- The Crisafulli Government has ordered an audit into young people self-placing in the care system in Queensland.
- The Government is also reviewing how contracts are awarded to service providers in the Residential Care sector with a focus on for-profit unlicenced providers.
- The announcement coincides with today's first public hearing for the Commission of Inquiry into the broken Child Safety System.
The Crisafulli Government has ordered a full audit of where and how almost 800 vulnerable children are self-placing across Queensland, as the Commission of Inquiry into the broken Child Safety System gets underway in Brisbane.
Fixing the broken Child Safety System is a key commitment of the Crisafulli Government to deliver a fresh start for Queensland, ensuring children in care receive the support they need to stop the system being a pipeline to youth crime.
A self-placing child is one who is under the care of the Department of Child Safety, but chooses to leave either their foster, kinship or residential care placement, often putting themselves at risk of homelessness or in dangerous environments.
The audit will include gathering the names, ages, locations of the children who are self-placing, as well as what efforts are being made to engage them and what support is being provided to them.
Over the past five years the number of children self-placing has remained unacceptably high, from 694 in March 2020, to 871 in March last year.
Shockingly the former Labor Government never asked for an audit or census of where these vulnerable children were.
The Crisafulli Government has requested a review of contracting processes that result in an over reliance on for-profit, unlicenced providers in the residential care sector.
Unlicenced and for-profit providers have thrived in a billion-dollar industry with little to no checks and balances on their service delivery over the past decade.
Unlicenced Residential Care providers received $474.3M of funding from the State Government last financial year.
There are currently 110 unlicenced providers, compared to 36 licenced providers.
Of the 102 for-profit providers in the residential care sector, only 11 are licenced.
The growth of these unlicenced providers exploded under the former government who:
- Are not required to have a Human Services Quality Framework certificate, which sets standards based on governance and management, service access, responding to individual need, safety, wellbeing and rights.
- Are not subject to legislative suitability requirements, other than holding a blue card.
- There is no other documented process for reviewing the organisation's performance.
Licenced providers are held to strict conditions bound within the Child Protection Act and are regularly monitored by the Department and are mostly not-for-profit organisations operating in an outsourced service delivery model.
It is this Government's intention to reign in the billion-dollar industry, by moving contracts to an outsourced delivery model and in doing so push the sector to becoming licenced providers.
The Commission has today begun the important work of unpacking the disarray and neglect the system has been left in over the past decade following the Carmody Inquiry.
At the onset the Government made it clear that reform and election commitments would continue into the broken system during the 17-month long Inquiry and these two steps begin that work.
Minister for Child Safety Amanda Camm said the Crisafulli Government was acting to ensure the safety of vulnerable children.
"Allowing one vulnerable child to self-place in Queensland is unacceptable to me, let alone 780 young people, that's why I have ordered a full audit of the kids in care who are self-placing, to understand how the current system can be improved," Minister Camm said.
"It is vital we have an understanding of how we can better support these vulnerable children to get their lives back on track and if they have a youth justice crossover – ensure we are doing all we can to better protect the community.
"The fact the Government had nearly no oversight of unlicenced providers, or recourse to ensure they are delivering positive outcomes for vulnerable children is a clear system failure.
"The residential care sector is a billion-dollar industry built on the back of vulnerable children with taxpayers' money, it is critical there is oversight and these organisations know that if they do not perform the Government will act.
"It is critical we take the necessary steps to fix issues when they are uncovered to ensure children are being adequately taken care of.
"There are some extraordinary people who work in the child safety sector, who go above and beyond for vulnerable children and I'm certain they want what's best for them.
"This Commission of Inquiry is about accountability, both ministerial and departmental, we need to understand how these system failures happened, so we can ensure they do not happen again."
