Tasmanian Government making progress on child safety system

The Tasmanian Government has thanked staff working in the child safety and youth justice system for the work they are doing, commenting on the latest Productivity Commission Report on Government Services (RoGS) findings. 

“The latest release of the RoGS shows that in child safety, the number of children in Out of Home Care continues to trend downwards, which reflects the benefits of our ongoing Strong Families Safe Kids reforms,” Minister for Education, Children and Youth, Roger Jaensch said.

“Our new approach focuses on identifying families earlier and working with them for longer to ensure they have the right support in place to prevent escalation to a statutory response. For these reasons, some of our data is not comparable to other jurisdictions.”

The Tasmanian Government is focused on making important changes to its child safety system to ‘ensure children and young people are known, safe, well and learning, and to reforming our youth justice system.’

“It is pleasing to see that the proportion of children placed with relatives and kin has also improved, which suggests our reforms are working,” Mr Jaensch said.

“We know we have more work to do on individual care plans, but we are doing everything we can to attract and retain staff in this area, so that every child and young person has a relationship with a primary worker.”

“The report shows the proportion of child safety investigations completed within 28 days of commencement increased from 25.5 per cent in 2021-22 to 36.5 per cent in 2022-23, which is above the national average of 27.7 per cent,” he added.

Youth justice data shows Tasmania’s average daily number of young people in detention has increased, though this still remains lower than the national average, adjusted for population.

“We know there is still much more to do and the Tasmanian Government is committed to our long-term plan by doing what matters for Tasmanians and continuing to progress important reforms to keep children and young people safe and deliver the best possible outcomes.”