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Winter 2005

Workforce offer solution to Child Protection Crisis

IT WILL COME AS NO surprise to anyone who has read the paper or watched television over the past months that child protection services across Tasmania are in crisis.

In recent times reports of potential neglect or abuse have skyrocketed almost 50% pushing the system to its limit and beyond.

Over the last couple of years the Government has incrementally increased resources to deal with some of the pressures on the system but these attempts to resolve workload issues can only be labeled as band-aid solutions.

The introduction of new legislation, a significant increase in paperwork and legal work relating to children reported to child protection services and other new initiatives have led to significantly increased demands on workers.

"Although the word crisis is bandied about liberally these days, that is in fact a fitting description of Tasmania's child protection services today," Tim Jacobson, HACSU Assistant State Secretary, said.

Following a dispute earlier this year the Government again agreed to increase some resources to the service but also recognized the need to step back and look more deeply into the issues effecting service delivery, including staff burnout and turnover.

A joint union/management group was established to develop a report into the service.

And what a report it was. The report, a warts and all assessment of Child Protection was finalised in July.

The Government immediately moved to acknowledge its contents, and also agreed to work through all the recommendations within it, not ruling out any of the suggestions.

The following is a direct statement from the report, which highlights the urgency and importance of ensuring that the issues in child protection are resolved:

"As they have no 'voice', children become displaced from the centre of our focus and there is a risk that this will occur even in the current review of the statutory care and protection service in the Division of Children and Families. In the review of caseloads, structures, conditions and levels of support to workers it will be easy to forget that the reason for the existence of the service in the

HACSU and the CPSU are continuing negotiations with the Agency.