would be that we would give three-year or five-year approvals or
something like that and you would have to maintain your level of professional
development. Again, it would be a resource that we would have to provide.
Ms JACOB - One of the areas that we think would benefit from further development is the
capacity to make more permanent placements for kids who come in through the foster
care system but really the decision has been made that they're never going to go home. It
would be appropriate for a more permanent ongoing commitment to be made. One of
the amendments to the legislation that we made in the last round of amendments was
capacity to make permanent placements for that group of children. The problem is that it
is a really time-intensive decision to make because you have to be absolutely certain that
the natural parents know everything about it and that the potential carers are really aware
of what they're taking on and what the commitment is going to be. One of the areas
where I think resourcing could be very well expended would be to outsource that to a
separate team of people whose job it is to do that work, because - as Andrea will attest it's something that takes a long time and you have to do it really well. If we were able to
do that, I suspect we would be in a position to increase the number of permanent
placements that we could make. At the moment we have the capacity to do it; we're just
not doing so many. We're doing many, but we want to be able to increase that. There
are some carers who would be much more willing to take on a permanent placement,
almost akin to adoption, recognising that at the moment we adopt four kids a year, or
something like that.
Mr BYRNE - Five last year.
Mr GROOM - So what's the legal status about permanent placement?
Mr HARBOTTLE - They are still on a guardianship order.
Ms JACOB - They still receive benefits, support and so forth. It's not like adoption where
now you're on your own. It does offer an opportunity. We actually have adoption staff
who could be doing more work in this area. Some of the other States and Territories
have basically said, 'Let's stop putting a whole heap of focus on inter-country adoptions
where we're dealing with really tiny numbers. Let's put that effort into more permanent
places for children who are in their own systems.'
Mr BYRNE - I went to a national committee on inter-country adoption and in every State
and Territory it is reducing. There was at that meeting a list of children with special
needs from the USA needing placement. I said unfortunately I've got the same list in
Tasmania and I can't get carers, so we're trying to open the eyes of people who come to
us to talk about inter-country adoptions, that there are other areas where they may be able
to assist in that care.
Ms JACOB - It's also a bit of a class issue. Middle-class people adopt; working-class people
foster. There's a real cultural divide there. What we're trying to do is work at ways of
breaking that down, saying to people there may be opportunities for this child to be
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permanently placed with you. You would continue to receive benefits and support.
They would not be legally your child - they are still on an order - but they would for all
intents and purposes be with you for the rest of their childhood and hopefully
transitioned into adulthood. We think that’s an area where we could really do some
good.
Mr GROOM - What legal protection would the foster parents have in that context? If an
order for permanent care is made, can that be undone?
Mr HARBOTTLE - No, the amendment we made was to limit re-litigation. So once a
long-term order has been granted in general, and that can include a transfer of
guardianship to a third party, it removes the parents from that re-litigation. They can't
keep seeking a variation of the order. They have to prove to the court first that
circumstances have substantially changed before it will even be heard. So it does put it
on that next footing whereby it's removed.
Mr GROOM - It's not a complete Mr HARBOTTLE - It's not like adoption, it's not a complete cut, but adoption is a big legal
and mental step.
Ms JACOB - We certainly do have some carers who have indicated that they would like
their involvement with that child to be much more long term. It's in the child's interests
to do that as long as there's a really clear decision that the child will not go home.
Mr BYRNE - The numbers are low at the moment and that's deliberate. I know you've had
some foster parents coming forward suggesting that they wanted to pursue third-party
guardianship. It's a deliberate decision by us to actually go slow with those cases where
it's clear that a child is not going home and there are no access issues. That's why we can
concentrate on those clear cases where the parents and everybody are accepting that this
is the right thing. Some of the foster parents have wanted to go that way and we're
saying there are too many problems with the actual carers. We also have the issue of
being mindful that indigenous children are caught up in that space as well, so we have to
tread very carefully.
Ms PETRUSMA - What about if their siblings are being looked after by another foster
carer? Under the charter of rights they are supposed to have access. If the foster carer
has guardianship of their sibling, can they still access their siblings?
Ms McCROSSEN - That would be part of the assessment, I guess, in terms of whether the
connectedness still going to be there with other important people in their lives.
Ms PETRUSMA - You know the case that we've talked about a few times where this girl had
been trying to see her brother for the last four years and still has not been able to see him
and it is because of guardianship issues and everything else.
Ms STURGES - Just speaking generically - and I am aware of the case - I think that what
Angie was saying is true, that we make assessments about individual children at the time.
I guess in that particular case what I can say is that circumstances changed over the
period of time and sometimes siblings having contact is problematic and can be harmful,
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particularly to younger siblings. So depending on their psychological state and wellbeing
it's far better to have constant contact or interrupt the contact for a period of time if it's
going to be detrimental to the other child. It's a very difficult decision to make at times
but I guess it's always up for review and I am happy to say that that particular case was
reviewed and access was recommenced. So in actual fact that can happen. It is just that
the context is sometimes missing and it is about harm to all children and particularly the
sibling in that case.
Mr BYRNE - There is a national standard that talks about connectedness with kin, including
siblings. As a policy we endorse that. As a practice there will be times where someone
makes a call that is subject to a judgment call.
Ms PETRUSMA - So do you see that kinship carers are going to be the way of foster care in
the future? I know interstate there are rapidly increasing numbers and more kinship
carers than foster carers.
Mr BYRNE - If I had sat here four or five years ago I would have said Tasmania should put
more energy into kinship care. I think we are probably about right. I think that we do
enough looking at kinship, but the difficult thing for a kinship carer is they've got a
relationship with the mother or father so they've got the double whammy and
unfortunately the support we are able to give them at the moment is limited.
Ms PETRUSMA - What would be the percentage at the moment of kinships carers?
Mr O'BYRNE - For out-of-home care, about 40 per cent would be in kinship care.
Ms PETRUSMA - And is that because you knew there were systemic issues in that family
anyway and that kinship care was not appropriate?
Mr BYRNE - Yes, sadly. You would be aware of your colleagues' report about
intergenerational crime where we are actually seeing a fourth and fifth generation of kids
coming into our system and their kin is not supportive.
Ms JACOB - There are obviously exceptions to that - the Aboriginal community is one
where we really want to grow kinship care. We have already had a lot of discussions
with the TAC about that and we are looking at a funding proposal they have provided to
us at the moment in terms of basically outsourcing responsibility for a proportion of outof-home care to the TAC for Aboriginal children. There is really good evidence that it
would probably be a lot better for the Aboriginal community to manage their own issues
around children in out-of-home care. If you asked me where the areas were where I don't
think we have made good progress in the State in child protection over the last five years
or so I would say that was one and we need to do a lot more work on that.
Ms PETRUSMA - One of the issues that a foster carer raised was that she looked after a
child for two-and-a-half years, the child went back to the grandmother, things went pearshaped and there were a lot of issues there, like attachment disorder for the child.
Ms JACOB - The worst thing for children - and I know people will support me on this - is
multiple placements and multiple changes and that's something we all want to avoid. I
guess you are always really conscious of that when you are making decisions. We also
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know that there are times when it is better for the child to be cared for by a family
member and sometimes you do have to make that difficult decision.
Ms McCROSSEN - I guess for families coming through notification phases you make an
assessment at that time that a kinship option is appropriate and able to meet the child's
needs. If that changes after a period of time that's tragic but I guess we need to put a
priority on going to family first and making that decision.
Ms PETRUSMA - This is something that has been raised by two people so far: is there a
culture that if the foster carer is seen as getting too close to the child or something, the
child might Mr PHILLIPS - There is often a difficult reality with children in foster care that they reach a
certain age and they reject foster care, albeit with all the best support and best carers, and
they want to go back with their family.
Ms JACOB - That is very common with adolescents.
Mr PHILLIPS - It is very difficult for foster carers.
Ms PETRUSMA - They see the department remove the child - they might have looked after
her for 10 years and then they had no ongoing relationship. Legally they had looked after
the child for 10 years from birth and then they were not allowed to see her on birthdays
or anything like that.
Mr PHILLIPS - Often that is the difficulty with the parent and the parent's response and you
try to negotiate that and recognise that relationship and maintain it. The reality,
sometimes because of distance, sometimes because of the nature of the family, is that you
cannot maintain that relationship, but certainly we recognise that it is important. We also
acknowledge how difficult that is for the foster carer too.
CHAIR - Okay, thank you for that. We will now have a short break.
Short suspension.
CHAIR - One of the terms of reference was about the integration of service delivery,
iterating some cooperation. I would be interested in comment around how the
government agencies are working together and also how the government and nongovernment agencies integrate as well. Alison, would you like to kick that off?
Ms JACOB - Okay. I think integration and collaboration across agencies is probably the
most difficult thing to achieve. It is really good rhetoric to talk about and everybody
wants to do it and everybody has the best intentions of doing it but it is actually a really
hard thing to do, particularly when you have people who are line-managed by different
managers and where there are different budget streams that don't necessarily coincide and
support collaborative practice.
I think we have done an awful lot, and people have talked about things such as the area
advisory groups where I think there is a genuine view about bringing people to the table
and really working together to identify gaps and needs and do the planning. I think, too,
some of the initiatives such as the Child and Family Centres offer a really good
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opportunity and certainly they have been jointly managed between DPAC, DoE and
DHHS. People around this table chair some of the local enabling groups, and people
from Education chair some of the others and they work collaboratively in sorting out
those agendas. I think there are some really good examples of where that interagency
work is beginning to bear fruit.
I think having a Minister for Children is a really good idea if they able to really drive the
agenda around children that occurs in the various agencies. One of the things I think is a
very positive sign under the portfolio of the Minister for Children is the discussion that
has been going on between the minister and the CEOs of Education, Health and Human
Services and Police to create a senior position that would basically traverse all the
department silos, and that person would have the capacity to direct policy and follow up
on accountability across the department boundaries. For example, that person would be
responsible to all three of those CEOs for improved outcomes for kids, and those CEOs
would all have joint responsibilities for some of those outcomes. So the DHHS secretary
may well have equal responsibility for improving school attendance, as well as the CEO
of Education, and I think it is only when you get to that level of leadership and
accountability that you will get genuine top-down-driven intent to break down
boundaries between agencies.
So I am really excited by the thought that there will be that position in place. We know,
for example, that if we really want to do something about improving outcomes for
children in care, which are absolutely deplorable in most areas - and that is an Australiawide and international issue - we must have the capacity to work with our colleagues in a
very real way in education about attendance rates, retention rates and early intervention,
all those sorts of things.
You really have to start to look structurally at the way the system operates and how we
can do business differently, as opposed to simply saying we rely on people at the
grassroots level being able to get on and work well together, which does happen. That
kind of personality-driven approach, people working together and being able to jointly
case manage and so forth, certainly does happen but we think it needs to be more than
that.
The Minister for Children has to have some teeth and some positions that allow that to
happen. That would be a team of people jointly funded by Police, Education and Health
and Human Services, that really would allow for the first time a real agenda to be driven.
I think that is one of the really important things. Underneath that, of course, is the
agenda for children and young people, and that consultation is going on at the moment.
If you look at those strategies, they are all things that will mean we do business
differently. They are not about every agency doing what they are doing and then we'll
talk about it and try to sweep it all up in a document that makes it look as if we are doing
heaps of stuff. We are not going to make any changes unless we can do business
differently and that basically means working not only between agencies but also within
the various silos that exist within agencies. For example, a really important one for child
protection is the often quite significant tension between Mental Health Services and
Child Protection Services, and we have to work across those boundaries as well. We
need to work with our police colleagues in some of the issues, and things such as
interagency support teams, which no doubt they will talk to you about, are a great way of
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being able to get more interagency work going as well. So I guess I would say that there
is lots of stuff which I think is very promising and working well, but if we're really
serious about it, it's going to mean some really significant structural and organisational
changes and, at the end of the day, people who are responsible for agencies actually
accepting that they have joint responsibility for outcomes across departmental
boundaries.
Mr GROOM - You have identified a couple of things there that are organisational-type
arrangements. Do you think there's a cultural issue with it as well?
Ms JACOB - Absolutely.
Mr GROOM - A mind shift, because one of the comments, I think it was in the New South
Wales inquiry into Child Protection, and they identified that as actually one of the
fundamental problems with information exchange. Can you talk about that? Is there a
cultural reluctance, historically?
Ms JACOB - I think there is a cultural reluctance in some areas, despite the best intentions of
lots of people to shift that culture, against being involved in more than you have to
within your own departmental boundaries. Or else people sometimes interpret working
collaboratively as, 'How can I shift my work into someone else's area.' I think that
getting genuine collaboration really means that you have to think about some of the
fundamental structural issues. One of the key things, I think, is budget. If you know that
you are working within a really limited budget within your line management area, and
that's intended for a certain set of purposes, it's really hard to shift that into working a bit
more expansively or working outside those areas. So in the Child and Family Centres I
think ultimately we have to be looking at a budget for the services that occur within each
Child and Family Centre as opposed to simply every line agency still being budgeted the
same way and they just happen to co-locate in Child and Family Centres. That's a
massive shift.
How do you get cultural change? I think that one of the ways you do that is professional
learning and one of the most significant things I think you can do is bring people from
different professions and different agencies together into some sort of joint professional
learning exercise. One of the most powerful tools is family partnership training. That's a
brilliant professional learning program that takes quite a long time and it's a very
expensive thing to do, but my experience is that where you've had teachers, social
workers, child protection workers and police people working in the same family
partnership training program, not only do they learn a lot about how to work with
families, but they also start to see things from each other's perspective and you break
down some of that cultural stuff.
Mr GROOM - Again - and I'm not sure whether it was in the same report - they were talking
about this issue and they spoke about case review. So it's important you undertake case
reviews and you do that across agencies, so you retrospectively look at a particular case
experience, and have all the people in the room that may have been involved in that
particular case to get feelings in that way. Is that something that you've thought about?
Ms JACOB - I think there are two levels there. One is: should people from other agencies
and different professions be involved in some of the critical decisions that Child
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Protection people make about whether or not to recommend that a child is taken into
care, for example. People like Angela can probably talk about that. In terms of good
practice, I think it's a really good thing to have different people's views and to not get
kind of 'group think' happening. That can happen in small groups of Child Protection
people. It really is helpful to have people who can come in and say, 'Hang on a minute, I
question that decision,' I think that's healthy. As far as what you do when something
goes wrong, as it does and as it will, and anybody who works in the system, as I said
earlier, should expect that there will be adverse incidents that happen, I think it is very
helpful to be able to look at those circumstances from a more formal perspective and
having external people. Certainly where we've had child death reviews we've done that.
We have included people such as the paediatrician on the child death review process, the
Commissioner for Children, external experts who are able to bring a different perspective
and community members because it is very possible for the child protection system to be
defensive and inward thinking, to know that they're going to get pilloried, so they might
as well try to keep it as in-house as possible, and that's not healthy either.
I think one of the really positive things which is about to happen is the new legislation
that was to be brought into Parliament this year, but was postponed because, I think,
there was a view that there had been so much spotlight on Child Protection that it wasn't
a wise time to do it. But that is to establish a child death and serious injury council and
that would be an independent place in which there would be scrutiny of all first-level
reviews of Child Protection of any death or serious injury that occurs.
One of the problems is that we have review after review after review of individual cases,
and what tends to happen is that you just seem to get the same recommendations come up
time and time again. I can remember David Fanning saying years ago that you do one
child death review, you have done them all in one sense, because they are likely to come
up with a very similar set of recommendations. But what is lacking is who actually
scrutinises to make sure those recommendations have been put in place?
When a coroner brings down a report about a practice which has led, for example, to
children dying - and a really good example of that is children who have died as a result of
bed sharing. That is often recorded as being a sudden infant death and that is often
associated with children who are sharing their parents' bed. If they do bring down
recommendations, who actually scrutinises whether or not there has been any attention
taken of that? What sort of public education role is there to make sure that those
recommendations are publicised so people actually know that it is a really dangerous
thing to bring your little baby into bed with you?
This new child death and serious injury council will basically make sure that any report
by a coroner, any report by a child death review committee, any report by any other
external source is basically subject to a second-tier scrutiny so that we can make sure that
recommendations are followed up on and that there is actually an improvement of
practice that follows from that. That child death and serious injury council would have
representation from independent people - educators, paediatricians, the Commissioner for
Children and whoever else you want to put on it, to make sure that something actually
happens to improve the system, that we don't just have countless reviews.
Mr GROOM - When was that legislation scheduled to be bought before parliament and why
wasn't it?
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Ms JACOBS - I believe it wasn't because we ran out of time and it is due to be tabled in the
first session next year, but also I think the climate was not right.
Mr GROOM - What do you mean by that?
Ms JACOB - There was such a spotlight on Child Protection issues that I did not think it was
right time to add another layer of the spotlight, I suppose, on all those issues. I think that
it was probably then we ran out of time and now it will come into the first session of next
year.
CHAIR - In terms of the siloing of different agencies and breaking down some of the barriers
there, I wonder whether anybody else might have comments because you guys represent
quite a few agencies.
Ms STURGES - I think there is some important work happening at local levels and I am sure
that my colleagues have different mechanisms happening for us. There is something that
we touted probably with mental health about four weeks ago now which is called Get
Real. It is a relative experience level, where I pay my rep to go in and work in their
service and they pay their rep to come in and work in my service. It is actually about
shadowing and building those relationships because we know that if we can just pick up
the phone and have a chat to somebody about it you are more likely to break down the
silos because people are then talking to each other in a much more collegial way.
Ms PETRUSMA - Can I ask a question in regard to breaking down the silos. We have heard
evidence in the inquiry that some people had given birth outside hospitals because they
are frightened that they might lose the child. What could be done about communicating
better with hospital staff? I think some of these 16-year-olds must be giving birth out in
the bush because these kids are suddenly arriving into the system when they are months
old. It seems like they are being flagged in hospital that there is an unborn baby alert and
then if the mother is due to give birth on, say, 10 December, you would usually say that
by 24 December she should have had that baby but she does not turn up. What is put in
place to check where that mother has gone to instead of the baby popping up three
months in the future?
