Public-sector workers call for pay rise, 500 additional staff and the de-privatising of out-of-home care
New South Wales child protection workers have warned that some of the state’s most vulnerable children are being neglected or put at risk of being removed from their families because resourcing problems in the sector have reached crisis point.
Wednesday’s strikes follow similar action in Wollongong and the northern rivers, where workers say they have had no office for four months after the shuttering of the Ballina centre due to mould. “We are tied to the computer so much,” they said. “It’s a struggle to get out to see children. We’re treated like numbers. We started buying our own stationery recently because even that has not been organised.”
Nin Bennett, a child protection worker in Newcastle, said working conditions had deteriorated in the past two years and her colleagues were struggling with unsustainable caseloads of between 12 and 19 children. The children’s magistrate found the government “not only failed to protect the children from harm but has caused harm to the children”.
One young person said their experience made them feel like a “dog being moved from cage to cage”. There were 427 children in “high cost emergency arrangements” at the end of March, according to the government.
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