CHILD PROTECTION — INTERNAL REPORT
160. Hon NICK GOIRAN to the Leader of the House representing
the Minister for Child Protection:
I refer to the article in The
West Australian entitled ''Department of Communities in crisis:
Children in care being shuffled between different case workers'', which
reported on —
� a Department of Communities
internal report ''Profile and Pathways of Children Who Enter Care''
which tracked � 327 children in care from 2019 to 2021.
(1) Is the minister aware that this report found that
the majority of those children had been on the monitored list?
(2) Is the
minister aware that this report found that children were frequently shifted
between caseworkers?
(3) Is the
minister aware that this report found that homelessness was a contributing
factor for 37 per cent of Indigenous children entering the system?
(4) Will the
minister table the report?
(5) If no to (4),
why not?
Hon SUE
ELLERY replied:
I thank the honourable member for
some notice of the question.
(1)–(5) The Department of Communities continues to utilise
operational data to provide analytics for opportunities to continue to
improve its services to vulnerable young people and families. This is an internal
report, part of ongoing service improvement activities and is not part of
routine briefings to the minister or Parliament; I have not been briefed
previously on this report.
These types of reports contain
sensitive, often individualised information that is not designed for public
release. Interpretation is undertaken by expert practitioners to look for
operational changes and practice improvements.
Homelessness on its own is not a sufficient
reason to bring a child into care, but it may be accompanied by other forms of abuse and/or neglect.
Communities acts in accordance with the Children and Community Services
Act 2004 and will complete child safety investigations to assess concerns about
the likelihood of abuse and/or neglect.
When a family with children presents
as homeless, Communities will assess their circumstance and provide all
available assistance to mitigate any risk of significant harm to the children
if assistance were not provided.