Report shows Queensland is making progress on child safety

Queensland is continuing to make headway in its efforts to address the needs of children, according to the Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services 2019 (RoGs).

 

State Minister for Child Safety, Youth Justice and Women Di Farmer said the report showed that Queensland was making progress but there were still improvements to be made to make sure child safety was as robust as it could be.

 

RoGS showed that more Queensland children and families at risk are receiving early intervention services than ever before, with Ms Farmer saying the report showed a 7.5 per cent increase from the previous year (2016-17) in the number of children who were receiving Intensive Family Support services.

 

“We know that early intervention is the key to keeping families and children becoming out of the child safety and youth justice system and our commitment to this is evident in these figures,” Ms Farmer said.

 

The Queensland Government have introduced 44 Intensive Family Support services since 2015, to support families under stress to access the support they need as early as possible.

 

“We have also rolled out 33 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Family Wellbeing services to provide early intervention and support for Indigenous families,” Ms Farmer said, adding that demand on the child safety system increased with issues like the prevalence of ICE and other drugs continuing to impact families across Queensland.

 

“There has been a small increase in the number of child safety notifications when compared to last year, as the result of more reporting from mandatory notifiers,” Ms Farmer highlighted, adding that the increase in notifications has lead to more demand for investigations.

 

“We have recognised this by substantially boosting frontline child safety staff to help cope with the demand.We are employing an additional 458 staff over three years from 2016-17, including 93 this financial year which continues to help drive caseloads for staff down.”

 

The RoGs report is available on the Productivity Commission website at www.pc.gov.au