In an attempt to shelter the Department of Community Services ( Docs ) from criticism NSW Health has introduced a filter between them and reported cases of child abuse.
Newly formed NSW Health Child Wellbeing Unit (HCWU )will now receive the reports of child abuse and pass the most series cases to Docs for investigation and action. Docs is the only agency with the legal authority to take children into care and remove them from danger.
HCWU will refer lesser cases to other agencies, thus allowing Docs to concentrate where intervention may prevent death or serious harm.
This simply introduces another level of bureaucracy to spread the load and dilute the blame when things go wrong.
Docs receives about 300,000 reports of suspected child abuse a year. Investigating all of these is far beyond the resources of the department, and not all cases advance to the stage where harm is likely. In many cases, someone snaps - and the end result is serious harm to a child.
Shielding children from harm can never result in success in every instance. It requires a judgement to be made - and the people making that decision are only human.
There will be failures in the future - and the only thing that will have changed is the sheeting home of blame. Now it will be divided between Docs and HCWU. - with finger pointing from both sides of the divide.
And as usual the political solution to such problems is to increase the bureaucracy !
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