The safety of Tasmania's vulnerable children and young people is an absolute priority for the Tasmanian Government and we continue to do all we can to ensure their safety and wellbeing and support the staff who look after them.
National Child Protection Week is an opportunity to highlight the vital work that is underway to protect our children and young people. This year's theme 'Every child, in every community, needs a fair go' aligns with our Government's long-term, Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy 'It Takes a Village', and is our commitment to all children and young people.
With a focus on the first 1,000 days of life, the Strategy invests $100 million dollars to deliver the services and supports that children, young people and their families need so they, and our State, can thrive into the future.
We also continue our long-term reforms of the Child Safety System – Strong Families, Safe Kids. Our reforms are ensuring more support is provided to families earlier, resulting in fewer families entering the statutory Child Safety System and fewer children and young people entering out-of-home care.
Our reforms are continuing and later this year we will form a new Department for Education Children and Young People by bringing together the Department of Communities and Education so that we can coordinate our efforts to deliver the education and support needed to keep our children and young people safe, well and engaged in learning.
These changes will further strengthen our systems, policies, and procedures, ensure they are integrated, and build a culture where a child's development, education and safety is everyone's responsibility.
Our Government also recognises the need for ongoing investment to further bolster the Child Safety workforce and that is why we are progressing a number of initiatives:
- Recently contracted 16 new Child Safety Officers and commenced further recruitment to fill remaining vacancies;
- Approving recruitment of additional relief positions above the current full staff complement to act as backfill when there are vacancies, or when staff need to take leave;
- Recruiting new Case Coordinator positions to ease the administrative workload for Child Safety Officers, allowing them to focus on their core responsibilities to children and families;
- Investing $2 million in new tablets and associated equipment for Child Safety Officers, as well as upgrades to video conference facilities across the state; and
- An enhanced student pathway is being developed with the University of Tasmania to enable fourth-year social work students to be employed as case aids during their final placement.
Importantly, this is in addition to our commitment, as part of the 2022-23 budget of $5.4 million for an additional 10 FTEs to be added to the Child Safety workforce around the state.
We have already taken important steps in establishing clear benchmarks for high-quality, safe services that will achieve the best possible outcome for children and young people in care through the release of the Tasmanian Out of Home Care (OOHC) Standards. The new Standards mark an important step towards implementing a Tasmanian OOHC Accreditation Framework and a Carers Register, which will help further safeguard and support children and young people in OOHC.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our frontline Child Safety Staff, our carers, our sector partners and all those who directly support the safety and wellbeing for Tasmanian children and young people.
Your dedication and hard work in challenging circumstances is ensuring more Tasmanian children and young people are safe, happy, and able to thrive and to reach their full potential.
