The Minns Labor Government is abandoning thousands of children at risk because the state\u2019s child protection system is collapsing under the weight of chronic understaffing.
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Recent media reports show that that tens of thousands of children assessed as \u2018at risk\u2011of\u2011significant\u2011harm\u2019 (ROSH) have not received timely intervention, or intervention at all.
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Shadow Minister for Families and Communities, Natasha Maclaren-Jones, said that this data shows that the Minns Labor Government is failing vulnerable children because it is struggling to retain experienced caseworkers and meet statutory response times and responsibilities.
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\u201cThe Minister responsible for protecting vulnerable children is presiding over a system where capacity, not risk, determines whether a child is seen,\u201d Mrs Maclaren-Jones said.
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\u201cOur child protection caseworkers are doing their best under impossible circumstances and chronic understaffing, they should never have to choose which children get help and which do not.\u201d
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\u201cWith a vacancy rate of 14% in some areas and chronic understaffing, the Minns Labor Government is effectively abandoning thousands of children at risk with no home visit, no assessment and no follow\u2011up.\u201d
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Independent audits have shown thousands of ROSH reports remain unallocated, meaning no action is taken to assess or support vulnerable children.
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The Government has been given repeated warnings from frontline workers and no action has been taken.
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\u201cCaseworkers are being set up to fail, and the Minister is doing nothing,\u201d Mrs Maclaren-Jones said.
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\u201cThey are being asked to make life\u2011and\u2011death decisions in a system the NSW Ombudsman has called \u2018inefficient, ineffective, and unsustainable\u2019.\u201d
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The NSW Liberals and Nationals are calling for a parliamentary inquiry to examine the under\u2011resourcing of the child protection system.
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\u201cThere must be a parliamentary inquiry into the under\u2011resourcing of the child protection system, including the backlog of unallocated ROSH reports and the government\u2019s compliance with statutory obligations,\u201d Mrs Mclaren-Jones said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Minns Labor Government is abandoning thousands of children at risk because the state\u2019s child protection system is collapsing under the weight of chronic understaffing.\u00a0Recent media reports show that that tens of thousands of children assessed as \u2018at risk\u2011of\u2011significant\u2011harm\u2019 (ROSH) have not received timely intervention, or intervention at all.\u00a0Shadow Minister for Families and Communities, Natasha … Continue reading “Minns Labor Government abandons vulnerable children”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nswnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37710,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37709\/revisions\/37710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}