Ms McCROSSEN - Those very things are what we weigh up at the decision-making point not to put an alert on a child because that is about safety and risk, but in terms of how we
communicate. Sometimes if we communicate that there is an alert in place, we obviously
need to weigh up the possibility of the mother fleeing and hiding away from Child
Protection. We have a co-located worker within the hospital and I guess we utilise that
position and social workers within the hospital who know the client to provide us with
information as to whether or not it would cause more of a risk to communicate that there
is an alert in place. Sometimes you don't know that and sometimes the risk of not putting
an alert on an unborn child is greater than the risk of the mother fleeing and having the
baby somewhere else. I personally don't know of a situation in the south where that's
happened.
Ms PETRUSMA - The Salvation Army knows of it and it's something that I brought up
during budget Estimates as well. If there's an unborn baby alert and two weeks after the
due date the mother has not arrived in a hospital anywhere in the State, what red flags go
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up so that somebody goes out to try to find this mother to see where that baby is at, so
that three months later this baby doesn't rock up at a doctor's surgery for treatment and
doesn't have a birth certificate.
Ms McCROSSEN - Quite often when we're making a decision about an alert we make
referrals for the mother to try to address the issues that we're concerned about before the
baby is born, so we don't need to intervene at that point. The first thing is about making
sure that the family is visible, if that was a risk. Again, Child Protection relies on people
reporting concerns. Certainly we have a very good relationship with the hospital. If a
mum is a high-risk client, and if that has been identified, they would be on the phone
quite quickly or talking to our co-located worker. Yes, it's very much reliant on people
telling us that they're concerned or they haven't seen them. Certainly with Gateway or
family support workers a lot of our unborn alert clients, I guess, are referred to that
family support service, so that's where that level of engagement is. I'd be really
concerned, though, about a discussion about not making an alert and not trying to protect
an unborn child because of perhaps one incident that either wasn't managed appropriately
or Ms PETRUSMA - They are more concerned about what will happen if the alert is there. If
somebody notified you that this mother hadn't arrived, would you go and try to find her
or something?
Ms McCROSSEN - Yes, and the unborn alerts are discussed and tabled at a weekly meeting
at the hospital where Child Protection are present. So there is really no way they would
fall through the gap in terms of our not knowing that they were meant to present.
Ms PETRUSMA - So do you go and get the police and try to find this mother?
Ms McCROSSEN - Yes, and all the services that have been involved. We would hope that
if they were disengaged already then we would know about that.
Mr BYRNE - It depends on what the risk is. Ordinarily you would use a child and health
nurse as the lever, a less threatening and more universal platform. Some of the
amendments we put through two years ago allowed people to contact Gateway. So what
we want to do is try to give the mother the support and assistance she needs to reduce the
risk to her child in the future. So that's the intent of the alert and that's what we have to
try to move to. I have to say that is the first I've heard of anyone presenting in that way
in all my years at Child Protection.
Ms PETRUSMA - It was something brought to our attention by the Salvation Army.
Mr PHILLIPS - Mike and Angela covered some of it, but I think some of it is educating the
community about what it means. We've told welfare, so welfare becomes involved.
There are services such as Gateway. You talk about partnerships. The see-you-at-home
nurses work with vulnerable mothers so that they get a supportive response rather than
what they would see as a threatening statutory response. That education will get through
the community quickly.
Ms WHITE - Have you seen a noticeable difference or improvement since Gateway services
have been operating?
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Mr BYRNE - Absolutely.
Mr WILLIE - I guess we've all been working our areas around bedding this down as a new
service. It is based on the strong evidence we have that bringing children into statutory
care is really not a good outcome for the child and really there ought to be better
responses by working with families and building family strengths and family resilience.
The way this is set up is that we have a community-based team leader in there who acts
as like a safety net, so if stuff does go into that space then that can be referred directly
back to child protection. It is not about trying to divert child protection work into
Gateway; it is about dealing with welfare and neglect issues where you know you can
work with the family.
In the north, for example, the system was set up to cater for 979 families. I attend the
monthly alliance meetings with all the partners. At the last meeting I went to I think we
dealt with 958 families. Now those 958 families probably wouldn't have met the
threshold for Child Protection intervention, so they're getting a family support response
that ordinarily they wouldn't have received. I guess that has two aspects to it. One is
that through dealing with that many families you will identify child protection issues that
ordinarily may not have come to anyone's notice, so by engaging with those services
there may be some response that leads to a higher rate of notification in the short term
because you are dealing and engaging with families where issues are identified. Also, it
begs to bear some cultural issues that have been mentioned previously around capacitybuilding in the sector, because all of a sudden we have this service where we are working
with families but we do not necessarily have at this point a level of capacity in either the
government sector or the non-government sector to provide the quality of service that we
would hope to provide, so we are engaging in a capacity building exercise. To that end
there was review of the family support system and we are currently working at a local
level to make sure that the providers are able to deal with particularly the level 3-4 cases.
The family support service might have been set up to do information referrals or group
work with clients. When they get to the harder end where you dealing with, and I hate to
be stereotypical about this, a young mum, a single parent, who has four or five kids all
under eight years old, the level of skill to engage with that level of need might not
necessarily be there at this point in some of the services. Obviously in others it is and
also it has assisted in terms of bringing people around the table to get common case
directions. One of the criticisms that was certainly prevalent when I joined the service
four or five years ago was that we have so many people involved in people's lives. There
are so many case managers, particularly when it comes to adolescents. With this system,
because it is a one-stop shop, you go through the Gateway, there are common assessment
processes and we have a really clear process of sitting round the table and having this
conversation about where the case goes to in terms of someone actually working with
either the individual or the family. You are getting a better sense of the common case
direction, and engaging with a smaller number of people. I think that is a good thing in
terms of building those relationships that are necessary.
We have some other clear data starting to emerge around re-notification rates, so we have
a quality process built in to say it has gone to the Gateway but further down the track we
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notified back into Child Protection. So we are starting to get some good data on that and
then making sure that we are engaging more intensively with those sorts of families. I
can say from the northern point of view, and I mean this genuinely, that we have made
significant progress by instituting the Gateway youth services. It was likewise when we
put disability services in there because many of the clients we are dealing with are also
presenting at other services, such as Disability Services. We are getting a more holistic
approach by dealing with both individuals and families in need in the community.
Mr BYRNE - Matthew talked about customer feedback. The strong feedback - and I am just
encapsulating a lot of views - is that I get help but I do not get welfare. I get the help I
need but I do not get the welfare response which was happening before, so you would
have to go through Child Protection again to secure services when we are looking at a
very prosecutorial manner. This is allowing families to get the help they need early and
we are definitely seeing a downward trend in Child Protection referrals coming into the
State. We are taking it as an early success story. The important thing is that those clients
are getting support now. They are getting the support they need. We are not going to get
the targeting completely right because, as Mike said, bad things may continue to happen
and then Child Protection will re-engage. We do not see that as a negative; that is more
support going out.
Ms STURGES - Conversely, you avoid the situation that we are all acutely aware of - being
unallocated for a long period. You avoid it because this is freeing us up to actually do
just the true tertiary end, which is all we are supposed to respond to, so basically you are
not having welfare involved when you do not need to. So we are able to concentrate on
the families where children are critically at risk.
Ms WHITE - Do you see any scope for improvement? You have obviously dealt with the
system now for a little while. Are there opportunities for us to improve on that?
Mr BYRNE - Matthew spoke about reflective practice. I think it is a very good one. There
are attempts afoot for family service providers and Child Protection to be more engaged
now because those learning services are being developed. I would plead - and this is a
Mark Byrne plea rather than from my role - that we let the Gateway stabilise and
consolidate before we get everybody wanting to put every service through the Gateway.
There are some people looking at it and saying, 'Oh great, the Gateway could be the
gateway for everything'. Yes it might be but we have to take a long-term view on that.
Ms PETRUSMA - The Weekend Australian talked about the Child First program in Victoria,
on which the Gateway is based. They are now seeing families being turned away and
forced to wait for support services and allegations are being made that that program has
now become a dumping ground for child abuse cases. Are you keeping a check on what's
happening with Child First, because our model is based on Child First, so we can prevent
going down the same tracks as they are in Victoria?
Mr BYRNE - I read that article with interest, and you know that despite the accent I spent 20
years in Victoria and was working in that system. I think it would be fair to say that
Victoria itself would say - Mal is also from Victoria - that the way it was implemented
was very different across the States and Territories. As to the feedback that was in the
Australian for that particular area, I could have predicted that because of the lack of close
working relationships with the providers.
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Here in Tasmania I can guarantee you that our partners, Mission Australia and Baptcare,
will not allow us to do that and we don't want to do that because that's not how the
system is going to work. Not only on an area level, but a statewide level, we meet
regularly with them to review the cases. It is fair to say that when it was first established
some child protection workers saw this as a panacea for getting kids off their case load,
there is no doubt about that, and the commissioner I think made a recommendation in the
12-year-old case that it was important that Child Protection didn't close just by making a
referral. That is an area that we basically need to do added work on because we think
with a referral from Child Protection and Family Services there should be some
partnership work in that space. So that is what we are trying to do.
Have any of my colleagues had any evidence where Family Services are picking up
Child Protection work, which was the basic information that I got?
Mr WILLIE - Not in particular, but I know a lot of discussion and debate occurs about
which direction a case should go at times, because some of them are on the threshold of
Child Protection, so it's a professional judgment call at the end of the day as to whether
it goes down the statutory pathway or the family support pathway.
Ms PETRUSMA - There was some discussion about whether Gateway might be at capacity
now with Family Support Services in terms of what it can provide. Will there be x
resources or funding put in so that they can have a bit more? The holding pattern is
getting bigger with a lot more Ms JACOB - We've added the Early Parenting Service we talked about earlier. We've also
just added the Youth At Risk one, which I think has plugged a couple of really
significant gaps. I reckon it is one of those services where you could probably keep
putting resources in and it would be well utilised, there's no question about that. I think
we need to let it grow slowly, and certainly we didn't have the Gateway service jumping
up and down saying, 'We need more capacity,' they were actually growing slowly as
well. It's a bit outside the scope of this review, but we probably have reached the stage
now where we need to start thinking about the introduction of disability clients into the
Gateway; that's certainly showing that there are gaps in services that Gateway have now
identified that we will need to put more resourcing into. The really good thing is that we
will have a much better assessment of the quantifiable gap that allows them to make
budget submissions and be much more precise about it, rather than just saying, 'Gosh,
we've got all this unmet need; we need to sort it.'
Ms PETRUSMA - Another thing we were told was that there was a lack of Child Protection
workers in one of the Gateways up north?
Ms JACOB - North or north-west?
Mr PHILLIPS - North, we're interviewing tomorrow.
Ms PETRUSMA - Apparently it's been a few months or something and they were saying it
definitely had an impact on services.
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Mr PHILLIPS - We've had some strategies to cover it and it's about someone leaving the
position and trying to recruit someone to the position, so it has been covered reasonably,
but we are recruiting shortly.
CHAIR - I just wanted to ask Mike a question about sharing information between Gateway
and the government sector. How is that all working out?
Mr WILLIE - I think it's moved on considerably in the last six to nine months because one
of the big shifts that has happened here is people working in partnerships. When we set
this stuff up we were very particular about not working with a particular agency but
getting agencies themselves to work in partnership and getting government agencies to
work in partnership, and government to non-government in partnership. I think we now
have a cultural base on which we can build these things so people feel free to share
information.
Ms JACOB - And a bit of trust.
Mr WILLIE - And much more trust, particularly through the area of planning processes, and
I think we've built the relationships that are necessary now for these things to happen.
Previously, either in government you're working in a solo way or, if you're an NGO and
in a competitive tendering environment, that's quite a different matter, but if you're
working in partnership you build all those sorts of processes into the way you work. I
think we're seeing some real evidence of that at a local level. I still think there's a lot of
work to do around building capacity and I'd like to see a greater emphasis on having
more data-driven decision-making. If we're really going to drive interagency
collaboration we must have a shared understanding of what the data is actually telling us,
and I mean a deep understanding, not a surface understanding.
One of the things that concerns me is that people pick up on little aspects of data without
understanding the relationship of that piece of data to another. I think they
overcomplicate things at times and really, rather than have 54 things we are trying
achieve we might be better to have 10 things we are trying to achieve, because by
achieving those 10 you probably will achieve the 54 because there are those causal
relationships. Education, for example, would be one of those. If we can really make an
impact on issues such as attendance and participation in education then we will see
educational outcomes improve, because the first step is that children have to be there. So
let's focus on that and make a change around that because other things will follow.
CHAIR - I couldn't agree with you more.
Mr WIGHTMAN - Hear, hear, Mike. Talking about recruitment, one of my grave concerns
throughout the year - and I alluded to this earlier - is the impact that the political climate
this year has had on child protection workers and morale. It is something I alluded to
before and am very passionate about. Has it impacted on the recruitment of workers?
Do we have enough workers in our system and how do we go about recruiting the right
people?
Mr PHILLIPS - I can start if you like. It is very hard to measure. There is a negative
perception in parts of the community about child protection and a lot of people do not
want to do that sort of work. Has the recent year had an impact on that and people's
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perception of child protection and do they want to go and do that sort of work? For new
graduates, possibly and perhaps it is likely. The north-west can struggle to recruit
because it has smaller populated areas, we are doing some work with UTas with students
because they generally are our best source of recruiting staff at base-grade level.
Mr BYRNE - Can I say, fortunately or unfortunately, Tasmania has the lowest turnover of
Child Protection workers compared to other States.
Mr WIGHTMAN - Is that right?
Mr BYRNE - We worked in a jurisdiction in Victoria where basically people were leaving
every week. Alison talked about a 25 per cent turnover of new workers in Victoria. I
would say that is a conservative estimate; they are having droves of staff leaving in every
jurisdiction, whereas Tasmania does well. But that creates it own problem. Our turnover
is usually with the newer staff. We have a lot of staff at middle management and above
level who have been there since Jesus was born, which has its own cultural issues when
you're trying to shift the culture to actually engage new workers with a different type of Ms JACOBS - I'm leaving, I'm leaving!
Laughter.
Mr BYRNE - And I will be with you. So that creates its own problems and again, where we
talk about changing the culture, it is important that professional development is part of
that because then we can champion some of the newer staff who have come in. We are
experiencing difficulties in the south, there is no doubt about that. The north-west has
always been a problem in terms of recruitment but I think it is getting better.
Ms McCROSSEN - Just in terms of timeliness, we have just run a recruitment process for
frontline Child Protection staff and received 25 applications, which is quite significant.
We have had quite a lot of success probably over the last six months recruiting people
who have life experience, have worked in other areas, have heard about child protection
and are interested in it. So it is happening, it is working. I think in terms of the
recruitment, yes, it is around the retention of those staff members. We have tried in the
south-east to run panels of Child Protection staff talking with possible applicants so they
actually know the true work before they get there. I think we lose a lot of people because
they don't quite understand the difficulties and the confronting nature of it.
Mr WIGHTMAN - You said the best recruitment strategies are often with the University of
Tasmania, so I am interested in the relationship that this group has with the university.
Also we have heard a lot of reports about the need for more Child Protection workers
with more life experience, let us say. I started as young teacher and developed a lot of
experience Ms JACOB - They all look about 12 to me, I have to say.
Laughter.
Mr WIGHTMAN - Most people thought I should be in the class.
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Mr BYRNE - If I can answer, and I hope this is not taken the wrong way, but UTas has been
slow to join with us in solving this problem. Up until this year the social work course at
UTas was quite silent on teaching about this area. Fortunately the head of social work is
now engaging in discussions with us about how we can change that because obviously
we are a big employer. So we want to work with that relationship. I would like to get to
the position where someone like Angela, for example, goes and does a year's tutoring at
UTas to show you can be proud of being at Child Protection. That is the kind of link we
want. We also, before the change in the education system from the polytechnic, thought
there may be an opportunity of re-engaging with that sector to attract those mid-year
people who have the life experience, don't really want to go through a four-year degree,
but could go through something different so we could actually accredit them and support
them. There is no doubt there are very good young workers, but I can tell you that I am a
much better Child Protection worker today than I was when I started at 21.
Mr WIGHTMAN - Do you have to have a social work degree to be a good Child Protection
worker?
Ms McCROSSEN - No.
Mr BYRNE - No - if you asked us to take an oath to say that. I think that child protection
work needs a multi-discipline approach.
Ms JACOB - I'm by profession a psychologist and I know that my colleagues in the
psychology profession believe that we ought to have more psychologists in Child
Protection. In my view that is probably a good thing, but I don't think it is disciplinespecific. There are good Child Protection workers who actually encompass a range of
disciplines and it's probably a case of making sure you get the right people. Probably a
mix is good. I'm sure there would be members of each profession who would say if you
had all psychologists it would be terrific, or if you had all social workers it would be
terrific, or if you only a few medical people in there telling you what to do then that
would change the system. I sometimes wonder how doctors would react if we marched
into their case conferences and had a different opinion about a medical diagnosis.
CHAIR - I guess all the media over the last 12 months wouldn't be helpful in terms of
creating a climate where people would want to work in it.
Mr BYRNE - It is fair to say that with every negative case I've ever been involved with you
do get this other effect where it pricks people's conscience. We've had a number of
corporate agencies talk to us about what they could do in this space, the first time in my
entire career that the corporate sector has wanted to engage with us. That is a sector we
would like to reach out to because they could provide mentoring and employment.
Ms McCROSSEN - It's having a massive impact on the staff, who want to stay there but feel
a bit disenchanted. That has to be said. But in saying that you hear them talking to other
professionals about how fantastic it is working in Child Protection, so people are
definitely struggling with feeling criticised but are also standing up and defending
themselves.
