Following questions from the Labor opposition, the Tasmanian government announces it will turn a 'laser focus' to staff shortages in child safety.
Ongoing staff shortages in Tasmania's child safety service is leading to children falling "through the gaps", a union official says.
on Wednesday, Labor leader Dean Winter asked Children and Youth Minister Roger Jaensch to confirm whether the child was "known to child safety services and had been the subject of several assessments in recent years"."The death of any child or young person is a tragedy and our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with that child's family and his community," he said.
"This service is working. It's under high demand, we're continuing to recruit to it so we have the capacity."On Thursday, Mr Jaensch said in a statement there were currently no outstanding call-back requests to the referral line, and that any high-risk reports would receive priority follow up by staff to determine whether a referral to child safety was required.
"When that continues year after year, more and more workers decide that they cannot continue to do this absolutely important work and leave and we must stop them leaving," Ms White said. "We have worked considerably hard in trying to ameliorate and reduce the number of vacancies. Clearly the positions are there to fill.
"This government has been in power for a decade. We have seen staffing levels get worse, we have seen statistics and data around child safety and the support we're providing or not providing to Tasmanian families get worse.
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