The recent Right to Information regarding vacancies in the Child Safety Service provides evidence of what this Government has been stating for over two years - no frontline Child Safety Service positions have been axed, in fact we are employing more.
Comparison of the actual paid FTE of frontline CSS positions confirms the Hodgman Government is actually investing in more frontline CSS positions with 148.3FTE Child Safety Officers and Support Workers recorded compared with just 112.9FTE in 2012-13 under the former Labor-Green government.
As well, there are alreadynine additional positions for our $20.6 million Child Protection Redesign. Of these nine new positions, four Support Worker positions have already been filled.
Three Clinical Practice Consultant & Educator positions were interviewed in the week of 10 October 2016, and two Child Safety Liaison Officer positions and the Clinical Nurse Specialist role are in the process of recruitment.
In addition, there is a cycle of regular, ongoing recruitment to vacant positions.
The RTI also outlines that all positions except one that have been vacant for a period of time are administrative positions outside of Child Safety Services which are not frontline child protection or support workers.
While the HR system currently shows that these roles are incorrectly attached to CSS, in reality, the positions identified are attached to an Administration Unit outside of CSS.
As the RTI quite clearly states, this error will be corrected on the system.
Otherwise, the vacant position (of 6 months – not the 9 months claimed by Mr Willie) in CSS is under recruitment, of which we are currently working on filling.
It should also be noted that under the previous Labor-Green Government, the Deputy Secretary position was vacant for 10 months in 2013.
We are currently recruiting for this position, which has not been vacant for 6 months as claimed incorrectly by Mr Willie.
The RTI was submitted by the Member for Elwick who clearly is not across his portfolio, as some of his questions were already answered in publicly available media statements.
With the budget back on track, the Hodgman Government is committed to ensuring that more supports are in place for our most vulnerable children and young people through our $20.6M investment in redesigning the Child Safety Service.