CHAIR - That's terrific. Are there mentoring programs for Child Protection workers in
place?
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Mr BYRNE - The model is supervision.
CHAIR - We talked about that earlier.
Mr BYRNE - Yes, that's the model.
Ms McCROSSEN - Sort of buddy systems.
CHAIR - It's a formal process, though?
Ms McCROSSEN - Certainly supervision, yes. It is very rare for workers not to have a twoworker model when going out to visit families or going to conferences, so there is that
colleague.
Mr GROOM - It occurs to me that there is an element missing for us hearing this process.
What is obvious is that there are a lot of issues faced by people who work at the coalface.
We are all sitting here talking about it and yet thus far we have had a limited opportunity
to hear directly from caseworkers and employees from within the department at the
coalface. Is there some way that that can be facilitated?
Ms JACOB - I reckon it would be really useful for you to go out and spend a bit of time in
the service centres; go and talk to the staff. For me it is always really illuminating to go
and spend an hour listening to the calls coming in and listen to the way the work
happens.
Mr GROOM - I think that would be very helpful.
Mr BYRNE - Could I suggest that two of you go to one and two to another one, rather than
all of you go to one.
Ms JACOB - I think staff would appreciate it. The divide between management and workers
gets broken down and certainly every time I've gone out and talked to staff directly and
worked alongside them, they do appreciate it and they do feel they're being heard. So if
you did that I reckon it would be really good.
Mr GROOM - That's great; I really appreciate that and I think we should do it.
Ms PETRUSMA - The CPSU has said to us that part of the dissatisfaction is that case loads
are too high, and getting people off the unallocated list to make sure they are allocated is
an issue.
Ms JACOBS - Like class-size issues.
Ms PETRUSMA - Is there a workplace tool used to determine caseloads?
Ms McCROSSEN - We have got a complexity tool, not a caseload-capping tool, because you
simply cannot do it. In terms of counting number of children, you could have a sibling
group of six and you are doing different things for each of those children, and some of
our workers could manage that case plus one other, whereas there could be other less
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complex, less intensive, more settled cases where workers are managing a much higher
number. Yes, we have a complexity tool but certainly not with the view that we are
going to say this is the optimum number of cases or children that you have in a caseload,
because they are human and they are different.
Ms PETRUSMA - In 2006, Fanning & Jacobs found that caseloads were unmanageable.
What has been put in place four years later to get them down to a manageable level,
because kids are off the unallocated list, but that has meant caseloads have increased?
Ms McCROSSEN - Unfortunately I was the person that managed the unallocated list in 2006
with 200-plus children. The caseloads were unmanageable at the front end most
definitely, the investigations, because the cases could not move through.
Ms JACOBS - We could not have the workflow processes.
Ms McCROSSEN - We have lots of operational changes in the structure of our smaller teams
so that the teams are more connected, and there are clearer time frames as to when
somebody's role finishes and the next person's starts. That has created fewer bottlenecks
in our own service centres. In terms of staff talking about issues on their caseload, that is
where the supervision comes in and that is happening regularly with team leaders and
Child Protection workers. There does come a time when we have to manage vacant
caseloads and juggle some of those cases, but with the view to make sure we are
matching that with skills and experience. We have in the south-east a weekly allocation
and triage meeting where, if people are carrying what they feel is a high caseload for
them, we are putting in extra supports and having a two-worker model in some of the
more complicated cases.
Ms PETRUSMA - So with an extra 100 kids projected to come into care, how do you work
out when you are going to employ another person?
Mr BYRNE - But equally for the extra 100 children in care there is a reduction of
notifications. Prior to that, when that workload issue was in place, you had a lot of
sifting to do at the front end, so big noise and big demands, and you had to put more
resources there. We can now put more resources to the back. Yes, the 100 increase is
anticipating particular dramas. I have, and I can make this available if I can de-identify
it, everybody's caseload and basically the average load is around 18 children, not 18
cases. You have heard my stories of quite lengthy experience in this game; I would have
died for these caseloads 20 years ago. Obviously there is increased complexity and these
caseloads will become more and more difficult because with the softer work being
deflected you are going to be left with that group. So we will have to look at the
complexity tool that Andrea was talking about, and applying that consistently. For any
staff member who feels the demand is too much, there is a supervisory structure in place
and we encourage them to go to that.
Mr GROOM - Sorry, what does mean?
Mr BYRNE - They have a supervisor to go to and if they are not happy with what the
workloads are then they and their supervisor will go to the Child Protection branch and
talk about those caseloads.
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Mr GROOM - Can you bypass the supervisor?
Mr BYRNE - You can but we are trying to build a system whereby you go to that person for
support. There are times in your life where you will be able to take 30 or 40 cases and
there will be other times in your life when you can only take one. That is why we always
shy away from a definite number. If you are in a Supreme Court case for a week then
you can handle only that one case; you cannot handle any of the rest. However, if you
have 30 kids who are incredibly settled and things are going well on a long guardianship,
you could probably handle some more.
Mr GROOM - So is there a better way of describing the load?
Mr BYRNE - Not really. There has been research on this and it all comes back to not using a
number.
Mr PHILLIPS - I have been involved in a number of projects to try to develop a tool quite
genuinely to determine a reasonable caseload. I saw a case that one team leader managed
by themselves and the only case they had was one child, and that case was in court for
three months. Then you see 24 children who are very settled and very manageable. You
develop a tool but really what you do is spend most of your time trying to manage the
tool.
Laughter.
Mr PHILLIPS - Add that to your caseload.
Ms McCROSSEN - It's not just the children and family complexities, it's also the worker and
their capacity, experience and even just where they're at in their life as well.
Mr GROOM - Do you have much of a problem with formal stress leave?
Mr BYRNE - It does fluctuate.
Mr WILLIE - I've got very few on my list.
Ms STURGES - I have two.
Mr BYRNE - It's present and often we find it's the straw that breaks the camel's back. It's
not someone in a space where something particularly goes wrong. You would think
that's where it would be most common, but it's actually the person who has been around
quite a while and some minor incident will happen and they go.
Mr GROOM - So what processes do you have in place to identify that?
Mr BYRNE - Again, it's the supervision. Supervision is the point of all of this concerning
workload control and welfare of employee; that's the way we built this system.
Ms McCROSSEN - We have the employee assistance program. Obviously you need to
know there's a problem in order to support someone to seek that counselling, so direct
supervision and observation as well. You can see when somebody is stressed.
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Mr GROOM - Do you have training in that?
Ms McCROSSEN - In stress management?
Mr GROOM - In identification.
Ms McCROSSEN - Yes, it's covered off in our induction program. Critical incident training
is something we could certainly look at building more on, and how to manage that as a
worker, team leader or supervisor.
Ms WHITE - Can I just ask a question about risk assessment following notification? It's
clearly detailed here. It mentions a process from information gathering through to
analysis to professional judgment about the immediate risk and future likelihood. Is
there capacity for investigation because the skills required there are sometimes a little
different? Some of the people we've heard from did not believe the child should have
been taken, or as a family they weren't consulted. It does talk about the process where
they should have been consulted but they feel they haven't been. In your opinion of the
risk assessment tool that you currently use, is it working as effectively as it can be or are
there areas that can be improved upon?
Ms McCROSSEN - I think the tool, yes, is working. In terms of decision-making it is still a
professional judgment, so you can certainly come up with a multitude of risk factors and
have two safety factors which would actually lead to a decision to not intervene or to
direct the issues to somewhere else. For me it's more about making sure that the
decision-making points have that level of scrutiny and quality assurance rather than the
actual tool. The tool is very much about information gathering and collating the
information. The decision making is something very different.
Ms JACOB - A tool will never replace a professional decision.
Mr BYRNE - There was a recommendation in the Commissioner for Children's report about
structured decision-making, which again is in Queensland. We've actually spoken to
Queensland about that and it's an actuarial model, so you score the risk. They said the
tool is only as good as the people who use it. So you can have an actuarial tool but what
if somebody is not applying it correctly? You will find in child protection there is a
strong lobby for professional judgment and a strong lobby for non-child protection
people to go down the actuarial model.
Ms WHITE - It comes back to training of staff and making sure there's continuity.
Ms PETRUSMA - From both sides we've had examples where children have had 44 P1
notifications before things have happened. In other examples, the investigation and risk
assessment didn't happen in the case of serious abuse and neglect. Then we've got the
other side where it was too much, over zealous.
Mr BYRNE - I'm obviously aware of some of the people who gave evidence. Some of it
was quite old. You have to put it into a context. Less than three years ago we had a
central intake team that had no ability to access the files in Launceston or Burnie or
Devonport.
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Ms STURGES - It was all done on paper.
Mr BYRNE - It was all done on paper. So one of the things that came out of Fanning &
Jacob was CPIS - Child Protection Information System. It was introduced so that all
notifications could be screened locally and you actually have an instant record of history.
Now, we've got CPIS2 we can actually get the whole kit and caboodle. So with a 41 P1
situation, immediately an alarm would go off on CPIS if that came in. We have a policy
position such that basically if any four notifications aren't responded to then it has to be
reviewed by the Child Protection manager to actually pick up that point of view.
With the quick-to-move cases, if you like, I think there's often a lot of information that
the people appearing before you, and indeed complaining to Child Protection, actually
aren't sharing with you. There are other significant factors going on in that person's life
at that time. A number of times it is about mental health, a mental health perception of
where they were at when the action actually occurred. I am not just picking up on Matt's
point but also on that reflective practice on working through what is a benchmark. My
role is to make sure that a child in Burnie is treated the same way as a child in
Launceston, so I've got to bring in the consistency. If we can boost our audit function we
can get that consistency across, but not in a negative way; we can talk about good stories.
We can talk about good practice as well as bad practice.
Mr HARBOTTLE - We have made some moves towards that. I think you would have read
our submission about the Child Protection Practice Manual. An adjunct to that is a
practice blog, if you like, which is really about staff sharing good experiences and having
a peer support network around what they do. It is quite a useful tool.
Mr WILLIE - Part of the area planning process that we talked about earlier includes the
setting up of practice networks at a local level, particularly in family support and
disability, so we are getting people on the ground who are dealing with the clients,
sharing their practice approaches and getting that consistency out there.
Ms PETRUSMA - Does the residential therapeutic care model give us now additional
placements compared to when you were doing the rostered care system yourself, or are
there about the same amount of kids in residential therapeutic care?
Mr BYRNE - It's basically the same amount of dollars, but it does purchase more numbers,
just because of the way it is configured. The rostered care model wasn't in itself a model
of care; it was a contingency arrangement. So the figures were about 22 across the south
and about 10 across the north and north-west. We now have capacity for 32 places
within those models, 16 in the north and north-west, and 16 in the south-east and southwest.
Ms PETRUSMA - Over the last few weeks people have raised things about restraint orders
and stuff like that in therapeutic care. Are there any standards that will be put in place
for these providers?
Mr BYRNE - Yes, the National Standards for Out-of-Home Care. Their contract was let on
the basis that when the national standards were accepted, they would be applied, and
both providers are more than willing to apply those.
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Ms PETRUSMA - Okay, so they will be complying with them.
Mr BYRNE - We're hoping that is 16 December, so the contract will have a clear provision
in there to say when those standards come out we will work with them to apply them.
We are not expecting them to meet them on day one because we think we as a system
have to work through that with them.
Mr GROOM - I want to go back to the information exchange and I want to refer back to the
comment I made before about the New South Wales inquiry that identified a few things:
culture was one, but the other two were legislative and IT barriers. In fact, in the context
of legislative barriers, barriers in legislation and information exchange, they made the
point that some of those were perceived and not real, which goes to training and
understanding. Can someone talk to those two issues?
Mr HARBOTTLE - It is certainly perceived. If we're talking purely about child protection
legislation, we made some amendments which captured both the Gateway and broader
service system in terms of information sharing. It gave Child Protection a broader range
of powers. It also gave protection to those other services that were involved with those
children in terms of sharing information.
Having said that there was already quite a bit of power in there for Child Protection to
share information, but there was a cultural barrier, if you like, around privacy and
confidentiality which limited that exchange. When you get outside Child Protection, so
where you are talking about mechanisms like inter-agency support teams where the
children may not actually be known to Child Protection, then you are in a completely
different legislative space in terms of information sharing and it changes the playing field
significantly.
Mr GROOM - So what are the issues there?
Mr HARBOTTLE - They then rely on the Personal Information Protection Act and so on, so
it does change the nature of the information you can share.
Mr GROOM - So should we change that?
Mr HARBOTTLE - Other jurisdictions have used different approaches. Some have used a
whole-of-government type approach in terms of the protocol that's agreed at cabinet level
for sharing information. Some have established separate information-sharing legislation,
which relates to complex clients, if you like, which that group could fall into. So you
could look at those sorts of mechanisms. The amendments we made, having come out of
the Jacob-Fanning report, were related to Child Protection and sharing information on
Child Protection clients.
Ms JACOB - We are now recommending another amendment to the Youth Justice Act.
That's one of the amendments that will be going through in the first session next year.
That will allow that sort of information exchange around Youth Justice clients, so we are
tackling it on an issue-by-issue basis. It is an issue.
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Mr BYRNE - One of the main problem areas where it does come in is services where they're
treating adults. Often you will get the furphy about the privacy bit about not sharing
information. You just have to work through that to try Ms McCROSSEN - And federal agencies.
Mr BYRNE - Yes, and federal agencies.
Mr GROOM - Which was in fact another question I was going to ask. It hasn't been a strong
theme but there have been a couple of instances where it's apparent that there are
complexities across jurisdictions. I am interested in that in the context of information
sharing because presumably kids and people move.
Mr HARBOTTLE - There is quite a well-established network for sharing information.
There is a protocol that operates between the States that is agreed at ministerial level and
which is around interstate transfer of orders and exchange of information. If a family
moves you can actually put out an alert through these people that are located in each
jurisdiction that this family is coming your way and you can actually start to work with
that jurisdiction.
Mr GROOM - Are you saying that it works okay between jurisdictions, but not within the
jurisdiction, or do we need to improve that as well?
Mr HARBOTTLE - As I said the amendments were really around child protection. I think
there's a need to perhaps move more broadly than that, to look at saying that the service
system is changing. NGOs are a major player now in delivering these services and they
need to have access to this information to deliver those services to people. We've fixed
that up for Child Protection in terms of legislative barriers, but they are players now in
other service systems as well, so it is how we capture that.
Mr WILLIE - We've now got review and response officers. They work across the whole
suite of services that we are responsible for at a local level. They are doing a lot of the
things that you are referring to in terms of getting the players around the table and
managing the complex cases that are really at the top end. In terms of having a conduit
through which the sharing of information can occur, I think we've had those in place now
for six or nine months. I've seen an improvement since we've had those officers on the
ground. They are also able to bring in the hospitals, for example, around the table.
Mr PHILLIPS - It highlights the huge range of things in our working with children and
families - from GPs and private therapists, education, drug and alcohol and adult mental
health. Anyone you think of involved with a family can be involved with child
protection around an exchange of information.
Mr WIGHTMAN - I'm interested in reunification strategies. I can imagine there would be
nothing more traumatic than having a child taken off their mum and dad. What do we do
in supporting those mums and dads out there to get their children back?
Mr BYRNE - Naturally it's an imperative; we've got to try to get the children back to the
parents as soon as possible. What we've done to date is broadly a child protection
response, working all the casework skills to actually assess risk, to work with families,
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get them support services so the child can safely be returned home. We're about to pilot
a new service. I am reluctant to call it a reunification service because everyone will see
that the only way you will reunify a child will be through that service. So it's a
reunification program. It's re-using some of the family support money and targeting
those dollars into working with families to get children home who are currently in the
system and who could safely go home. So it is a limited resource but we target that.
That's an area we could make more investment in, the whole reunification area.
Ms McCROSSEN - Because ultimately we are referring to other services to work with the
parents and ultimately the parents need to make changes as well. So the role of Child
Protection staff is very limited. The hands-on support in the home is what we're hoping
this reunification program will be able to provide.
Mr BYRNE - Ideally we'd like to also put that level of intensity before we remove the child
as well, so there is that side of it. So there is the family service bit and there's also the
more intensive side that is sometimes required. We are faced on a daily basis to make
the decision, 'Is it a family support option or is it bringing in large sibling groups?'.
Often the large sibling group can create more problems, so you put in more family
services. So you have to work with what resources you have. Often reunification is
about getting a family service package around a child to keep them home.
Mr WIGHTMAN - We've heard some stories about foster carers having up to 10 children in
their care. Is that common? Is that good practice?
Mr BYRNE - Firstly, is it common? There are a number of foster parents that have a large
number of children. Part of the KPMG report I referred you to talked about historically
high numbers of kids in placements. It's an issue that we continue to grapple with in a
market of dwindling carers. A lot of those large sibling groups and multiple sibling
groups being placed together is really a response to a need. If we had all the carers we
could have, would it be that situation? No. But equally there have been times when
we've been thankful for the expertise of some foster carers in dealing with that number. I
can think of one who won a State award two years ago and who has up to 10 children. I
would be ticking that off as wonderful care that this person and her family do.
There are other situations that I'm aware of where it's not so good. We have to work
with those and get to a point where we have a bigger pool of carers and bigger choice of
carers. It's bad practice to put two sibling groups together in the one place.
Ms PETRUSMA - A few weeks ago it was reported that half the girls in the Hobart
homeless shelters are wards of the State in Child Protection; what's your response to
that? They are as young as 12, in State care, but they are staying in youth shelters.
Ms STURGES - This is a teen challenge. Teenagers generally speaking are going through
high risk-taking behaviours and are bucking authority. Kids do not always want to live
in a family home setting or family-based care. Sometimes some of the reasons they have
left home are related to that difficulty in attachment and relationships. That's what is
difficult about what appears as a generalisation. You have to have specific types of care
for specific kids. In some cases there are children who refuse to live in home-based care,
who can't return home, but equally don't want to be or shouldn't be put into a residential
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setting and who are looking are to segue into mainstream society. That's one of the
models that you would utilise to do that.
