Direction to all Community Services PSA members

Child Protection workers* are directed not to undertake redacting of records in response to subpoenas (including summonses and notices to produce) served on the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ).

For years the PSA has raised concerns with DCJ over the need to reduce the unmanageable levels of red tape and non-frontline administrative work imposed on frontline Child Protection workers. Over the past 15 years, the Department and its various Ministers have recognised and highlighted the need to free up Child Protection Workers so they can spend more time working face-to-face with children and families. The Department has repeatedly stated its commitment to reversing the 80 per cent of time workers spend tied to their computers and 20 per cent working face-to-face with clients. The Department has failed dismally.

You, our members, have clearly told your union you have enough of doing “CP by PC”. You have told us that your professionalism and indeed the quality of practice is undermined by the imposition of “productivity targets” in addition to imposition of the “checklist” and “tick-box” approach to practice.

Whilst the PSA acknowledges that some of the Executive within DCJ are trying to address these issues, some things need to change now.

One particular area is frontline workers spending countless hours redacting hundreds of thousands of pages of records in response to subpoenas served upon the Department. Every hour spent redacting records is an hour less working to protect children, support families and managers’ availability to support casework staff. This work should not be undertaken by frontline workers.

Current impact on frontline Child Protection workers:

• DCJ Community Services receives about 2500 subpoenas each year
• Some of these subpoenas involve thousands of pages of records which need to be sourced (mostly from ChildStory), reviewed and redacted
• A conservative estimate is an average of 750 pages of records require preparation per subpoena
• This equates to more than 1.8 million pages
• For comparison, the Care Leavers Records Access (CLRA) unit manages about 1700 applications a year, which translates to preparation of about 1.25 million pages of records
• Unlike CLRA and indeed the Right to Information unit, whose workers are properly trained and more adequately resourced (some 50+ full time staff in CLRA), Frontline Child Protection workers lack the training, experience and time to prepare records in response to subpoenas
• This results in 50 per cent of subpoena responses containing information which should have been redacted and in breach of relevant legislation**
• Even more concerning, 48 per cent of subpoenas responses contained information which directly or indirectly identified persons who made child protection reports**. 

Reasons for the ban:

• It frees up frontline Child Protection workers to protect children and support families
• It reduces the administrative burden on frontline workers
• It reduces workloads of frontline workers – all too often frontline workers review and redact records in their own time due to prioritising their work time with children and families
• It will assist in reducing Child Protection Workers’ excessive workloads, which result in high attrition rates, unacceptable rates of psychological injury and Workers’ Compensation claims
• Currently, due to the poor preparation of records, the department is knowingly breaching Privacy and Child Protection legislation
• To protect the women, children, families, Child Protection Workers and the Department itself, given the known breaches of legislation that is occurring
• It protects the integrity of Section 29 of the Children & Young Persons [Care and Protection] Act 1998 which protects the identity of persons who make child protection reports
• Centralising this process with suitably graded and trained workers will eliminate breaches to legislation, as well providing as a better service to courts and legal proceedings
• To demand the government adequately resource Child Protection workers so they can do their job and KEEP CHILDREN SAFE. 

Please note that this direction only covers the review and redaction of records as detailed in the attached DCJ document HERE. The identification and collation of records in compliance with the subpoena will still be managed at the District / CSC level prior to forwarding the un-redacted records to DCJ Legal Services.

The PSA will continue to advocate for the establishment of a centralized unit to undertake all work associated with subpoenas.

* Includes Caseworkers, Casework Support Officers, Managers Casework & MCS

** Data based on results from DCJ Subpoena pilot in 2020