Annual Report 201213.Pdf
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Hon HELEN MORTON MLC Minister for Child Protection In accordance with section 61 of the Financial Management Act 2006, I hereby submit for your information and presentation to Parliament, the Annual Report of the Department for Child Protection and Family Support for the financial year ended 30 June 2013. The report has been prepared in accordance with the provisions of the Financial Management Act 2006. Terry Murphy DIRECTOR GENERAL Accountable Authority 1 September 2013 Head office address: Department for Child Protection and Family Support 189 Royal Street, East Perth WA 6004 Postal address: PO Box 6334, East Perth WA 6892 Email: [email protected] Free call: 1800 622 258 Phone: (08) 9222 2555 TTY: (08) 9352 1232 Fax: (08) 9222 2776 Website: www.child protection.wa.gov.au CONTENTS DIRECTOR GENERAL’S REPORT 1 AGENCY OVERVIEW 3 AGENCY PERFORMANCE 5 SIGNIFICANT ISSUES AND TRENDS 39 DISCLOSURES AND LEGAL COMPLIANCE 40 OTHER LEGAL REQUIREMENTS 97 GOVERNMENT POLICY REQUIREMENTS 101 APPENDICES Appendix 1: Map of metropolitan and country districts, and office locations 103 Appendix 2: Community sector organisations funded by the Department 107 Appendix 3: Supplementary performance information – Service 1 118 Appendix 4: Supplementary performance information – Service 2 122 Appendix 5: Supplementary performance information – Service 3 128 In this report, the term ‘Aboriginal’ refers to both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. DIRECTOR GENERAL’S REPORT All government departments must stay agile and responsive to the changing needs of the community and the opportunities for more effective work and making a greater impact. A department that it is not innovating and growing in organisational capacity and growing how well its people do the work, will be falling backwards in meeting its challenges. At the same time an organisation cannot grow and develop and become progressively more effective if it is in relentless pursuit of the latest intellectual wave and is changing in order to be seen as changing. Getting this balance right is a challenge for governments and their departments. It is particularly pronounced in the field of child protection and family support, where tragedy and contention are inherent in child protection work and these can be widely publicised, while successes pass unnoticed, and the wicked problems we tackle remain a part of the community landscape. The now aptly named Department for Child Protection and Family Support is looking back at six years of root and branch reform following the Review of the (former) Department of Community Development (the Ford Review) that described the Department as overwhelmed, confused and defensive. In this period, all of our interstate counterparts have been subject to review and restructure, many of them for the second time. Getting the reforms right, sticking with the core service settings and growing capacity within them, while pursuing continuous improvement and innovative developments has meant the Department has developed while being stable, improved its outcomes and most essentially grown its people. Our key settings warrant description. The bedrock is the way we do child protection work, through the Signs of Safety. This is an approach that is rigorously focused on risk, emphasises putting families in the centre of assessment, planning and responsibility for the safety of their children, and working collaboratively with families even if children have to be removed. This approach, created in Western Australia had evolved through implementation in jurisdictions around the world, before it was adopted and implementation began in a concerted way in Western Australia in 2008. Since that time, it has spread further internationally and most pleasingly, three other Australian jurisdictions are now adopting the approach. Western Australia held its second international conference, the Signs of Safety Gathering, in November 2012, hosting visitors from around Australia and presenters from The Netherlands, Japan, New Zealand and Canada, eighteen months after our first Gathering. The growth in the effectiveness of our practice, the depth of work with families, and the capacity to keep children safe without bringing them into care was clearly evident. This was demonstrated through the interviews with families and workers that formed most of the presentations. Our outcome measures confirm the story of improving child protection practice. Over the last five years, child protection notifications have doubled, while a more rigorous focus on risk has seen the number of investigations triple. In this context, intensive work with families to keep children safe at home, with the active support of family and community networks as well as professional services, has also tripled, while the rate of growth in bringing children in care has reduced to 5 per cent, substantially less than half the rate five years previously. This growing depth of practice with Signs of Safety can and must continue, as Western Australia now finds itself as a leading jurisdiction, nationally and internationally, in child protection work. The Department has well founded frameworks to guide how it works in all service areas. In out of home care for children, the Foster Care Partnership guides foster care, while the Sanctuary approach, an international model from the USA that is in use in three Australian jurisdictions, 1 underpins residential care. Most family support services are provided by the community sector. The Department’s limited direct services are carefully targeted to families with criminal and antisocial teenage children, working with Youth Justice and Education, and to young mothers on the edge of the child protection system, and are guided by our Family Support (Responsible Parenting) Framework. As close to half the clients of the Department are Aboriginal, our Aboriginal Services Framework focuses our leadership and specific Aboriginal positions on bringing these approaches, all developed with Aboriginal people at the forefront, to work effectively with Aboriginal children and families. The other critical ingredient in the work and growth of the Department is the ethos and the hard work of partnership. The Government's focus on partnership with the community sector has been actively pursued by the Department through the Community Sector Roundtable, its collaborative approach to contracting services, establishing integrated services such as the Family Support Networks and the Family and Domestic Violence Response Teams, and allocation of the majority of growth funding to the community sector that has seen sector funding grow by 122 per cent, and as a proportion of the Department’s budget in each year, over the last five years. Similarly, partnership with government agencies is pursued through the Child Safety Directors Group, initiatives such as Rapid Response that prioritises government services for children in care, and a network of formal agreements across government agencies. There is no perfect formulae for making these partnerships work, and indeed none are of themselves perfect, but all are active, based on effective working relationships and substantial communication, and all are improving service impact. The next steps for continuing reform and development are many. Continuing to increase community sector out of home care placements and coupling these with delegated case management for permanent placements, building the innovative service Family by Family where families who have been through troubled times assist others working their way through difficulties, and more partnering with Aboriginal organisations to support youth and families, are key priorities. Equally as important is recognising that root and branch reforms have been implemented and are now embedded, and core service settings are in place that are the best the world can currently offer. While the Department and its partners cannot solve all the problems we confront, and tragedy and contention will still be part of everyday child protection work, the community of Western Australia can be confident it has a child protection and family support Department and sector that will continue to deliver great outcomes and grow its effectiveness within these settings, evolve how it works to improve continuously based on experience, and relentlessly pursue innovative developments within this context. Terry Murphy Director General 2 AGENCY OVERVIEW AGENCY OVERVIEW Minister The Honourable Helen Morton MLC was the Minister for Child Protection at 30 June 2013. The Honourable Robyn McSweeney MLC had held the ministerial portfolio until March 2013. The following advisory bodies provided independent advice to the Minister during 2012-13: Child Safety Directors’ Group Ministerial Advisory Council on Child Protection Western Australian Council on Homelessness. Statutory authority The Minister for Child Protection was responsible for administering the following Acts and Regulations: Adoption Act 1994 Adoption Regulations 1995 Children and Community Services Act 2004 Children and Community Services Regulations 2006 Parental Support and Responsibility Act 2008 Parental Support and Responsibility Regulations 2009 Parental Support and Responsibility (Disclosure of Information) Guidelines 2009 Working with Children (Criminal Record Checking) Act 2004 Working with Children (Criminal Record Checking) Regulations 2005. Mission and values The Department’s mission is to protect and care for children and young people who