Pretty much in the tradition of the need for that and the number of children utilising
some of those services, there has been an additional injection of funds to ameliorate that
and recognise and acknowledge the work they're doing. We're responsible for case
management for those children and work alongside them hand-in-hand with those
services.
Ms PETRUSMA - When you talk to the shelter workers, you hear that half the beds are
taken up with kids who are wards of the State. It means that they're turning away more
than 100 girls in the meantime who could have been occupying those beds if those
children were in other State care places.
Mr BYRNE - We've got the top of the pyramid, we've got the bottom of the pyramid, but we
need other options in there and that's what's happening. Young women and young men
sometimes don't want to live in a foster place. They don't want to live with kinship, they
just don't want a home environment and they certainly don't want a residential care
model. We've got to create something where they can be looked after. It might well be
speaking to those people who run those shelters and saying how about you operate
something for us in that space.
Ms WHITE - Could you expand on that? What do we need to be investing in to assist those
people?
Ms STURGES - I actually believe it is that middle system; it smacks of what Alison was
saying earlier. We need to have a range of services available at that secondary level.
Ms WHITE - What does that actually look like?
Ms STURGES - We need to outsource other models of home care and we need to fund that.
Mr BYRNE - What you would have is more robust roster care, professional-type foster care.
You would have a hostel arrangement for those younger people who can have
independence. Equally you would have places where young people can transition to
independence, which we are looking at, so as they get to 17 or 18 their transition is
something more permanent, but equally you are going to need some kind of softer
residential-care model. It is not just a therapeutic resi-care; it is a softer resi-care model
that fits. As I said, we have the top of the pyramid and the bottom of the pyramid right;
we have to do the work in the middle.
Ms WHITE - Are there models elsewhere that we could copy?
Mr BYRNE - To be fair, KPMG in their report gave us those models.
Ms JACOB - They are not rocket science. There is no instant answer that this is the perfect
model. It is having the range of options because there is a range of young people.
Ms WHITE - It talks in here about transition programs going into homes when young people
are 17 or 18. How has that been taken up? Is that working well?
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Ms McCROSSEN - Did you mean as supported accommodation?
Ms WHITE - Yes, for young people leaving State care.
Ms JACOB - One of the initiatives in the homelessness plan is to try to look after that group
of people.
Ms McCROSSEN - It is very early days.
Ms JACOB - It is early days. One thing you want to have a look at is the report on
transitioning from home care and also the accompanying work that CREATE Foundation
did on the What is the Answer report, and the DVD. Again, I am expecting that ministers
will release those things publicly.
Ms PETRUSMA - Is that the Be Heard report you were talking about then?
Ms JACOB - Well partly that, but it is a discussion paper called Transitioning from Out-ofHome Care - looking at what is good practice and what we ought to do. It is a big issue
and every system is grappling with that. Obviously we need to be planning for young
people to transition from care early on and we need to be making sure they have adequate
provision because we know that those young people are really at risk and that they do end
up homeless, in the youth justice system, pregnant and all of the other adverse things
which happen to young people if they are not supported and if the planning is not there. I
hope that the report that will come out of the national implementation working group for
the child protection framework will provide you with a really good basis for saying this is
what good practice is, so this is what we really need to be trying to work towards in a
Tasmanian context.
Ms PETRUSMA - So the Be Heard report has been handed over to the minister?
Mr BYRNE - It is actually on its way. We were given a presentation as a group last week by
CREATE. There are no surprises. The report generally is saying young people do not
feel they are involved enough and they are not consulted enough. It is that classic thing.
If you look at the reality from a bureaucratic point of view you can see lots of
involvement in the case file, but from the young person's involvement they are saying
not, but equally that is why we did it. We commissioned CREATE to do that because we
wanted to hear and we will continue to hear. You will see from the national agenda in
this DVD, which is quite powerful I am led to understand, that it is a national issue. It is
how we engage, how we do that. Fortunately for us we are a small jurisdiction so these
guys will actually know these kids who are going to be leaving. There are only about 58
kids in that space and we should be able to do something for them.
Ms PETRUSMA - I spoke to the Commissioner for Children and Gateway workers who
have raised the fact that there are long waiting lists to access family violence counselling.
Will it be outsourced? Will there be more resources for services?
Mr BYRNE - There is a review underway. Family violence is no longer under my bailiwick
so I am speaking just to inform you that this is the case. There are no additional
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resources available to extend it at this time. The review is being done by an external
consultant. They will obviously make some recommendations about it.
Ms JACOB - But decisions have not been made about that.
CHAIR - I am just wondering, Alison, whether you might like to make some concluding
comments before we wind up.
Ms JACOB - We have actually covered a lot of the things which I would have put on the
table - extra support and help. The work over the next few years will really be a strength.
From the work that is coming out of the national framework for protecting Australia's
children there is a really good opportunity to leverage off the research that is being done.
Why would we be sitting here trying to re-invent the wheel and do our own consultancy
when there are some really good benchmark recommendations that will come out of that
work? I reckon Tasmania ought to be saying, 'Okay, that is what we need to aspire to;
that is what we need to do.'
I would really emphasise that the agenda for children and young people is a vehicle for
really doing stuff that would have a huge impact on the child protection system. It is not
just the protecting children element of that framework or agenda. If we all committed to
all of those strategies it would have a huge flow-on effect to kids in the child protection
system. I am talking about initiatives around attending school, youth at risk et cetera. I
think that is an opportunity. Let us not just get involved in issues about Child Protection;
it is actually around the broader universal services and secondary services.
I do think there is real potential with the senior position I talked about earlier that will
have capacity to really do business differently and work across agencies. As far as I am
aware that is the first time it has happened anywhere. I reckon that is something that
Tasmania could really do something with and make work. If it cannot work in Tassie it
will never work anywhere and I think the climate is right for that to happen.
I have already alluded to this but if you want to be able to return children safely to their
parents or if you want to reduce the number of children who come out of their parents'
care then you have got to do something about some of those adult services that impact on
the children. Fiona Stanley, whom you would all know, says that the challenge of ending
child abuse is the challenge of breaking the link between adult problems and children's
pain. I sometimes say to my colleagues, John Crawshaw and so on, that I am happy to
put all possible resources into drug and alcohol abuse and mental health issues because in
fact that would have a huge flow-on effect to Child Protection. So that is where I would
put emphasis.
We have talked a bit about the need to put greater effort into reunification programs.
That is an area where we need to have dedicated people who do that work because it is
really time-consuming. For lots of reasons it is probably not always a good thing for the
Child Protection person who worked to take the child away to be the same person who is
working to return the child to the family. That is an area that I would really like to see
better resourced. I have talked about planning for permanent placements.
We need to increase the options in out-of-home care and we would all want that. One of
the problems of a small system is that you will always have smaller economies of scale.
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You will never be in the position to have the levels of specialisation you have in bigger
States. We have to be more flexible and we have to have the capacity to respond
flexibly.
I have said on a number of occasions today that we do need both internal and external
processes for quality assurance and review. From my point of view that is a much better
way to go and that should be much better. We should all support that rather than having
all these ad hoc, external, totally out of context, reviews. As Eileen Munro says, they do
absolutely nothing to improve child protection practice.
I do not think we are doing at all well with Aboriginal children. We need to be working a
lot more closely with the Aboriginal community about how we outsource some of that
work and allow that community to be responsible for their own children. That is an area
that deserves a lot more attention and I am really happy to table that paper.
Today we might have come across, me in particular, as being a bit defensive and
sensitive. That was probably a reasonable reaction to what I consider a total imbalance in
the discussion and commentary around child protection in this State over the last three or
four months. I have never been backward in coming forward in saying there are
problems in the system - like the Jacob-Fanning report. I am soon, through the
Government, to put out a paper about the Youth Justice system which will recommend
quite radical changes and so forth. I am not in any sense backing off from the need to
make changes and further improvements, but in a small State with a small number of
people we have to work together on some of these things and not allow ourselves to be
caught up in a lot of hype that just causes a lot of noise and distracts us from what I
consider to be meaningful reform. That is something which I know everybody on this
side of the table is absolutely committed to.
CHAIR - Thank you very much, Alison. Thank you everybody for coming today.
THE WITNESSES WITHDREW.
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Mr VINCE McCORMACK, THE NARRATIVE CENTRE, WAS CALLED, MADE THE
STATUTORY DECLARATION AND WAS EXAMINED
CHAIR - Thanks for coming. This hearing is a proceeding in the Parliament, which means it
is covered by parliamentary privilege. That means it gives you legal protection for
anything you say here - you cannot be sued for it in a court of law. Basically it is there
so you can give free information to us, without fear or favour and can inform our
processes. However, having said that, if you repeat things you say in here outside this
room, then you are not covered by parliamentary privilege.
Mr McCORMACK - Right.
CHAIR - The other thing I need to mention is that everything here is recorded in Hansard
and it will be publicly available for anybody who wants it. It is also open to the public,
as you can see, and to the media.
We have your submission, and thank you very much for that.
Ms PETRUSMA - I think it was excellent submission. It gave me a lot of insight into the
family group conferences. I would like to get it properly clarified because you would
make a distinction that there are family conferences that are held with the family and
conducted by Child Protection workers themselves, which are sometimes called family
group conferences when they are in fact case conferences. Can you clarify for us what
case conferences are that the department run which they think are family group
conferences when in fact they are not? What are family group conferences?
Mr McCORMACK - Basically family group conferences are conducted or facilitated by
people like myself who are independent of the department. We are contracted as
external facilitators so we come in not as employees of the department, but as a neutral
third mediated voice, as a mediator or facilitator. So we have a relationship with the
department, we have a relationship with the family, we have a relationship with the
support services and the aim is to bring all parties together, in a collaborative way, so
that the meeting is not run and controlled, by the department itself. So we establish a
different relationship with families from that which the statutory workers have, basically.
That is the fundamental difference.
Ms PETRUSMA - Why does the department call them family group conferences when they
are actually case conferences?
Mr McCORMACK - I do not really know, you would have to ask them, but I think
sometimes it is easier. 'Let's get the family together, let's sit down, let's have a meeting,
let's have a conference about the issues involved'. It is a fairly bureaucratic process to set
up a family group conference, you have to go through a whole set of procedures,
admissions and approvals and whatnot so I think probably it is a shortcut.
Ms PETRUSMA - Have you raised this concern with the department that there should be
more family group conferences?
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Mr McCORMACK - Yes, I had a meeting with them earlier in the year and they took on
board what I talked about but I do not think it has sort of swept across the department as
such. You speak to an individual, but that does not necessarily mean that it gets out
there.
I think the conferences are still proceeding but, as I mentioned, more as a requirement
when the law stipulates that they have to be held, but there is a whole opportunity, which
I am aiming for, of early intervention when a child or a family first come under the
notice of Child Protection, at that early intervention or assessment stage to gather the
whole family together, and the extended family, and sit down and talk through what is
happening in a collaborative way. One of the things that happens I think at the very
beginning, often when Child Protection becomes involved, is that invariably they set up
an adversarial sort of a relationship with the family and it is conflictual and it is not
positional, so you have family in one corner and you have the department in the other
and they are almost at loggerheads fighting each other. So if we can avert that as soon as
possible so that we all come together in a more collaborative way with an independent
person working through some of the issues, it sets the whole direction in a different way.
Ms PETRUSMA - So do you think there would be fewer complaints if that sort of system
were put in place?
Mr McCORMACK - I do not know whether they would have fewer complaints, but I think
it would lead to better outcomes because you have the whole family involved. I had a
conference the other day here in Hobart. We had grandparents, we had aunts and uncles,
we had a room filled with 25 people. We had support agencies, we had Child Protection
and in that context, if it is skilfully facilitated, everybody has a chance to have their say,
everybody has a chance to look at the issues that are affecting this family, the resources
needed, how can we move forward, where do we want to be in 12 months' time, how are
we going to get there step by step, how can Child Protection come in and resource the
family. This is far preferable to the sort of approach - 'We have got your children, you
are bad parents, unless you do this, this and this, you will not get them back.' So it is a
whole different sort of conversation that we are engaged in basically.
CHAIR - Why can't the department itself facilitate that?
Mr McCORMACK - Because I think when you have workers in a statutory position they
have a lot of power, they have a lot of control on the agenda and they are basically
saying, 'This is what is required of you, you have to do this, you have to do that'. The
families often will arc up and if you set that sort of dialectic up it is not helpful. So the
advantage is that if I get out and I sit in the kitchen and talk to this family and I meet the
grandparents and I meet the aunts and uncles, often the issues that are affecting the child
or the family can be frequently hidden. Problems grow when they are hidden, so often
grandparents, aunts, uncles, other people do not even know what is happening in this
particular family and all of a sudden it is a revelation to them and they have the huge
resources available to them to start working with their family, with the child, if they
know about it, if they are invited into it. My role often is to invite these extended family
members. Then also you have half a dozen community organisations and service
providers involved - Centacare, Anglicare, Salvation Army, counsellors, psychologists
what not - and they are all working in isolation from one another. So obviously if
everyone is in the same room we are all working off the one page, everybody knows
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what the other person is doing and we can work toward some sort of co-ordinated
approach.
CHAIR - Typically when would you be called in to offer your services?
Mr McCORMACK - There is a requirement that if further orders are needed I am often
called in. So if a child has been on a care and protection order for 12 months and the
matter is due back in court in a few weeks' time - 'Quick, we have to have a family
conference.' Whereas basically I am saying that when the child or the family first come
to the notice of the department that is the ideal time to actually begin a conferencing
process.
Ms PETRUSMA - So to be proactive instead of reactive?
Mr McCORMACK - Yes. So, if you do it at the assessment stage or when the notice first
comes, parents are often struggling, they are surrounded by various crises. We can say,
'Okay, how can we work with the family, how can we resource the family, who can do
what, how and when and where?' and set up a different sort of process.
Ms WHITE - Would you say that the Gateway Services, which now provide referrals for
families to get assistance and support from different providers, achieve that? It just
doesn't mean that they're coming to you, but they're going to other people who do
support them.
Mr McCORMACK - I don't really know enough about the Gateway Services, but
conferencing processes, as such, are not used by the Gateway. They have their own
processes. Having done about 200 conferences over the last so many years, I stress that
this is a very specific process. It grew out of New Zealand in 1989 and it has been used
now internationally as a very effective way of working with families. How the Gateway
operates, I am not too sure. I'm sure they do meet, I'm sure they have conferences but I
don't think they do it quite as extensively or in quite as detailed a way as this particular
process.
Ms PETRUSMA - This is really something that is used once the child is in out-of-home
care, isn't it. So Gateway is a step before that.
I focus on a statement on page 2 of your submission. You say:
'It now appears that family group conferencing does not always enjoy the
same status within Child Protection as an effective intervention with
families, despite current research and literature, both nationally and
internationally, indicating otherwise.'
What recommendations could you give us as a committee so that we can change that
situation so that it does give the recognition that you think it deserves?
Mr McCORMACK - I don't think it requires much actually. It is all there in the legislation
already, in the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act. There is a requirement
for family group conferences - when they must be held and when they may be held. It
doesn't require millions of dollars because we have the process, it is in the legislation,
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and there are facilitators around. It just needs, I think, an impetus within the system
itself to start using this as an early-intervention model.
As you are aware, the changeover in staff of Child Protection is fairly frequent; you
constantly get new graduates coming on board as case workers. They have little
knowledge or little grounding in this whole process, so it falls by the way. When it was
started in the 1990s, there was a whole leadership team within the Child Protection
system who were promoting this. They got it brought into the legislation. Those people
leave, other people come on and it loses its impetus.
Mr GROOM - Do you think there are some within the department who are strongly
supportive of it though?
Mr McCORMACK - Yes, some are. I constantly run into the same workers because they
believe in it. You have other workers there who may have been there for quite a while
who have never had a conference in their lives because they're not familiar with it, they
just don't use it.
Mr GROOM - To the best of your knowledge, is there an awareness-raising program in the
department?
Mr McCORMACK - Not that I know of. I don't think there is.
Ms PETRUSMA - On page 2 you talk about how over the last 13 years you've never met a
family who has been informed that they have a right to ask for a family group
conference. Section 39 of the act states that 'A secretary must convene a family group conference to review the
implementations of the plan'.
Do you think there should be a brochure given to families when they first start?
Mr McCORMACK - At least they should be informed that this is a process available to
them. I raise it often with them that they have a right to call for a conference in these
situations. Families feel very powerless against the department, the department has a lot
of power and it is dealing with their children so they very much acquiesce because they
don't want to do anything that may harm the outcomes of the children. But they have
some very clear rights to ask for a conference to review the care and protection orders of
the children that are being proposed or are in place already. I am not sure that giving
them a brochure would help, but certainly they need to be informed.
Mr GROOM - In your view, how can you deal with that power imbalance between
individuals and the department?
Mr McCORMACK - That is the role of the independent facilitators - very strongly. I come
in and it is very much my conference, I run it. The department is not running it. I set the
agenda - the legislation says it is up to the facilitator to decide who comes to the
conference, so I do the inviting.
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Mr GROOM - Yes, but that's been more in the process. I'm talking about before you get to
that point. You have just made the point that people are a bit reluctant almost - unless
something is suggested, presumably by the department - to push things and you are
saying that you think that is a consequence of the power imbalance. Families feel
disempowered by the department. How do you address that? How can you help
empower families?
Mr McCORMACK - Yes, that is often what I do actually in the conference itself to make
sure that the families get a voice and have a say. One of the shortcomings of conferences
can be that you develop an outcome throughput from the conference, then it is up to the
departmental workers to implement that. Often, because they are overburdened, they are
overworked, they do not have the time for the details, those outcomes can fall by the
wayside. I frequently receive complaints from families, 'This was decided at the
conference, but it has not happened.'
