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QUEENSLAND'S Child Safety Minister Mike Reynolds says the state's new child protection system are "world class". Mr Reynolds defended his department's practice of mothballing more than 4500 suspected child abuse reports. "To suggest that the Beattie Government has not brought the Queensland system to world class standards is nonsense," he said in a statement. "The Queensland child protection system is acclaimed nationally as having the best possible practices and procedures." Mr Reynolds, who is resting his voice on doctor's orders, was responding to a report in The Courier-Mail that, as at June 30 this year, 11,896 child abuse reports were in the investigation and assessment pipeline, but of those, 4544 cases had not been allocated to a child safety officer for investigation. "Every child abuse notification that my department receives is screened and assessed to ensure the immediate safety of the children concerned," he said. "If a notification is classified as urgent it is dealt with within 24 hours." He said the system provided for three response timeframes - 24-hour, five days and 10 days. Nearly 100 per cent of the highest priority cases were dealt with in the required 24-hour timeframe. All of the 4500 unallocated cases were considered low priority. Mr Reynolds said low priority cases were "regularly reassessed by team leaders and child safety staff". "If new information comes to the attention of the department that indicates the safety needs are more urgent, they are responded to as a matter of priority," he said. In May $2 million in extra funding was provided to target completion of investigations and assessments, providing up to 55 extra temporary child safety worker positions for six months to be deployed in various locations around the state. Queensland Public Sector Union general secretary, Alex Scott, said the union was aware of the backlog. "We're of the view that while the unallocated case-load figure is so high, it's not safe for the children or the workers for that matter," he said. Mr Scott said significant numbers of workers in some child safety centres continued to face high workloads - well over the 15 cases per worker recommended by the Crime and Misconduct Commission's Protecting Children report. Courier Mail (3-8-2006) Marg Wenham |
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