As you would be aware, Minister Kate Washington called for a comprehensive system review into Out of Home Care in NSW. She saw that the system was broken.

The Terms of Reference can be found here.

The review has just been released, with some unsurprising results. You can view the report here.

PSA General Secretary Stewart Little distributed the following media release.

“It’s time to return child protection to the public sector”

“Care of children removed from their parents should never have been outsourced by the former liberal government, it was always a bad idea, and now that has been proved,”

“Kids deserve to be in family-like environments, like with foster parents, not placed with for-profit entities which spend their whole time trying to wring as much cash as they can out of each child.

“This was never a place where privatisation should have been tried, but the former liberal government was obsessed with it and now we have to clean up their mess.

“Our members, child protection caseworkers, have been yelling this from the rooftops for years but the former liberal government was obsessed with bringing the free market into the care of vulnerable kids, they just put their hands over their ears.

“I applaud Minister Washington for identifying what’s been happening in this sector and for beginning the process of returning care of vulnerable kids back into the public sector. 

“The experiment has failed, the former liberal government’s outsourcing of the care of the most vulnerable kids in the state to for-profit providers has now been shown to be bad for kids and to have cost taxpayers more.”

With some significant changes coming, and a great win by PSA members for improved conditions for Child Protection Workers, your continued advocacy will be invaluable.

Better safety for Far West District

The PSA was recently advised by your Delegates that some of the new vehicles in Far West were being delivered without phone boosters installed. This represented a possible safety hazard with the distances between towns and potential lack of reception in case of an emergency.

We wrote to the Department to raise your concerns, and they have taken active steps to rectify the issue.

Infrastructure and Assets, as well as your Acting Executive District Director Susan Mullard, have advised they are working to retrofit any current vehicles without the boosters and will make sure any new vehicles are delivered with the boosters installed.

An audit will be undertaken to establish which locations require additional cars fitted with boosters. If you are aware of any vehicles that need the boosters, please let your manager or EDD know.