Mr GROOM - Do you ever get what you would perceive to be resistance to outcomes from
the department or is just that they are overloaded?
Mr McCORMACK - They are overloaded. Probably the majority of times the outcomes we
get are a negotiated agreement that the family and the department agree, they sign off on
it and that is the agreement that goes to court. I would say that happens most times.
Sometimes there is a diversion so the department can say, 'This is our position, this is
what we believe should happen,' and the family say, 'This is what we want to happen.'
The family document will still go to court and can be defended in court by their lawyer.
So you can have two documents in court, or two positions - the family's position and the
department's position. Then the child also has a separate independent legal rep so there
can be a third position when the child's rep recommends a third position. But more often
than not there is an agreement. I had a conference in Burnie yesterday with a mum and
her dad and two grandmothers and two maternal aunts and a couple of others and what
not. Over a three-hour period they gradually negotiated an agreement which I think will
stand up, whereas at the beginning there was no way they were going to do that.
Ms PETRUSMA - So the agreement that is negotiated that becomes part of their care plan or
goes to court. What happens with it?
Mr McCORMACK - Yes, it goes to court and if there is an agreement between Child
Protection and the family, usually that is endorsed by the court and then that becomes the
way forward. So it is really giving the family a very solid voice into how to proceed and
it is based on the philosophy that if families are treated respectfully and are resourced
sufficiently they will make good decisions about their children. If they are under attack
or in a corner or emotionally distraught, you get an emotional reaction which is not good.
So it is a creative context where respect happens, families are listened to, they all have
good intentions for their children, those intentions need to be honoured - so how can we
resource you, how can we work with you in order to move forward? At times the
children have to stay in care, of course, and there are situations where they need to be
made safe and they cannot go back to their families but that can be worked through.
Ms WHITE - Can I seek clarification on the best point in time in your opinion for utilising
family group conferencing? Do you think it is when a child is first notified but they are
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not actually under the care order of Child Protection, or is it when they come under the
care of Child Protection, once they have been removed from their families?
Mr McCORMACK - I think in that initial stage, Rebecca, during what they call the
assessment period - there is often an eight-week assessment period at the very beginning
before any orders are made. I think part of an assessment ought to include a family group
conference process.
Ms WHITE - So while the child is still in the family home?
Mr McCORMACK - In the family or temporarily on an interim care and protection order,
away from the family, and with no decisions having been made whether the child will go
back or go into care. It is amazing at times the number of people who will put up their
hands within the family circle, the extended family, to provide care. As we know,
grandparents all over the place are doing it. So I think at that initial stage, sometimes
when they are still at home or sometimes when they are on an interim order.
Ms WHITE - Okay. Thank you for that because I was not quite sure. The reason why I
brought up the Gateway Services is that they operate once a notification is made which is
also what you are saying would be an ideal time for your service to be provided. Perhaps
there is scope for your service to be included as one of the points of referral when a child
is notified.
Mr McCORMACK - Yes, absolutely.
conferencing as a general rule.
I do not think the Gateway use family group
Ms WHITE - But you would be happy to be included in that?
Mr McCORMACK - I think it is a great process and if we have it available we should use it.
Ms PETRUSMA - In your submission on page 5 you say that unfortunately Child Protection
workers are not always as enthusiastic as families to the family group conference review
processes. Do you know why that is?
Mr McCORMACK -I think it is probably the point that Matthew made. Sometimes it is
about power - who has the power and who makes the decisions. Fundamental to the New
Zealand legislation was the understanding that in conferencing the role of the child
protection worker changes. They are not there as the decision-makers but they are there
more as a collaborative partner, working with the family and drawing on the family
strengths and wisdoms, which are there if you look hard enough, to work with them so
that there is joint decision-making rather than the Child Protection worker having the say.
There are always exceptions. Sometimes, in a situation where a child is not safe, the
Child Protection worker needs to come in, and bang, bang a decision needs to be made
straight away, but that does not always happen.
Ms PETRUSMA - On page 6 you say that over the years you have frequently been informed
by family members who have participated in family group conferences that the decisions
made at conferences and approved by the Child Protection management at the time have
not been adhered to or followed up by the Child Protection Services. Why is that? And
what can be put in place to ensure that they are actually being adhered to?
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Mr McCORMACK - I think we need some sort of watchdog within the department to say,
'Okay, these are the conference decisions; are they being followed through? If not, why
not.' Otherwise those decisions can sit there on a bit of a paper and all of a sudden you
get a crisis call. As we know, the Child Protection workers often have a huge caseload.
So if a family is going along and there are no ructions, they are ignored. I think it is as
simple as that.
Ms PETRUSMA - What would be the ideal? So we have it on a child when they come in in
the intake or assessment phase. How often from that point would be the ideal?
Mr McCORMACK - I try to have review conferences - I suggest to them that maybe we
meet again in three months' time to see how it is going because there has been a major
distraction in the family's life. Usually there is not one crisis happening, usually there are
three or four other things. There are unemployment issues, there are relationship issues,
there could be drug and alcohol issues. There is a whole pummelling effect all the time,
so to think that a family who is in a certain crisis situation can make a plan for the next
12 months is totally unrealistic. But in three months' time we say, 'Let us meet together
to see what is working, how is it going, what has not worked, where do we need to rejig
it, get it back on track' - that sort of stuff. I think the 12-month span is just too long - it is
too far away. Families are usually very keen to do that.
Ms WHITE - You are contracted by Child Protection?
Mr McCORMACK - Yes.
Ms WHITE - Is that an ongoing contract or do they just ask you to come and Mr McCORMACK -No, the process, Rebecca, is that when a family group conference is
required, the family are provided with a list of names of facilitators and each facilitator
has a bit of a bio attached to them and so the department send out information on three or
four facilitators - 'This is who we have' - and they pick. To what extent they pick or to
what extent the department suggests, 'Well he would be good' or 'She would be good' there is probably a bit of that too. But basically the family have a right to choose their
facilitator.
Ms WHITE - Do you do this privately as well?
Mr McCORMACK - I do it privately all the time. So whenever a family group conference
is requested I get a request from the department asking whether I am available to
facilitate a conference. Then I enter into a contract for that particular conference and do
it and that is the end of the story.
Ms WHITE - You do not just work for Child Protection?
Mr McCORMACK - No, I do not work for them at all. I work privately.
CHAIR - You said you would be typically contacted, so who would be making the contact?
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Mr McCORMACK - Usually I think the senior practice consultant at Child Protection, or
one of the assistants to the director.
CHAIR - Do you do any work with the Education department?
Mr McCORMACK - Not directly, no. So I do this and I also do Youth Justice community
conferences. I had one this morning actually - a 17-year-old guy.
Ms PETRUSMA - How long does a family group conference take?
Mr McCORMACK - One last week I had with about 25 participants took four hours. The
one in Burnie yesterday was two-and-a-half hours. It varies a little bit; it depends on the
complexity of the issues and the number of people involved. They basically work in
three parts: the first part is the family group conference where everybody is in the room
together, there's information-sharing so everybody gets the same information. We talk
about the issues and concerns and we also talk about some of the positive developments
in this family and some of the strengths, so we try to sort of develop an agenda of what
needs to be decided at this conference. That can take an hour to an hour and a half. The
second part of the conference is family time only, where all the professionals leave and
just the family stay, and then they go in to make a family plan based on part one of the
conference. Sometimes I stay for that but usually I don't because it's really family time
and it's up to them to make the decisions. So they'll spend an hour or maybe two hours
drawing up a family plan in part two, and when they finish we call the department back
in for part three and go through it together and see if we sign off on it. So it's a very set
process; it's not just 'what do I do now?' sort of stuff, it's step by step and stage by stage.
Ms PETRUSMA - Who determines the attendees?
Mr McCORMACK - Basically me, in consultation with the family. I go to the family and
say, 'Who can we invite? Is there a grandmother or grandfather?' Usually there's a
grandmother or two lurking around somewhere, and there's aunts and uncles, older
brothers and sisters and cousins, or there's a neighbour down the road or a good friend
from years ago. We also consult with child protection workers too and sometimes the
legal people come. Sometimes it's important that the child representative be there;
sometimes their family have a legal rep or if the family is separated there may be a
couple of them there because sometimes it can be helpful to have the lawyers there as
well.
CHAIR - Thank you very much for that, it was terrific. Thanks for coming.
THE WITNESS WITHDREW.
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Mr PAUL MASON WAS CALLED, MADE THE STATUTORY DECLARATION AND
WAS EXAMINED.
CHAIR - Hi, Paul. Thank you for the very comprehensive submission you have provided to
us. How did you want to approach this? Do you want to talk us through your
submission?
Mr MASON - I think I might speak to the submission for about 10 minutes and then go from
there.
CHAIR - That would be great.
Mr MASON - You will see it is in dot point form because there's a lot in here. The primary
thing following from the previous witness, in my view, is the importance for children of
having someone who is completely outside the Child Protection executive who is
responsible directly to this Parliament whose term is longer than the term of this
Parliament and who has powers of oversight, monitoring and advocacy. When I say
powers, particularly in relation to advocacy, it is in my view a necessary element of
independent advocacy that the advocate has a statutory right of access to premises, a
statutory right to inspect documents, and a statutory right to speak to individuals alone and I cannot overemphasise that last word, 'alone'. One of the things about talking to
children and disempowered people of all kinds, including people with disabilities,
prisoners and refugees in refugee camps, is that they will tend to try to give you the
answer that they think you want to hear. Children are particularly good at that and I'm a
father and those of you who are parents know how that game works. If you speak to a
child in the presence of someone to whom they owe strong ties of loyalty, or conflicted
ties of loyalty, their answers will be influenced by the presence of that other person.
So that's the primary point that I want to make to this committee. If you want to find out
what it's like for kids in care or kids at risk or kids in the Gateway system or kids in the
schools, you have to talk to them in an environment where they know that they are safe
and able to tell you what they really think - just as I am here in 'cowards' castle' where I
am able to say whatever I think. That doesn't mean I'm not nervous but, like a child, I
would speak differently to you if I were outside this room.
Coming straight to the most recent point of the case of the 12-year-old girl who has
exercised the minds of Australia, not just Tasmania, since at least May of this year, it
was a major concern of mine that I think on one occasion only is there a recorded
conversation between the Child Protection worker and the child completely alone, in a
café, and that is the only conversation which, to my practised eye as a family lawyer of
some 30 years' standing, rings true. When you read the report of that conversation you
get a real idea of what it's like to be that child. In all of the other conversations with the
child there are other people there. In many of them, her mother is present or her siblings,
and when the department first became involved with this child the most significant risk
factor they identified was a reversal of the parenting roles. The child felt, and to some
extent her older sibling felt, that they were in some way responsible to protect, to help
and to support their mother in the role that she was discharging, particularly in relation to
the youngest sibling. That risk did not in my view reduce before this matter became
public, nor do I think it was adequately addressed. That is the first thing I wanted to say.
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The second thing I have to say I have listed in my three themes there in my submission.
This inquiry is here because this is how this executive runs their child protection system,
with respect. They believe they have at heart the best interests of all the children in their
responsibility. They go to bed at night believing what they have done what they can for
the children in their responsibility. However, they need a reality check from time to time
and there is no-one within the system, and there is no method within the system, that
ensures they get that reality check. If you look at the history of child protection in this
State, in every other State and in every other jurisdiction in the world it is a common
problem. It is not a criticism that I level against this Executive any more than any other.
In every jurisdiction that I am aware of there have been parliamentary and judicial
inquiries, often following a death of a child through neglect or abuse, in this case
following neglect of a child, and it is a responsive crisis-driven model. It is expensive
and it is ineffective because what happens, with great respect to you six people, is that
you will produce recommendations and which I expect will be very similar, if not
identical, to recommendations that have been made all over the world. There was a child
in England called Victoria Climbie who died and ought not to have died. The creation of
the Commissioner for Children in that country and in Scotland, Northern Ireland and
Wales arose largely out of the Victoria Climbie inquiry. But there was not a lot in the
Victoria Climbie inquiry that was not in the crime and misconduct inquiry in Queensland,
that was not in the two inquiries in South Australia, or the inquiry they have had in
Victoria, or aspects of the Little Children are Sacred inquiry in the Northern Territory the Commissioner for Children's recent inquiry in the Northern Territory - and on and on
and on we go. There is no quote about 'preventing problems before they arise'. There is
a quotation from this Parliament. In 1997 the Government introduced the Children,
Young Persons and their Families Bill. One of the things that Mr Cleary, who introduced
that bill, said in the second reading speech was:
'In providing services for children and their families there are few definitive
answers and a large number of complex questions. It is not surprising that
organisations which deal with children at risk do not always meet their own
expectations -'
and that was what I was talking about 'The select committee's approach to this issue was focused on, one,
preventing a problem before a crisis occurred; two, supporting practitioners
and increasing the available skills and knowledge base; and three,
developing policy practice standards in the service system that provides the
best possible outcomes for children and their families. All three criteria
will be met with the establishment of a Commissioner for Children in
Tasmania.'
I will give Mr Donnelly a copy of a document I have prepared where I have excerpted
from Hansard every reference to the children's commissioner in that debate, and the
members all had the greatest expectations of the position, that it would be independent,
would have monitoring capacity, oversight, advocacy powers, and would be a powerful
position. Here we are 13 years later and we have not prevented a crisis before it
occurred, we are still supporting and increasing the available skills and knowledge base
of practitioners, which were not up to the crisis that occurred, and we have not provided
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the best possible outcomes for children and their families. I will provide that to you later
and I really commend those references to you.
What you need is a system which is not just responsive. The Commissioner for Children
at the moment has two powers essentially of her own motion. One is to raise public
awareness about the welfare, education, health and development of children, and the
other is to advise the minister. Now, how do you know what to advise the minister about
if you do not have an oversight and a monitoring function? As the four commissioners
who currently serve this State have done, they have picked and chosen the things that
interest them and personally, I am as guilty as anybody of that, as no doubt you may
know, but it's still a crisis-driven model.
The second concern I want to raise with this committee is what I've described as the
'closing files' culture versus the 'model parent' culture. When you are a parent you
cannot close the file. When they move out they move back in again. You think they've
gone; they go overseas and get jobs, and then a couple of years later, there they are again
and you never, ever close the file. I observed in my reading of this individual case - as
well as in the reading of some 30 files in detail every year over 20 years, in this State,
Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales - that the closure of a file is seen as a mark
of success in Tasmania. I suppose that's a function of professional pressure to some
extent. The Government doesn't use it as a mark of success in any of those other
jurisdictions, and when I advised the minister that that was how I saw it, in this particular
case the department was quick to deny it publicly. Mr Byrne went to the press and said,
'There is no such culture'. I disagree with him about that and if I am right it is a bad
thing. If there is a risk that I'm right, or more right than he is, that's a bad thing and that's
something that a child protection system should address. It should be demonstrable and
undeniable that there is no culture of closing files, and that's why I've compared it to the
model parent.
The model parent - the State, the Executive Government, the Sovereign - cannot and
should not close files. It leads to all sorts of little things like, as a child in care
approaches their eighteenth birthday, it's not that the interest drops off, it's just that other
more pressing babies, infants and children are on the horizon and when a kid is 15, 16 or
17 you think, 'Well, they're going to get on with their own lives; they're becoming adults
and becoming more and more autonomous'. You hope they're going to be able to segue
neatly into adult life in a safe environment. The statistics are clear that children who
have been in care perform less well in adulthood than those who have not, so if your
children are returning to your home after they've left that's because they need that
support and, to some extent, the services that the Executive provides to those children
should not close off on a particular date.
Now the Executive will say, 'We do provide services after the child is 18', but I would
invite you to talk to the - I can't remember the title they use - the kids who have left care
who are now working for the CREATE Foundation. They spoke downstairs in the
Gallery last year and their point was that they did feel they'd been abandoned when they
left care and that they didn't get the kind of support they needed when they left. When
my stepdaughter left my and my wife's care, we were driving back and forth getting
cupboards, beds and lifting furniture and so forth. The department endeavours to do that
but it's limited in what it can do. But it does relate to the pressure to close files, and in
this particular case the department successfully closed the file in February 2008, when
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professionals were informing the department that the risks were unaltered, that nothing
had really improved, and only three months later there was a catastrophe in the family, in
May 2008. Then in September 2009, another 16 months later, there was the ultimate
catastrophe in this case, and again nothing had changed. The title of my report is pointed
to the fact that the day the responsible committee made a recommendation to the
secretary's delegate to let the protection order lapse was the day these awful things were
happening to this child.
The third point I wanted to make was really the first one, that if you don't have external
and independent oversight the opportunities for a government - not only this one - to spin
the figures and tell the public that things are going well, notifications are down,
substantiations are down, we've got the new Gateway system in place and because
notifications are down therefore children are safer, that is bad and unsafe logic unless
there is someone who can connect the reduced reporting to Child Protection and what's
happening in the Gateway not to the figures and the outcomes and the dollars we're
spending on the process but to the actual safety of children in the system. The whole
purpose of the Gateway was that minor and major complaints were coming in straight
through to Child Protection and that system was overloaded. The Gateway is a
community-based intake process and is a really good idea. It will save money not
necessarily in the immediate future but over the long term, over generations, because
hopefully theoretically it enables services to be provided to families and to children a lot
sooner. The money that is saved is the money of intensive child protection. The money
is also saved in saving police expenditure, ambulance expenditure, hospital bed
expenditure, youth justice expenditure and ultimately Ashley and Risdon expenditure,
which are incredibly expensive. Child protection is not sitting out here on its own as an
expensive thing; it is an expensive thing that creates massive expense in other areas.
Those are the main themes I wanted to bring to you today.
Ms PETRUSMA - Paul, could you just explain what you mean by coercive powers?
