The latest Human Services Dashboard data has to be a wake-up call for the Liberal Government and Minister for Children and Youth Sarah Courtney.
Shadow Child Safety Minister Sarah Lovell said the government had released five months of data and none of it was good.
“The latest child protection data is indicative of an under resourced system,” Ms Lovell said.
“Twice in the past three months there have been over 100 children referred for an investigation who have not been allocated a case worker within priority timeframes. This has increased from 65 at the end of April this year, which at the time was a shocking 350% increase from April 2020.
“It is simply not good enough that vulnerable families are not getting the support they need in a timely way, potentially putting children at risk.
“The Government’s failure to adequately resource child safety means some of the most vulnerable people in our community are not being given the support they need.”
Ms Lovell said the new data came just days after Coroner Olivia McTaggart released findings into the deaths of seven Tasmanian children.
“Earlier this week we saw the devastating report of more inadequacies and failings in our Child Safety Service.
“This government has failed to take child safety seriously. We know that up to 80 per cent of investigations by child protection take a month to begin and we know the majority of investigations take three months to complete.
“Minister Courtney needs to adequately resource this system and properly implement the Strong Families, Safe Kids reforms.
“The government continue to let the most vulnerable in our community down, it is simply not good enough and something must change.”
Sarah Lovell MLC
Shadow Minister for Child Safety
