#nomoreexcuses
Heavy handed police raids hunting leaked documents; foster carer bullying; missing children in care; child protection workers overburdened with case loads; and a damning report from the Commissioner for Children and Young People - all point to a Department “at crisis point”.
One of these leaked documents is a report by psychologist Tracy Westerman who slammed the mega-agency in 2019, saying it needed urgent change or “outcomes for Aboriginal people in WA may remain the same or worsen”.
Disturbingly, child protection workers described being “thrown in the deep end” and in desperate need of more training just to do their jobs.
According to Dr Westerman “only one staff member from a sample of 295 … met the cultural competence benchmark, with all other staff (294) meeting the benchmark of cultural incompetence”.
Another of the leaked documents, a 2021 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, revealed that none of Dr Westerman’s four dozen recommendations had been implemented.
I’ve been calling persistently over the last five years for Mark McGowan and child protection minister Simone McGurk to fix the problems caused by their decision to amalgamate child protection into a mega-department in 2017.
We once again need a specialist Department of Child Protection and we urgently need it now.
For over 5 years I’ve been calling for victims of sexual abuse to be kept safe from their attackers whether at school or at home.
In the recently released report from the Commissioner for Children and Young People: Independent Review of Department of Communities policies and practices in the placement of children with harmful sexual behaviours in residential care settings we find that the Government housed victims with known perpetrators despite repeated pleas for help. You can read the WA Today article here.
Amalgamating the specialist child protection department into the generalist mega-department of Communities has been a failed repeat experiment & the price paid has been not only avoidable but far too high.
‘Enough is enough’, the current practices are simply unacceptable, and our State’s most vulnerable children need people willing to stand up and say so. If you or anyone else you know feel the same way, I encourage you to write to Child Protection Minister Hon Sabine Winton; Education Minister Hon Tony Buti and Premier Mark McGowan to express your concern with this situation.
No child should be forced to face their attacker at home or school every day. No child should be removed from their home because the Department lacks cultural awareness. No foster carer, who shares their heart and home with our State’s most vulnerable, should be bullied. No child protection worker should be given case loads that are unmanageable and that defy the WA Industrial Relations Commissions Order.
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