“Once again, the NSW Ombudsman has found that in cases of reviewable deaths of children in NSW a lack of coordination and communication between government agencies has acted against the best interests of children,” said NCOSS Acting Director, Ms Michelle Burrell.

The NSW health system is the target of many of the Ombudsman’s recommendations.

“One of the problems we continue to have is a lack of focus on the needs of children when adults are undergoing treatment,” said Ms Burrell. “Most drug and alcohol services and mental health services do not have the professional expertise to work with the whole family and to pick up on signs of abuse or neglect of children.”

“On the other hand, services working with families find it difficult to engage parents who have a serious drug and alcohol problem or a mental illness, so children fall between the cracks” she added.

“The relationship between Department of Community Services (DoCS) and NSW Health is critical to ensuring that proper assessments of the family situation are made,” said Ms Burrell. “This is the key to a service system than enables families to receive both support and treatment early”.

“Whilst NCOSS recognises that integration is the intention behind the DOCS Early Intervention Program, this cannot be delivered unless better systems for identification of risk, referral and response are put in place” she said. “This includes not closing files prematurely”.

 “Recent legislation makes the Courts give greater weight to child protection history, particularly the prior removal of other children in a family, however, this will be of little use if DoCS itself does not give weight to the same evidence in its assessment of risk, “ said Ms Burrell.

The Ombudsman’s report also casts some doubt on the efficacy of the recently mandated parental responsibility contracts as a means of changing parent behaviour.

“Families on parental responsibility contracts are more likely to be those that are the most difficult to work with and least capable of making an ongoing commitment, despite their best intentions. If we simply set families up to fail, then the legislation is not helpful,” said Ms Burrell.

“The Minister has assured us that parent contracts will be backed up by quality services. We will hold her to that commitment” she added.

“The Ombudsman’s Report on Reviewable Deaths is an important reminder of the complexity that surrounds child protection. It is also, however, a reminder that we can do better and that effective systems will make a difference to children’s lives.”