Mr MASON - Yes. In the course of my advice to the minister on this 12-year old it became
apparent that the problems the three children in this family were experiencing were not
unlike the problems that their mother had experienced when she was a child. It is very
difficult for me in this public arena not to trample on the privacy of the mother herself,
especially since she is utterly unable to answer anything that we may say about her. I
asked the Department of Health for a copy of clinical notes from the drug and alcohol
counselling that she had in order to better advise the minister about the transgenerational
nature of the neglect and abuse that the present generation was suffering in this family.
The department refused my request and produced an advice from the Solicitor-General.
Mr GROOM - On what grounds did they refuse?
Mr MASON - On the basis of an advice from the Solicitor-General that the Commissioner
for Children lacked the power to require.
Mr GROOM - On the basis of section 80?
Mr MASON - Yes.
Mr GROOM - On what grounds?
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Mr MASON - You had better ask the Solicitor-General. I disagree with that opinion but the
Solicitor-General said that the inquiry had been instituted under a paragraph of subsection (1) of section 79, which related to children generally and did not empower the
commissioner to require information about an individual in particular.
Mr GROOM - It seems extraordinary. I have the words here in front of me:
'The Commissioner may require any person to answer questions or to
produce documents so far as may be relevant to the administration of this
act.'
It reads as an extremely broad power to me. I must say I find that very concerning if, in
your former role, you have been denied access to documents that you consider to be
relevant in the performance of your function.
Mr MASON - I was very concerned. I had promised the minister that I would do my best to
produce an advice to her by a certain date. That date had already passed. To resolve that
issue I would have had to seek a declaration in the Supreme Court as to the meaning of
section 80 as it relates to that particular question. That would have taken a considerable
time.
Mr GROOM - Were you provided with a copy of the legal advice?
Mr MASON - Yes, I required it under section 80 and a copy was provided to me by grace,
not in a response to my requirement. That was an interesting thing, Mr Groom, that I met
in a number of other areas. I would use the word 'require' and the respondents would
provide information not in response to a requirement but, as they clearly said, out of the
goodness of their hearts.
Mr GROOM - So they sought to re-characterise the basis upon which the information was
being provided. It strikes me as a very important point because this committee has
received evidence from the current commissioner in relation to a reluctance of certain
information to be provided.
In fact the current commissioner has made a
recommendation, the consistent view, that this be bolstered in some way. I was a little
bewildered because when I went to the section I thought it is an extremely broad power.
For the life of me I do not understand how you could argue that it is not within your
power.
Mr MASON - Well, Mr Groom, lawyers are very good at arguing.
Laughter.
Mr MASON - The long and the short of it is that if you want spell out the power then you
can turn to other acts - the Ombudsman's power, the Auditor-General's power. You can
look at those powers and you will see that they set out not only statements like that but
also how to enforce that requirement and how to follow through. Because that section is
so short, so blank, there is an argument that by comparison with the powers of other
statutory officers, those officers have powers that the commissioner does not have. I do
not agree with the refusal to comply with my requirement.
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Mr GROOM - I do not disagree with the need for further clarification, but it strikes me as a
very wide power. You have made a very strong case for the importance of the role of the
Children's Commissioner, and the importance of an independent review. I think you
made the point that, despite the fact that very good people work in the system, from time
to time it does need a reality check. I guess that is part of the function of the
commissioner. But you made the point that it is very important that it be independent.
You think the terms should exceed the term of the parliament, which strikes me as a very
sensible position. Another matter that I raised with the current Children's Commissioner,
and I was shocked when I looked at it, was that the minister may effectively remove,
obviously through the Governor, the commissioner from office, quoting from the act, 'for
any reason that he or she thinks sufficient'. Would you have a view on that?
Mr MASON - Yes, I do. I was not worried about that. As a lawyer I thought that if the
minister decided to shoot me for a reason she thought sufficient then I could test that in
the Supreme Court. I could seek a declaration that the reason was not sufficient and she
would have to face the media to explain why it was sufficient.
Mr GROOM - I do not doubt that you could make the argument and we could revert to the
legal system, but what is your view in terms of the appropriateness?
Mr MASON - I was not troubled by that phrase because if a commissioner wanted to argue it
then they could argue it.
Mr GROOM - That is not really the question I am asking. I am asking whether you think it
appropriate that the minister is able to simply remove the children's commissioner. You
made mention of the Ombudsman. If you compare it to other statutory officers, normally
there is a requirement that a case be made that the person is incapable of performing a
function or that they may have engaged in wrong-doing of some type. This is completely
discretionary.
Mr MASON - Well, with respect, I disagree with your argument that it is discretionary, but I
do agree that there are other ways of structuring these positions. For instance, many of
these positions can only be removed on a decision by both Houses of Parliament. That is
a common provision you find in legislation and that would answer the problem you have
raised. It may be discretionary, it may be that the Parliament is sick of the existing
commissioner and wants to get rid of them, but if the Parliament gets rid of them then noone is going argue with that. I agree with you that it is a lower order of discretion than it
should be to establish proper independence. I would be much happier if the
commissioner could be removed by a motion from both Houses of Parliament rather than
within the Cabinet.
Mr GROOM - This question goes to the role of the commissioner. We had evidence given
today by the Deputy Sectary of Human Services, Alison Jacob. She made a number of
comments that I would just like to read out. She said, 'There is a need to guard against
professional decision making by Child Protection workers being constantly subject to
second-guessing and dispute by people who, while they are often well intentioned, are
not trained or experienced in Child Protection services'. In the context of the important
role of the children's commissioner, do you think it is important that the children's
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commissioner has practical experience in child protection practices? Is that something
that is important to the role?
Mr MASON - I think it is important that the children's commissioner has experience with
child protection services, not in Child Protection Services. The Ombudsman secondguesses the department. The Auditor-General is second-guessing the department at the
moment in relation to children in out-of-home care. To my knowledge neither of those
gentlemen has any experience in child protection or with child protection. I think myself,
Ms Ashford, Mr Fanning and Ms Ambikapathy have all had experience with child
protection, and that is appropriate. I do not know whether you would want to cast that
into legislation as a necessary requirement, but that is how I would answer Ms Jacob's
comment there.
One of things about the department's response to my report, for instance, and it connects
with something you were saying earlier, Mr Groom, was that when I complained that the
commissioner should have greater powers to require documents, that is exactly what I
was referring to. The powers just do not seem to be there, but can be by a simple stroke
of the legislative pen. That recommendation was not accepted because, if I remember
rightly, the commissioner has power to request any document and information that he or
she wants. So, very subtly, the department spun on the spot and turned 'requirement' into
'request' as if no-one would notice, but I am glad you have noticed. There is a difference
between requesting and requiring. Regarding the police - in my longer report which I
think I have drawn your attention to - interestingly under section 80 I required the
Commissioner for Police to produce to me the records of interview of the members of the
family and of Mr Devine. In the first instance I was refused point blank. The reason I
was given was that they were under a direction of the minister. Interestingly enough of
course the minister happened to be the same individual as the minister who had asked me
to advise her. So here was a minister directing one of her departments not to provide
information at the requirement of the Commissioner for Children whom she had asked
for an advice. I said I wanted that in writing because I intended to annex it to an affidavit
and file an application in the Supreme Court for a declaration about section 80. When I
required it in writing the police came back to me and said, 'We will give you a verbal
briefing'. So I said okay. One step at a time. I went to the verbal briefing, they told me
what they were doing and at the end of that I went away and said, 'Now I want a copy of
the briefing paper and I want copies of the records of interview. Thank you very much.'
and I required them under section 80. The police this time acceded to that request, as a
request not as a requirement, and lent them to me. They were very sensitive documents,
and I accepted that. I have seen more sensitive documents in my time as a lawyer, but
they were sensitive documents. They were provided on loan on the basis that I would not
copy them and would return them as soon as I prepared my advice to the minister, which
I did. We are still sitting here today, the police have not responded to a requirement for
information, the Department of Health has not responded to a requirement for
information, the Department of Education and the division of Child and Family Services
provided all the information I required, again, not in response to our requirement but just
by sending boxes of documents to my office very promptly and in very good order, for
which I thank them. The Registrar of the Supreme Court declined a requirement and I
thought it was probably appropriate for me as a member of the Executive to require the
judiciary to do something but, again, they acceded to it as a request and provided me with
the information I needed. I am very troubled that arms of the Executive Government feel
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they can pick and choose whether they respond to a request or a requirement when
section 80, in my view, is pretty clear.
Ms PETRUSMA - So do you think that one of our recommendations should be that section
80 is further clarified?
Mr MASON - Yes. I think you should get hold of the Solicitor-General's advice because
there is too much wriggle room if the commissioner is inquiring into an individual
person and the wrong paragraph of section 79(1) is selected, then there's wriggle room
for saying that you can't give information about an individual, which I think is a
nonsense, with great respect to those who gave that advice.
Ms PETRUSMA - So do you think the department only ever wanted you just to look at
debriefing and that sort of thing?
Mr MASON - I think that this Government, like a lot of executive governments - and now I
can speak as citizen Mason - was hoping that they had an idea of what they wanted me to
report so they didn't trouble themselves too much about the detail. I could have said that
she was an awful mother and a naughty child and the things that were missed were
missed by a Child Protection worker who was overworked, underpaid and who had the
wool pulled over her eyes by the mother and the naughty child. I think that is probably
the outcome the department would have been most comfortable with but it wasn't the
outcome that I provided them. Does that answer your question?
Ms PETRUSMA - Yes, thank you. Can you go through with us now some of the projects
underway, traps for young players?
Mr MASON - Yes, I put that in because I saw Mr Greg Barns give evidence and two things
he said disturbed me. One was that the child protection system is beyond repair, and if
that is true then we may as well all just pack up and go home. I don't think it is beyond
repair. The second thing he said was that we need a dedicated children's court, which I
took to mean a dedicated child protection court in this State, and lo and behold, within
the same week the newspapers were reporting that there is a children's court. That's why
I've got there that the children's court being referred to by the Attorney-General - now the
Treasurer and Deputy Premier - is in fact a youth justice court pilot administered by a
magistrate selected by the chief. They hope, as I understand it - and I don't think I'm
spiking anyone's guns here - to expand that to child protection and I wish the court every
success with that project. However I was engaging myself as a lawyer with child
protection experience - not, as Ms Jacobs would say, 'a person in Child Protection' - and I
was engaging myself with the court to provide them with the benefit of my experience in
that field in the development of a court that would deal with child protection. That
process is now out of my hands; I am no longer able to have any input or influence into
that process.
What I've listed here are other things in which I was engaged which were still in process
and to which I was contributing my expertise - if you can call it that - at the time that my
term expired. I want this committee to be aware that these are live areas of reform that
require the Parliament to keep a close eye on to make sure that they wind up in the right
place. One of the things you may have noticed is the DSA or Disability Services Act.
That's a review process that was overseen by a steering committee of which I was a
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member, and that committee made various recommendations which I think are now in
the form of a cabinet minute, but to my knowledge the Executive Government has not
adopted a strong recommendation from that steering committee that in the delivery of
disability services people with disabilities, and in my case particularly children with
disabilities, have independent advocacy. Those advocates should have statutory powers
of entry and inspection and statutory powers to speak to individuals because disability
advocates I have spoken to in this State have uniformly complained to me that they been
stymied by the lack of power they have when they attend premises and that some
services will not let them speak to clients alone and treat advocates as the enemy and
make things as awkward and difficult for them as possible. Some advocates are
concerned that some services actually visit retribution on clients who have been visited
by an active advocate.
So it is a concern to me that the Executive has at this point chosen to bypass independent
advocacy. They have created a model of a senior practice consultant who will conduct a
monitoring oversight of disability services delivery and in my view that is not sufficient
or adequate.
Ms PETRUSMA - Complaints in care policy revision - what are you talking about there?
Mr MASON - Since January 2009 there has been in place an internal child protection policy
for how complaints in care are to be dealt with, and they range from the very minor, like
the porridge being too cold, to the very major, like assaults by carers and sexual assaults
by other children in care. The commissioner is a member of a monitoring group which
oversees complaints in care and that is again at Her Majesty's whim. The commissioner
has no power to be there; the commissioner is given information - is promised
information from that group which is not provided; the commissioner does not get every
complaint in care that is made, it is only a selective number of complaints. Ms Petrusma,
the reference there to removing one-on-one meetings is that that policy is currently under
review and they want to do two things. One is to have a sort of formal triage where what
the Government thinks are less important complaints are dealt with in a different way
from the ones it thinks are more important. The gateway, if you like, for using that triage
system, if you think about sheep running through a pen, that gate is operated by a Child
Protection worker or a team leader or a senior practice consultant, which means it gives
the executive the capacity to close down a complaint. Anything that gives the executive
the capacity to close down information, to close down complaints, is a danger to the
citizens that they are supposed to be protecting. As far as I can see one of the
requirements of the current, or former, policy was the importance of speaking to the
child alone, one on one. As I read the review document, that is diluted. When I
complained in my report about the 12-year-old that the worker had not been speaking to
the child one on one, the department's response was that she did not have to and that
although she was using the complaints-in-care form to record her conversations, she was
not attending under that policy; she was attending under another policy. More spin. The
visiting requirement and the requirement for speaking alone exist entirely because of the
complaints-in-care policy. That is where the standards are created and set out in that
January 2009 policy. There is another policy about visits for kids in out-of-home care,
but the standards, the regularity and the necessity to speak to the child alone exist within
the complaints-in-care policy. I warned the Parliament against letting that be diluted. It
is very important for children in care that they have individual contact and alone - even
young children of five or six - to talk to kids about how it is.
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CHAIR - In normal practice as it currently exists, if a child made a complaint against a carer
how would that be dealt with?
Mr MASON - Well the first question is: how does it get out? The answer to that is: in a
number of different ways. The child will sometimes tell the Child Protection worker if
the Child Protection worker sees the child alone, or the child will tell a schoolmate or a
parent on an access visit. That last category has its own problems because parents who
visit their removed children during access visits are emotionally anxious and they want to
see everything in the worst possible light about the Government looking after the child.
It is important not to treat it as completely false. It is important. For instance, there is a
policy that, when there is a notification to Child Protection, the notifier will be told what
has happened to the notification, and that is the same as the complaints-in-care process. I
see that being observed in the breach rather than the practice. It seems unusual to me. I
may be wrong, but statistically in the stories I have seen there is not a lot of feedback to
notifiers and to kids who make complaints. What is the effect of that? It is a way of
shutting down. It is a way of covering over and that does not help child protection.
Ms PETRUSMA - Paul, I came from the aged-care complaints investigation scheme prior to
entering parliament. I suppose the biggest thing for me since I have been dealing with
child protection issues over the last eight months is that there is no independent child
protection complaints investigation scheme because the department is investigating itself.
In the aged-care system, any person in a nursing home, their relative, son, daughter or
nursing staff can make a complaint. It is independently investigated so that everyone
sees it as a fairly robust sort of system and everyone feels they can have a voice. Do you
think that something like that needs to be set up or does it need to come under the
Commissioner for Children, for example?
Mr MASON - I think that the Commissioner for Children needs to know about every
concern. The one story which in the last three-and-a-half years really brought me to tears
was the story of a little boy who was with his siblings in foster care. His complaint, as it
got out through one of his siblings, was that they had to sit at the dining room table while
the foster family sat in the lounge room to watch television, so they could only watch
television through the door. That really cracked me up. Was that abusive? Was it
violent? Was it sexual? It was none of those.
Ms PETRUSMA - It is emotional abuse.
Mr MASON - It was awful.
Ms PETRUSMA - I have been dealing with a lot of kids who have left the system, speaking
to kids through CREATE, kids who have left care, and the number one thing that struck
me was that each of them still had ongoing anger issues about the fact that they had
raised concerns with the department during their care. These include things such as
mattresses on the floor, not on the base; that they were given different food to eat; or they
were expected to be a live-in nanny, house cleaner et cetera. They raised these issues
with the department and they felt they were never getting anybody independently to
assess their complaint. That is why they felt as if they needed to go to someone who
could be that independent advocate.
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Mr MASON - The Government says they can go to the Ombudsman.
Ms PETRUSMA - Yes, but the Ombudsman a lot of the time will say that he cannot
investigate it all.
Mr MASON - I had a look at the Ombudsman's annual report before I came here and I think
in 2009-10 he investigated four complaints from Child Protection. He actually spoke to
me personally after Ms Ashford's appointment had been announced. I told him that the
Commissioner for Children's office gets complaints that the commissioner cannot deal
with, because it is not a complaints office, and maybe five or six a week. We had to refer
them on to the Ombudsman, who said, 'That's funny, because I do not get them'. I said
that is because it is an obstacle course and brick wall for people who are either poorly
educated or have other responsibilities or whatever. You can have a system that looks
really good on paper but which is just a brick wall for the people it is supposed to be
serving.
CHAIR - How would the complaints get to you? You say you had five or six a week.
Mr MASON - They ring up or they e-mail to the commissioner. I do not know that we have
analysed it in particular, but the current commissioner could do that for you if you asked
her to, or if the minister did. Analyse who they came from and what they were about.
They are from foster parents, parents, neighbours, kids - all sorts.
Mr GROOM - Did you get any complaints from those within the department.
Mr MASON - From workers?
Mr GROOM - Yes.
Mr MASON - Rarely, but a couple. People would ring up and say, 'I have had a gutful; this
is not working, I cannot do anything for this family because of what is above me'.
Mr WIGHTMAN - What things in your experience in Tasmania have been working well, or
examples of best practice that have been working well and making a difference in kids'
lives?
Mr MASON - The best thing this Government has done is to institute the community-based
intake service, Gateway. With that comes possibly the worst thing they have done - to
use that as a method of arguing that children are safer when there is no evidence that they
are.
Ms PETRUSMA - Is this in regard to the Gateway?
Mr MASON -Yes, and to argue that because notifications that get through to the department
are down then children are safer; and at the same time as creating a community-based
intake service not creating an electronic database that would enable families to be tracked
right the way through. So a person can come to a Gateway service and receive a service
and go away but it will not be included in Child Protection electronic statistics. That
same family can come back on a number of occasions until it becomes so bad that it does
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become a Child Protection concern. That was a flaw in the design, I think, but the idea is
great and as I say, it's what has been done in Victoria and in England.
