CHILD PROTECTION — CASEWORKERS — REGIONS
205. Mr P.J. RUNDLE to the Minister for Community Services:
I refer to the minister's
response to the member for Moore's question yesterday and comments made
during private members' business in which she admitted the difficulty
of recruiting skilled child protection and family support workers in regional areas
like Narrogin. What specific incentives or policy initiatives has the minister
implemented to address the lack of skilled child protection and family support
workers in regional areas?
Ms S.F. McGURK
replied:
One of the points I was
making yesterday was that the member for Moore had either misunderstood or
misrepresented the position in Narrogin. I made the point that he said
that there were no skilled child protection workers operating out of Narrogin,
and that is not the case. It is actually a family support officer—what
used to be called family resource employees—and
it is a level 1 position. Those officers essentially do some of the legwork in
taking children to contact visits, maybe picking up children, assisting
foster carers in taking the children who they are caring for to appointments
and the like. That position has been vacant in Narrogin and I know that has
been the subject of some frustration by the staff there. We understand that and
we are looking to recruit.
I was talking more generally about the concerns that the
union had raised in relation to child protection and that there were not enough
people on the ground. We understand that; in fact, we have added significantly
to the child protection workforce since coming into government in 2017, with
307 extra staff, and more than half, 158 of those, are frontline workers and
the rest are support staff. The frontline staff were protected from the
voluntary severance scheme that we put in place in 2017. We have done a lot of
work to support that staff. In the department, we now have a specialist child
protection unit that is looking to not only make sure that child protection has
given good advice to the office of the director general, but also support the
work of the district. A lot of work happens across the department to support
good work and good community professional practice.
It is a challenge in the Department of Communities in child
protection—as it is across much of the workforce, not just the public
sector workforce—to attract and retain skilled staff in some of our
regional areas. As an example, we were talking before about Kununurra and the
Target 120 program there. In the East Kimberley, it is difficult to attract and
retain skilled staff. Those staff members are doing tough work, but we are very
focused on making sure that there is good
support for the FTE staff there; there is good relief staff in place, if people
need a break; and if we are not able
to fill positions, that there are other relieving staff who can come in and do
the work. We are very focused on that. I have spoken in the past to the
union about that and I have spoken about that publicly.
I do not want to disregard the concerns of child protection
staff. As I said, it is difficult work that they are doing and I want them to
know that we appreciate their work and want to work with their union, their
representatives and their management to make sure that we can support them in
whatever way we can.