A damning independent report into child protection in New South Wales has found the system is “ineffective and unsustainable”, its escalating costs are “crisis-driven” and it is “failing to improve long-term outcomes for children and families” with complex needs.
The report, by the former senior public servant David Tune, estimated the government spent $1.86bn on vulnerable families in 2015-16 but spending was “crisis-oriented” and had “evolved in an ad hoc way”.
Tune said there was “significant unmet demand” and inefficiency, with only one in three reports of children at risk of significant harm being investigated by a family and community services (Facs) worker.
Almost three in every four cases (72%) were closed without further investigation, even where the risk of serious harm was recorded as “high” or “very high”. Tune said this was largely due to resourcing constraints in local Facs offices.
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The report said the cost of providing out-of-home care had risen sharply since the government began transferring responsibility to non-government organisations in 2012.
“The average unit cost of a child in care of an NGO is $41,000 ... while a child in [Facs] care is $27,000,” the report said.
The opposition has demanded the families minister, Pru Goward, be stood down pending an investigation into why she failed to release the report for more than 18 months after it was delivered.
NSW Greens said the report shows the minister has “utterly failed” to deal with the system in crisis and the premier, Gladys Berejiklian, should demand her resignation.
The government has resisted several attempts to make it public, citing cabinet confidentiality.
Almost 60% of children were now in the care of NGOs and they were staying there longer because the bulk of funding was spent on out-of-home care “instead of addressing family needs earlier”, the report found.
Responsibility was shifted to the NGOs in response to a recommendation of the 2008 Wood royal commission into child protection.
The rationale was that the non-government sector would be able to deliver high-quality services, had lower caseloads and was perceived to have better community links. Facs aimed to transfer all children and young people in statutory care to the NGO sector by 2022.
Tune identified at least $450m spent, and 61 different programs delivered, with “no overarching logic to guide investment and ... little systemic impact”.
“The true cost and size of the effort is likely to be greater,” it said.
About $302m of spending was on programs “where the effectiveness is unknown” and 67% of Facs programs for vulnerable children and families had not been evaluated.
“This makes it difficult to assess the effectiveness of interventions for families, focus investment or drive change across government,” the report said. “There are also missed opportunities to provide help at the earliest opportunities to vulnerable families, to reduce needs from escalating into crisis.
“The current system does not hold agencies accountable for achieving whole-of-person outcomes.”
Quick GuideMain findings of the Tune report
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• The number of children in out-of-home care has doubled in 10 years due to increases in factors driving demand, like mental health issues, as well as a lack of investment in vulnerable families’ needs before they enter OOHC
• The cost of providing OOHC is growing, with the expanding NGO sector costing significantly more than the government sector
• The government spends a lot on OOHC but it is not well-targeted and there is still significant unmet demand and inefficiency: “Overall, the system is ineffective and unsustainable”
• Millions of dollars' worth of programs are delivered in agency silos and are not evaluated
• Outcomes are particularly poor for Aboriginal children and families, who are the highest growing population in OOHC. The number of Aboriginal children being restored to their families has dropped significantly
• Current programs are not aligned with what children and families need
• Expenditure is crisis-driven, rather than going towards early intervention or family preservation
• “The system is failing to improve the long term outcomes for children and to arrest the devastating cycles of intergenerational abuse and neglect”
• A new entity, a NSW family investment commission, is needed to drive and implement personalised packages for vulnerable children and families
Aboriginal children, already over-represented in the system, were the “fastest growing cohort in out of home care”, Tune’s report found – 7.4% are in out-of-home care, compared with 1% of all children and young people in NSW. The report could not identify any specific programs designed to arrest that trend.
Greens MP David Shoebridge said the Coalition was playing politics with the lives of vulnerable children and the minister should be asked to resign.
“Hiding this report has also hidden the solutions, including an independent Families Commission, a fresh emphasis on individual care packages and early intervention,” Shoebridge told Guardian Australia.
“We can now see the true cost of privatising the more than $900m out-of-home care sector, with a 25% blow out in costs.
“It’s time this ideological experiment ended and services returned to the public sector.”
Shoebridge was critical of the government’s push toward open adoptions as a solution, as well as the high numbers of Aboriginal children in state care.
“Adoptions will never be more than a fringe ‘solution’,” he said.
“This minister has ignored the complex needs of Aboriginal children and communities and failed utterly to respond to the call for self-determination.
“Aboriginal kids are best cared for by Aboriginal parents, elders, aunts, uncles and grandparents, not some NGO or bureaucrat.”
Labor’s families spokeswoman, Tania Mihailuk, accused the government of “hiding behind a cloak of secrecy”.
“Why did the government use taxpayer funds to commission a report into a broken child protection system only to do everything possible to bury the findings?” she said. “It’s grossly irresponsible and the minister should be stood aside.”
Mihailuk said the minister’s record during her first tenure at Facs between 2011 and 2014 was “lamentable, pushing through more than $180m in cuts from community services, cutting 110 full-time caseworkers in her first year in the job, failing to fill caseworker positions and presiding over thousands of redundancies.
“There have been a number of coronial inquests and inquiries all highlighting the shortcomings and failings of a broken system that this government refuses to repair.”
In an earlier statement, a spokesman for Goward told Guardian Australia the government responded to the Tune review in 2017 by investing $190m over four years through Their Futures Matter, its long-term strategy to transform the child protection system.
“This includes $90.5m over four years to support parents to change when their children are at risk, with two new evidence-based service models to improve family preservation and restoration,” the spokesman said.
“The two models – Multi Systemic Therapy and Functional Family Therapy – will help 900 children and families in priority locations across NSW each year, with half of these places for Aboriginal children.”
The Tune report is one of three documents the NSW opposition and minor parties have repeatedly fought to make public, pushing the Berejiklian government to the edge of a constitutional crisis last week.
The Liberal MLC Matthew Mason-Cox has crossed the floor three times to demand the reports and has been a vocal critic of the government’s child protection policy.