Mr WIGHTMAN - Why do you say it's great? What does it have the potential to do?
Mr MASON - It's good because if there are so many notifications to Child Protection that
they cannot physically address them all as they come in, then they get turned away, and
the same people come back again and again until there really is a crisis and by that stage
it has become very expensive and you very often have serious escalating family violence
which now involves police, ambulance, Risdon and the rest of it. That is why it's
expensive for the community. That money should be going into providing housing for
families who are struggling with money problems and into drug and alcohol counselling,
family violence protection and things like that. So that's a good thing but it's not good
enough to say, 'Well, here's a good system we've set up', unless it also addresses the
wriggle-out and the problems with it.
What else has gone well with Tasmanian Child Protection? I think breaking up Child
Protection into four regional services has brought expert management closer to the
coalface, so the area team leaders and the Child Protection management system are
working well. I think that has improved conditions for the workers and made it easier for
them to do their jobs. The minister has announced that she has put money into the
system but if you look at the most recent Productivity Commission report on government
services - known as ROGS - the total expenditure on Child Protection in Tasmania went
up in 2008 and dipped down a bit in 2009. If you look at the money that's spent on
Intensive Family Support Services and statutory Child Protection Services, you will see
that the money on statutory Child Protection Services has dropped while the amount
that's gone into family support has gone up hugely, but they're the same thing - sort of
bites out of the same cherry.
Another really good thing is that when they created the Gateway they engaged someone
to conduct action research and action something else - some other buzzword; one of the
funniest things about the last three years has been learning all the bureaucratic language but they did set up what I thought was a very effective method of enabling workers to
say what is going wrong. You have to have a system where a worker can say, 'I really
stuffed up today', and not feel that there's going to be a black mark against them; they
should be encouraged to do that in a safe environment and that should be an ongoing
process. In the report I read about how they tease these things out they don't talk about
problems, they talk about 'challenges' or 'areas for improvement' and that sort of stuff,
which is all fine but it's basically the same thing. It's saying, 'Look, it is a nonsense to
pretend that the system is working as well as it could'.
Mr WIGHTMAN - It's a system that will never be perfect.
Mr MASON - Precisely, and that's why I don't criticise this Executive when things go wrong
because they've gone wrong. What I criticise them for is their defensiveness, the kneejerk denial, so when I say, as I've said before, that there is a culture of closing files which
is evident from reading a file, they say there is no evidence, meaning that there is no
researched, randomised control trial conducted by someone with a doctorate from a
university; there's just Mr Mason sitting there blowing off. But it is experience and it is
evidence and I see it in practice and practitioners I speak to in this State - and in New
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South Wales and other States - agree with me that there is a bureaucratic tendency to see
a closed file or a referral out - and that's the other thing that happened in this case - that if
you can successfully refer a Child Protection case to a service then you can tick that box.
No way; I think the box is ticked when the child is safe, not when the child has been
referred to a good service. They are two different things, no matter how good the
service.
Ms PETRUSMA - Paul, you were talking about your funding concern and money going
more into early intervention than to the child protection system and you were going to
talk about what that concern was. What is your concern about that mix in the future?
Mr MASON - It's the reason the Commonwealth Government has established through
COAG the national child protection framework. These other services are so incredibly
expensive - jail, hospital, ambulance - and if you look at the kids in Ashley, for instance,
there is a very good paper by Ms Jacob, one of the finest papers I've had the pleasure of
reading, which is about youth justice; it's like her little bible on youth justice. She only
produced it very recently prior to her departure. She makes the point that something like
43 per cent of the kids who come into Ashley have been on orders and 90 per cent have
been known to Child Protection Services. Now, the logic is that if you can save $1 000 a
day, if you say to a kid, 'Listen, instead of stealing cars, if I give you $1 000 a day' - but
it's not that simple, obviously.
Laughter.
Mr GROOM - I'm not sure that that's the answer.
Mr MASON - Governments all over the world are struggling with this problem - how can we
shift that cost back to the early stages?
CHAIR - Of course that's one of the terms of reference here. Paul, you talked earlier about
our having a crisis-driven model and we're always responding to crises. If we had to put
in place a best-practice model, what would be some of the ingredients of that model
which looks at the elements of, say, early identification and intervention and then
integration of service delivery, the sort of things you have spoken about? What needs to
change?
Mr MASON - You passed a law last year - congratulations - which provides for services to
speak to each other about children at risk of neglect, and that was a breakthrough. It was
also a necessary part of a community-based intake process that the Salvos can talk to
Centacare, or the classic example is police driving out to a domestic on a Friday night
and ringing Child Protection and saying, 'What can you tell me about this family?', and
someone from Child Protection saying, 'I can't tell you anything'. So information
exchange is a key thing. Another key thing that I've touched on is that the Executive
Government knows who is coming through the door of the Family Support Services and
the Gateway. If you're reported to Child Protection you go into a computer system
which automatically lights up the connections with your mother, your mother's family,
your siblings, your step siblings, your father blah, blah, blah and on it goes, so the
department can say this family needs quick and focused attention. That should also be
rolled out for the Gateways so that you do not get the possibility of people going to the
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Gateway and going away and coming and going away and coming back until there is a
crisis - so, preventing problems before they arise.
One of the major crises you will have heard about - and I have read a bit of transcript of
these proceedings - is kids who are in 10 or 20 different placements and then go to eight
schools. That is a problem and that problem needs to be prevented before it can arise. If
there is any money expenditure that is needed in this field it is to boost the number of
foster placements. The Government had a go at recruiting and recruited some people but
I received complaints about that process. I received complaints from people who had put
their names up to be foster carers and had either not heard any more, just silence, or had
been told, yes, come along and we will do a training session with you and then have
heard nothing. Perhaps the Government has good reason for saying no, they are not
suitable people. They are entitled to know that. If they have gone to the trouble to put
their head on the block, they need to be told when the axe is coming down. Again, it is
the Government being defensive, the Executive being defensive and afraid of criticism. I
would like to think they should be a lot more open to criticism.
Mr WIGHTMAN - Don't you think they get criticised enough?
Mr MASON - They get criticised when there is a crisis. They get criticised because crises
occur you see, but they need to bring us in on the story. It is only the lawyers, the
Commissioner for Children and the people in Child Protection who know what the story
is - and the kids, of course. The outsourcing of residential care services and the
outsourcing of all sorts of services, the outsourcing of Disability Services looks great on
the outside because it has all gone quiet, but the reality is that it is not, that there are
people out there suffering because of the outsourcing. People have talked about Derwent
Park and they say we should never have that again. Well, Derwent Park was half good,
half bad and when they all moved out into the suburbs, the good did not all follow. We
have Disability Service workers - and I tell this on my I promise to tell the truth - who
cannot read and write. They cannot write a shift report so that the person coming on on a
rotating shift does not know what has happened in the previous shift. That is not a
criticism of the individuals; it is a criticism of the system. You cannot have a system
where you just bundle people into a service where everything goes quiet and if things do
go quiet, if it looks as if it is working well, I hate to say it, but that could be an alarm bell.
I was just thinking about a particular case, Ms Petrusma, if I could because I want to
frame this very delicately. There is an outsourced residential care service for Child
Protection and I am aware of three very serious problems that have arisen in that service
and now that I have been reminded of it, I would like to tell you about that another time
in camera if I could because I do think you need to know. It is a signal of a breakdown in
the outsourcing system.
CHAIR - Paul, we have 15 minutes. We could move into camera if you like after we have a
couple more questions.
Mr MASON - No problem.
Ms PETRUSMA - Just quickly, the two questions are just on section 3 and 4. Are you
saying that these recommendations are still yet to be implemented or they are still out
there and have not been put in place?
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Mr MASON - Yes. Not all the recommendations in the Jacob-Fanning report have been
implemented. It would be absolute hubris for me to suggest that because I made 1 000
recommendations the Government has to adopt them straight up. Recommendations
really in this context are ideas that have arisen from the reading of a situation. You read
a story and you say, 'Okay, I am not Alison Jacob but I think this is how this problem
could be addressed.'
The key issue is this - and this comes back to Mr O'Halloran's question about crisis
prevention - even in the Gateway the importance of speaking to the child alone is not an
essential part of the process. A family comes in with a child, and mum might come in
with a 10-year-old, a whining five-year-old and a baby in a stroller and she has a
problem. It might be domestic violence, it might her gambling habit, it might be the
neighbours, it might be the kid who will not go to school, it might be whatever. It might
be that some service promised her something and they did not deliver. In my view, if this
service is to have children at the centre of everything they do, to quote Mr Lennon and
Mr Bartlett, then the child is the person you talk to and you talk to the child if you can
away from the mum. If you ask mum how things are at home, you get the response, 'Oh,
they are fine' and then you get the child alone and ask how things are at home - 'Well,
dad threw the television through the window last night.' Mum is not going to tell you
that because mum wants to hang on to dad for all the reasons that victims of domestic
violence want to hang on to their partner. I think that is a really important part of it. I
invited the reform implementation unit, when I was on a steering committee for
designing the intake form that Gateway workers use, to have a separate section that says
'Ask the parent if you can speak to the children' and if you do, here are some questions
you can ask them. 'How are things, how are your friends, how is sport, what is your
favourite food, do you get enough of that, blah, blah, blah' and it comes out. If you can
spend 10 or 15 minutes with a kid at that stage maybe you will get the same story that
mum or dad has given you, but on the other hand maybe you will get a new angle that
will enable you to avert a crisis.
But the reform implementation unit did not take up my suggestion and that brings me to
another important point. There is a tendency of executive governments all over the world
to develop a policy, to develop a document, to develop a form, to develop a process and
then put it out for consultation. Sitting here as citizen Mason, I say that is bull. They
have decided what they are going to do and they do it and the consultation process is so
that they can tick the consultation box. The new Royal Hobart Hospital that was going to
be down at the docks: a lot of money put was put into developing that process and the
Commissioner for Children got a request to comment on that in a consultation process
five days before the decision was to be made. That was patently false and patently
dishonest and yet the Children's Commissioner is, I think, an important stakeholder in
providing things like the design. Show us where the kids are going to be housed. I have
been to children's hospitals in Melbourne and Sydney to look at them as part of the job,
and I was hoping to be involved in the development of the Royal and I wasn't - and I still
wasn't in the new design. Even the Liberals did not ask me, but it is an important point.
Look at the children and youth strategy that the Government has created. That has been
created without the input of the Commissioner for Children. To the best of my
knowledge it was created by an interdepartmental committee of adults who are all well
meaning and all very learned, and then there is a consultation process. I bet London to a
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brick that there will not be much difference between the consultation draft and the
outcome.
Ms PETRUSMA - Point seven, your argument for a commission of inquiry, are you saying
there should be a commission of inquiry into the decision to prosecute only one of the
200 men?
Mr MASON - That is about this individual case. As I have said, I had a verbal briefing by
police and the DPP, and by the Crown prosecutor, Mr Daryl Coates SC, on the strategy
they were adopting in that case. They adopted a strategy of CHAIR - We do need to be careful here, Paul.
Mr MASON - I will be very careful. They adopted a strategy which has resulted in the two
people closest to the action being successfully prosecuted so that they actually pleaded
guilty and there was no need for any of the children to give evidence. That is an
achievement to be admired. Every day, someone comes up to me in the street and talks
to me about that case. When I say 'every day' I do not exaggerate. It happened today,
yesterday, Tuesday, Monday, Sunday, Saturday, Friday - every day. The concern is that
the strategy adopted has to some extent resulted in a prosecution of other people not
being possible. The DPP explained in the press and relied not on what the child told the
DPP but what the father of the child told the DPP. This is in the public domain. You
will have gathered that I think that was the wrong approach; you should speak to the
child. However, you just do not rock up to the child, knock on the door and talk to her.
She is in therapy; that is known too and in the public domain. You talk to her therapist;
you go that way. You find out what she can remember, whether she was able to identify
some more individuals other than the two people who wound up getting convicted. The
public is demanding that someone review the evidence collected by the police, the
intelligence collected by the police and the information received by the DPP, and review
the strategy adopted and inform the public whether any of the men who did in fact go
through that door - not the three who have walked away - were as well known as the one
person who is now known to have been charged arising out of those events. People are
entitled to know. We are about to create a working-with-children check process in this
State. The public is entitled to know whether any of those people who did visit that child
in that period - and I don't know - are netball coaches, private piano teachers, swimming
coaches, members of parliament or lawyers. Do they work in the DPP's office? Or the
Office of the Commissioner for Children? Maybe I was one of those men. That is what I
am saying. The public requires that assurance and the only way to do that is through the
commission of inquiry.
CHAIR - We will now go in camera for about 10 minutes.
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Ms MARY D'ELIA, BAPTCARE STATE OPERATIONS MANAGER, AND Ms TRISHA
MALES, PROGRAM MANAGER, SOUTH-WEST FAMILY SERVICES, WERE
CALLED, MADE THE STATUTORY DECLARATION AND WERE EXAMINED.
CHAIR - Thank you, Mary and Trisha, for your submissions. We have heard a lot about
Baptcare and the Gateway services from people who have presented to us. Could you
give us a bit of a snapshot of why you are here and talk to your submission and then we
might ask some questions.
Ms D'ELIA - Thank you for the opportunity to come and talk with you today. Baptcare is a
not-for-profit provider of services for vulnerable families and individuals in the
community. In Tasmania we are the leading provider for Gateway and leader of the
IFSS alliance partnerships in the north and the south-west of the State. As such, we
would see ourselves as a leader and driver of change in this sector; that's really a core
part of our responsibility in taking on that contract from government. Gateway is just
over 12 months old, as you would know, and it is part of a reform agenda that this
Government adopted over a three- to five-year plan to try to shift the way that children
are protected in this State and to look at a continuum of service provision for vulnerable
children and families. I guess one of the key things we would like to put forward is that
this reform is as much a shift in the culture and practice and skills development of the
family services sector to say that it's not about providing services at this early end of the
continuum but about providing a support for families who are at risk of moving into the
statutory end of the system and really trying to have a philosophy that kids and families
do better when we keep them out of the statutory system. If we can engage with them,
keep them out of that system and provide the right kinds of support, we will get a better
outcome at the end of the day.
So it's really predicated on saying that practices in family support need to shift and move
and some of that is about developing and training our staff and employing more qualified
staff. It's about moving that culture and working at the more intensive end of the
spectrum and trying to think of every way that we can work with the family to engage
them and keep them out of that statutory system.
This reform is also about changing the child protection practice and culture across the
State as well. I think sometimes when people talk about the Gateway-Integrated Family
Support system they talk about that shift for the family services continuum but perhaps
forget that the child protection side of the system is also about a radical shift in the way
that they may have undertaken protection of children in the past. It is about working in
partnership, changing our focus, and not saying, 'That's Child Protection's work and that's
Family Services' work', or indeed, 'That's Mental Health's or Education's work'. It's
about a system whereby we take the lead in trying to work in partnership and looking at
what's happening for the children in a certain family and the family overall and seeing
how we can work together to protect the children and give them better opportunities. So
it's not just about protection but also about how we act in the best interests of the child
and the family and give them every opportunity to grow and develop well.
I think we have seen some really positive early signs of change across both the family
support and child protection sector, however we would say that there are still some key
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challenges, and I'll refer to those a bit further on, but certainly there are some
recommendations that we would make to improve where we're moving to.
In terms of Gateway I'm not sure how au fait you are with the key changes. The
Gateway model is very much about providing a very comprehensive risk assessment and
needs assessment of every child in a family, and of the parenting capacity of the primary
caregiver. It is a key difference to the child protection system in that Child Protection
are mandated to look at the statutory risk to each child and very often they will look only
at the statutory risk for the child or children the report is made about, so potentially you
will have a report from Child Protection where they have looked at, say, the 12-year-old
in the family but not at the four-year-old because the report is about the older child. The
role of our Gateways that Baptcare has rolled out is to get a report across about what is
happening to each and every child in that family and the parenting capacity, so it's a
holistic assessment. We are also utilising some of the information-sharing provisions for
the assessment of a child's risk and safety so we are able to talk to other providers who
are also involved and whilst we cannot compel someone to give us information we can
certainly have them protected to provide that information for the purpose of the risk
assessment to a child. That's a key difference in the way that Child Protection would
look at a report on a child versus looking at the whole family and what is impacting on
that family's functioning and looking at who's involved.
A key role for us is about looking at who is coordinating the services that happen to that
family. In Gateway we often find that people will ring through and make a referral about
a child or a family, but when we get in there and do our assessment work we actually
find, in talking to a number of providers in the school, that there are a lot of people
involved with this family but they might not be talking to each other. A key risk in that
is that they might be duplicating service or indeed they might be working at crosspurposes. As an example, if there is substance abuse in the home, a drug and alcohol
counsellor might be trying to restrict the free money that is available in the house and so
they might be trying to look at how they manage that. That might not look at the fact
that there is no food on the table because of that substance use, or they might be
concerned about it but thinking they need to restrict this. In a family services sense, if
we were not talking to each other we could potentially be providing food vouchers and
therefore an income stream to the substance use. It is really about how we talk and work
together so that we can plan. We have to get food on the table but we also have to
support the good work that the specialist service is doing. Rather than each of us
independently saying that is not working, it is about working together because we want
the kids to be looked after well and the family to function well. That is a key part of the
work that we do.
It is also about working in partnership with other agencies because we know that in
working together we can often tailor a different solution for families than what we might
be able to do as each agency individually.
It is also about using quite active engagement and assertive outreach strategies for
families. What we have found is that it is really important for us to be outreachers. We
need to be in the home, modelling good parenting behaviour, modelling household
management strategies and really working intensively with the family and each of the
children in the family in having good dedicated care planning and case planning around
what is required for a family. We expect that our family support workers regularly do
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case plans. Every six to eight weeks they would be making some goals with the family
and then maybe reviewing those goals and trying to work toward the safety of the
children in that family and better family functioning.
