The Minns Government must purge costly out-of-home-care providers from the child protection system in light of a damning report released this morning by the NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART).
There are currently 14,000 children who have been removed from their homes in NSW and many are housed by a mixture of for-profit and not-for-profit organisations and traditional foster parents.
This has not always been the case, the previous Liberal government allowed for-profit and not-for-profit organisations (sometimes religious based) to contract to the government to look after kids.
Hundreds were housed in hotels and motels looked after by a rolling roster of labour hire workers.
Meanwhile the traditional foster parent system has been left to die and foster parents have left the system in droves.
This morning’s report finds placements delivered by non-government providers cost the Government around $18,000 more per child per year than foster care delivered by The Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ)
The report finds DCJ has limited visibility of the services delivered by non-government providers which makes assessing the cost effectiveness of different delivery approaches challenging.
The report finds the number of authorised foster parent carers in NSW is decreasing at a faster rate than the number of children in out-of-home care and the rate of decline is accelerating.
It also found while for-profit and not-for-profit organisations have been soaking up money and resources he care allowance for foster parents has been going backwards.
It found the care allowance is out of date and requires review and the indexation that has been applied to it over the past two decades is unlikely to have adequately captured changes in the cost of caring for children.
The experiment with for-profit and not-for-profit organisations in child protection has failed, said Troy Wright Assistant General Secretary of The Public Service Association.
“This report shows us this experiment with letting for-profit outfits look after our most vulnerable kids has failed, it’s both more costly and more damaging than the traditional foster parent model where kids are in a family-like environment,” said Mr Wright.
“The previous government dismantled the foster care system and replaced it with a patchwork of for-profit and not-for-profit outfits to look after kids taken from their parents.
"As a result over 500 kids went to sleep each night in hotels, motels and caravan parks around NSW supervised by labour hire workers on rotating eight hour shifts.
“This is not a situation any child should be in - they should be in family-like environments.
“This morning’s report shows us not only was it wrong, it cost more too,” said Mr Wright.
Contact: Tim Brunero 0405 285 547