Ms ROSOL question to MINISTER for CHILDREN and YOUTH, Mr JAENSCH
You have been minister with responsibility for Tasmania’s children and young people for the past six years, and yet the system continues to fail vulnerable young Tasmanians. You have for years known the workforce shortages in child safety which are placing children at further risk.
You finally admitted yesterday that only 40 per cent of child safety positions in the north-west are currently staffed, and yet you told this House yesterday that you ‘have asked my department to urgently finalise an action plan for ensuring our workforce can get back to full strength’. Given you have had all these years in the job, we do wonder what ‘urgently’ means to you, in the context of these dangerous workforce shortages.
Will you today give this House a clear timeline for this urgent work you finally asked your department to do, and commit to fully funding and staffing child safety in this year’s state budget?
Members – Hear, hear.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for the question. Importantly, this government has undertaken significant reforms in the child safety area, which have resulted in there being fewer young people entering the statutory out‑of‑home care system and more families being assisted to be safe places to care for their children than before.
I am proud of those reforms, which were commenced under my colleague, former minister Jacquie Petrusma, that we have followed through since 18 December with the development and the commencement of the advice and referral line process. The trends continue of fewer young people in out-of-home care, more young people being supported by their families, and fewer families going through the trauma of being separated from their children due to their inability to provide safe care. The reform process that we have undertaken has worked. We will keep it working and we will keep investing in it.
Our government has also invested, more than ever before, in our Child Safety workforce. We have increased the capacity of the workforce by around 40 per cent.
Dr Woodruff – Not in the north-west.
Mr JAENSCH – This is where I need to call out some of the commentary of Ms White’s yesterday, when she said having positions unfunded is effectively cutting jobs or cutting positions. It is not true. We have positions across our Child Safety Service. We have, at this stage –
Dr Woodruff – What are the urgent changes you are making?
Mr JAENSCH – We have a large proportion of them unfilled. That is a critical issue for us and it is my highest priority as minister. There have been a range of actions undertaken already, including redeployment of staff from other regions to ensure we can meet our basic obligations; negotiations with non-government organisations to provide case support and care teams, child visits –
Madam SPEAKER – Minister, you have one minute. I draw you to the question that was asked.
Mr JAENSCH – referrals to Relationships Australia for management of complex care teams; and recruiting additional unit coordinators, support workers, youth workers and disability liaison officers in the north-west region.
We are also talking with our staff and working right now on a range of other initiatives that include things like scholarships so that we can support our support workers to upgrade their qualifications to perform in child safety officer roles. We have continued to work with the unions on appropriate pay and conditions so that we are competitive in the market and we ask for their support and cooperation to do that. We will do everything we can to ensure that we have trained people in these positions across our state to meet the needs of the children under the guardianship of the state.