The outreach-based model also incorporates what we call assertive engagement. So in
the past you might have rung a family support service, you might have been on a waiting
list for a while, you might then have received a service but it might be that some of the
changes being asked of you are quite hard. A key part of our role is to go and knock on
the door and say, 'How can we work together, what are the things you need and how can
we work with you to keep your children safe and well and healthy?'. For many families
that is a really tough ask because it means they have to make some key changes to the
way they are living their lives. For us, it is not just about ringing up and saying 'Would
you like some help?'. It is about going and knocking on the door and offering that help
again. It is about trying to offer a lot of different strategies to a family to try to engage
them and have them voluntarily commit to working with us. What we find is that in the
beginning few weeks, and maybe for six or eight weeks, we will often have engagement
with the family but when it gets really tough in terms of change families will often say,
'Go away, I cannot do this any more'. Our role is to stick with those really hard-toengage families. They are often sitting right up there at the cusp of child protection
involvement. That is where the key part and key role of the community-based child
protection worker really comes in and works incredibly well in the model we have. Not
only are they at the gateway to provide a professional consultation role where we are
concerned about cumulative harm and risk to children and for us to work collaboratively
around that, but for some of our families where we have quite difficult engagements or it
is hard to effect some of those changes then it is also about being able to work
collaboratively and have child protection join us in joint visits and talk with families
about how we would like to keep you out of this system. Really our choices are to either
keep working with you or to move it into this statutory role, so let us think together about
what the solution might be. We find that is a really effective intervention, to have
families come on board and stick it out a bit more because they love their kids. They
would like to keep parenting their kids so it is a really critical part of the work we do.
In terms of the system on the ground, it is early days but some of the challenges that we
have and would like to put forward as recommendations are that we need to continue to
work on strengthening the integrated relationship between family services and child
protection. From Baptcare's perspective we would like to see a shift in the current act
that covers child protection and that the Government look at legislating some of the
decision-making principles, and in particular look at things that we feel have been very
positive in other jurisdictions - things like legislating best interest principles around
decision-making for children. In Victoria, within their legislation not only did they
capture child protection decision-making but also the decision-making of family support
and out-of-home care providers; they legislated for the best interests of children. They
legislated on cumulative harm and on some of the standards and principles that would
support the work being undertaken. The legislation also talks about that community
intake. It also looks at information-sharing provisions to support that critical
comprehensive assessment that needs to take place of the whole family and each child in
the family. This is a key part of the reform agenda and it probably needs to be supported
by a new act, as against making changes to the act, and capturing some of those key
principles.
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Without adequate training of staff to support the cultural and practice shift, it will not
work. There is an investment in resource to try to shift quite a strong culture, particularly
in child protection, to work in a different style and in a different way. It is quite difficult
for us presently within this new model. Whilst there is a common assessment tool, whilst
there are some changes in the legislation that support some of that joint work, child
protection still use the Tasmanian risk framework, which is different in the way it is laid
out and in some of the things it looks at from the common assessment. We need to use
common language, not using different language and therefore having differences in the
way we professionally assess the risk and safety of a child and the sorts of interventions
we need.
One of the key things about Gateway is that it provides robust discussion where we have
high risk. We will see child protection sending referrals to us where sometimes the
statutory role of investigating and responding to statutory risk may not have been
undertaken or indeed needs to be undertaken with more rigour. One of the things that
this system provides is a bit of a stop-gap, for want of a better word, where it will come
out to the Gateway and we will look at it and might say this is high risk or we need some
more information or there might be another area that needs to be looked at. That is not
about challenging professional assessment; it is about good, robust discussion that really
helps us from different perspectives to look at whether or not this child is safe and what
the best safe intervention and strategy for this family might be. Is it the statutory sector
or the community sector? It puts a bit of rigour around that decision-making. Sometimes
we do need things to go back to Child Protection to be looked at more closely.
Mr GROOM - How often would that happen? Is it common or infrequent?
Ms D'ELIA - It is something that does happen with regularity. It is not occasional. Certainly
we are doing professional consults all the time and there is some robust discussion every
week around families that are coming through the Gateway or referrals that are coming in
from Child Protection or indeed from other providers.
I have mentioned joint training opportunities and making sure that we would train staff,
and legislating best practice principles. One of the key things in legislation would be to
better define the statutory role so that people are really clear about what it looks like.
Certainly in the changes to the act the ability for mandated reports to come to the
Gateway or to Child Protection I do not think is well understood in the community. We
would certainly want people to understand better that whilst the intent behind that is to
say that when you are mandated you are concerned for a child - 'This is beyond what care
I can provide, it needs to be reported.' For some families that is definitely at a statutory
level; for others it is clearly not, it is more than you can provide and you need to report,
but it sits outside of the statutory intervention scale and that is where it needs to come to
Gateway. There are some in the middle that are a bit grey, and we certainly have great
systems to try to push that back and send them to whichever system. But it is a great
opportunity for reporters to use their professional judgment about the need to mandatorily
report. 'Is it because I am really concerned and it needs more help than I can provide or
is it about it being a statutory level of risk?' We would see that as being really important,
but we think that some community education is required about what that looks like.
Ms PETRUSMA - Or does it need to be more clearly defined?
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Ms D'ELIA- It is about defining it well. We feel that we are able to define it very well
because we are working at it every day, but I am not sure that if you asked a general
practitioner - it is hard to understand and our ability to go out and do community
engagement is limited because operationally we are really busy. We are taking hundreds
of calls across the State. The volume of work that has been coming through to the
Gateway is probably higher than the modelling that we had to begin with - definitely
higher - and certainly the disability side of the Gateway that has come in we are looking
at incredibly high numbers coming through - much higher than the modelling indicated.
We would be asking for some support around that community engagement strategy.
We would also recommend that government looks at the resourcing of the family support
sector and we absolutely commend that when you brought Gateway on board you also
funded additional family support positions. However, the work that we are undertaking
is not short-term. For many families we are looking at a nine- to 12-month intervention
being standard. So you get some throughput with really complex families who have
multi-generational poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, violence - and not just one
of those factors but all of those factors. It takes quite some time to work with families to
effect that change and to support them to maintain that change. So we feel that we really
need to have a discussion about the capacity in this sector and resourcing that further.
The other concern I would have is where we lose capacity, so whilst I absolutely
commend the fact that the Government is currently looking at trying to fund some
reunification services - for example, in the south-west region we are about to lose 15 per
cent of our family support capacity to being refocused into reunification. We are at
capacity in the south-west; we cannot lose 15 per cent of our capacity to another
program. We fully support reunification and in fact one of the points that Sadie made is
that there is an absolute gap in this State for reunification services, but our issue is that it
is at the expense of a program that is reforming and working well and needs those
resources and probably more. So I would highlight that to this committee.
I think another area of resourcing and concern would be out-of-home care options, foster
care, kinship care and reunification options. For many families if children are removed,
what supports are in place to help mum or dad change those issues that need to be
changed so that their kids can come back home? There are very few such supports in
place. So we need to look at that in terms of the intensity of a family support
intervention, the step into a reunification process, and if indeed we are looking at kinship
or out-of-home care intervention, then we need to make sure that we are doing really
adequate assessment and giving really good support to those people, particularly in
kinship care, where some of the grief and loss issues, with the children being torn
between the kinship carer and their biological parent, can be really difficult, so
supporting the safety of children and supporting those family units to provide that
nurturing environment is really important. Certainly that resourcing is missing in this
State.
In terms of the shift to providing family support and Gateway, I talked about this model
being about moving family support from quite an early intervention to sitting in this
secondary end and up to and including the statutory system, but I think there are some
gaps. We have a gap over here, which it was probably assumed would be picked by
universal services. In terms of modelling I would suggest to you we have universal
primary, secondary, tertiary - it is like an extra step in there. It is more than universal
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might be able to pick up but it is not at that more intense family support end. I think
there is a gap in providing that continuum and we say resource the family support sector
so that there can be a bit more really early intervention as against earlier than Child
Protection intervention.
The other thing that we see as a gap currently is quite intensive support. Where we have
a parent with multiple risk factors - substance use, mental health issues - they possibly
need daily support. It is about perhaps funding something that is more intensive family
support - maybe caseloads much lower so that you have a section of your work that is
quite intensive. For some families that might be a short part of that and then we move it
into the continuum of family support. For other families it is probably long term. We
even need to make the decision that these children cannot live at home or we need to put
a much more intensive, long-term intervention in place. At the moment one of the gaps
is that in the absence of there not being an option in out-of-home care then the response
is that children need to stay there. That is incredibly unsafe and it is quite concerning for
us.
Ms PETRUSMA - In saying that we probably need to put more resource into family support,
would you say that Gateway has now reached the optimum levels of families and
children that it can support.
Mr D'ELIA - We are probably not getting the same level of throughput that we would like to
see in the family service sector. We are undertaking quite good interventions but it is
disturbing when we hit capacity and are saying to people, 'Can you review what you are
doing with families because there are another 10 families waiting for the service'. At the
moment we are using active holding strategies which I talked about in my submission,
which are quite good strategies, particularly for families where they may be reluctant to
engage; we have found it to be a really healthy engagement strategy. It gives them a
softer entry point.
Mr GROOM - What do you mean by 'active holding'?
Ms D'ELIA - In the past, if you rang for a service you might be put on a wait list and you
might not hear anything for six or eight weeks. The story that we would hear from
families very often when we contacted them would be, 'I was in crisis and you would not
help me but now I am back to my usual daily level of crisis. I needed you when it was
really out of control'. The model is predicated on saying what would happen if, instead
of going on a wait list and getting nothing, we actually looked at the key thing that would
take you out of this crisis and support you right now. It might be a bit of brokerage. It
might be a couple of hours of quick counselling or case work support. It might be some
support with some respite for a few hours - something that supports this level of crisis.
Then, instead of a full case-work intervention, we keep in touch with you over the period
until we do have a full case-work intervention available. We might be ringing and
talking about what is happening. If it is a very young child we would put that very often
into more of a high risk infant intervention. We would say we really need to go and do a
home visit and see what is happening around the home. Then we would keep in touch. It
might be half-an-hour a week with a phone call. How is it going? It is probably a couple
of weeks until we can get a case worker out, but what is happening? Maybe if you tried
this, or maybe if we get some food vouchers. So it is about doing some active
engagement. It is about supporting a family while they are on a wait list for a more
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comprehensive intervention. For some families who are quite distrustful of services and
have perhaps had not pleasant experiences in the past, or their intersection with Child
Protection has been difficult. We find that they can be very reluctant to be engaged with
the service. When we first thought about it, we though in terms of a demandmanagement strategy, but what we have discovered is that families who have a long
history of not being engaged with services and welfare concerns it is like a soft entry.
They build their trust. You have been able to help them at the point of entry; you have
been able to keep in touch and it gives them some confidence and readiness to make
some changes when you are ready to provide a full intervention. It is hard work to make
those changes.
Ms WHITE - We have heard today that there might be capacity for an IT database within the
Gateway Services so that you can track the interactions.
Ms D'ELIA - We have a database and we track the interventions that we have, so we would
be reporting back to government on what we call non-substantive interventions, which
are under two hours - brief, episodic, short-term interventions - and what we would call
substantive interventions, which are more than two hours of work. We might do a range
of hours of service provision, talk to other providers, work with the family and then close
it, or it may go on to family support.
Ms WHITE - Is that accessible around the State? No matter where you are, is there a point
where you can enter?
Ms D'ELIA - Baptcare North and Baptcare South-West are accessible. Obviously Mission
has their processes Ms WHITE - But you can do that?
Ms D'ELIA - Yes. We do have some very robust support for people moving from region to
region so we are able to get the family's consent and sift that information across to
Mission and vice versa. We have had people move around the State and we have
certainly moved that intervention with them.
Ms WHITE - In terms of information-sharing between Gateway Services and Child
Protection, is there difficulty in that, or is it working well?
Ms D'ELIA - I think it would be true to say, certainly in terms of professional consultation,
that is happening really regularly within the Gateway, where we are concerned about risk
factors with a family.
Ms WHITE - What I mean is if you have a child who needs to be referred to Child
Protection, then the support services that family might have been accessing through
Gateway are no longer available because they are suddenly a client of Child Protection.
So how do we address that?
Ms D'ELIA - One of the things that is quite tricky is that if Child Protection needs to do an
investigation then we need to step back. It is not that we totally withdraw our service
provision or we close that case, but we would want Child Protection to do their processes
to assess the safety and investigate risk to that child, and children in that family. Then
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we would move back in because it has moved to a statutory level of risk. At that point in
time we would move that across to Child Protection. We would not immediately close it,
but if it is staying in Child Protection or the child is going on to an order, then, yes, we
would close that because it becomes the case management and duty of care of Child
Protection at that point in time.
Ms WHITE - What happens then if that family were receiving assistance? Can they still
access services through you?
Ms D'ELIA - For a short period, yes, but the purposes of our intervention would be about
providing support in modelling parenting and providing that level of support. If the
children have been removed and they are not coming back, then we are not funded to
work with adults who do not have children in their care.
Ms WHITE - In terms of reunification and enabling those parents to gain the skills they
need, do you think there is capacity for us to look at funding so that you can continue to
do that work and build those relationships?
Ms D'ELIA - Absolutely. And that is certainly what I would be saying in terms of
resourcing not only the family support sector but also a more intensive level of family
support and indeed reunification. They are probably different parts of that service
continuum. If a child or children were removed for a short period while investigation is
taking place, we would see it as valuable to look at an intervention that might support
those children being returned. But if children have been out of the home for some time,
it is probably a more formal reunification process that we would see as being quite
important. Certainly that is something that government is looking at at the moment.
That is where I was talking about some additional resourcing because at the moment it is
coming at the expense at the family services sector and service provision.
Ms PETRUSMA - Mary, how much would that cost? At the moment when a child goes to
out-of-home care, your support to the family stops. To keep that support going to the
family and to help that process of reunification what would it cost?
Ms D'ELIA - It would be about quantifying the data of how many come through. We would
look at case work capacity at the moment in family support as being around 10 to 12
families in a case load. If we were looking at continuing that intervention if children
moved, then that would sit in a caseload of probably similar levels. That is where we
would sit it. If it were more about reunification processes, a more intense end of the
spectrum, you would probably look at some lower caseloads - probably only about seven
or eight families in a worker caseload. In terms of providing support to carers and foster
carers and so forth, then another whole system of support and case workers would be
needed at that level. I am not sure that I could give you prices. I can certainly tell you
what a worker is worth in the sector and then you would need to extrapolate numbers.
Ms PETRUSMA - So how many families do you reckon would be out there at the moment
that could go into this sort of system?
MS D'ELIA - The current figures as I understand them are about 400 families in kinship
care. There are another 600 or so sitting in out-of-home care across the State. Most
recently my understanding is that government was saying that about 20 per cent of those
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would probably be suitable to move into this kind of reunification process. I would
question the support to some of the other carers; I think there is a whole system of
support that is required in that area. In terms of family support, at the moment we would
really welcome not losing some of the resource we have, then additionally we would
probably need at least another two or three workers in each of our regions - if not a
couple more. The demand is really increasing and it is longer term and intensive work.
With the model we have put down around 10 families in Tasmania, and the distances that
workers need to travel to really make sure we are adequately covering all of the
catchment and families quite a distance out, we are probably going to have to review that
level of caseload. Certainly some providers are saying, 'Could you spend more time each
week with a family?', rather than the current levels which are three or four hours worth of
intervention to each support at a time. That is a visit each week and then there is indirect
work. One of the things it is important to keep in mind about this model is that we might
visit a family once a week but then there is a range of other work that the worker is doing
around that family, connecting with other people who are involved with that family in
providing support to the family and keeping quite accurate and intense case notes and
data to support the interventions we are doing. There is a lot of indirect work that now
takes place in the family services sector that was probably not there before; it is about
providing rigorous and good interventions.
In the years that I worked across the Victorian jurisdiction as this change came through I
noticed that, while courts relied on child protection information, they were certainly
interested in what family services were able to contribute in knowing about a family.
Some of the shift and change we need to look at in our workforce is about how they
record accurately and data-manage well what is happening so that we can give a more
accurate picture of what is going on, not only to government but also to contribute much
better in those processes of decision making for children, particularly in the court system
because the court system is a change that is affecting the rest of their lives. The richer
the information we can provide to a family and to that court intervention, the better.
Mr GROOM - Is that just about skilling up or is it recruiting different people?
Ms D'ELIA - I would certainly say that in some cases it is about recruiting different people
into our sector but it is also about skilling up people who are in our sector because it is a
different model and has some different key principles to it. Even with the assertive
engagement, in the past people were much more thinking about family support as being
voluntary, so you would come and say, 'Can I have a service?', 'Oh yes, we'll see what
we can do'. If we contacted someone and they said, 'I don't think I want to do that
anymore', then we would step back, whereas now we would certainly be saying 'Let's
ring', and we would be really encouraging of a family to think about what that might look
like. If we could not get hold of them we might go out for a visit and still feel quite
concerned about what is happening but not have managed that engagement, so we might
go out again with Child Protection. It takes a different set of skills to be confident and
able to do that kind of work. Some workers are very comfortable working in an office
and very often in the past families would come in. This model is about working in
people's homes. It takes a different set of skills. It is about having good casework skills,
good case coordination and case management skills, as well as good case note writing
around what is happening, but it is also about having really good practical skills and
being able to model those different strategies and skills for families.
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DEPUTY CHAIR - That was a very considered and professional report to us so we thank
you very much for that.
Mr GROOM - Thanks very much for coming in, Mary.
Ms D'ELIA - Thanks for your time.
DEPUTY CHAIR - It is much appreciated.
THE WITNESSES WITHDREW.
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