Uniting NSW.ACT welcomes the release of the report on the major review of the NSW Out Of Home Care (OOHC) system and urges the NSW Government to recognise that out of home care cannot be adequately reformed in isolation from the broader child protection system.
Uniting NSW.ACT Communities Director Dr Andrew Montague said Uniting welcomes the focus on the whole child protection system, especially the need to shift funding earlier.
"The government needs to widen its lens and focus more broadly, beyond cost control and service commissioning," Dr Montague said.
"The system should avoid simply responding to risk which is already apparent; it should treat every interaction with a vulnerable family as the opportunity to provide support earlier to break cycles of trauma and disadvantage."
"The problems the NSW Government is responding to are not new. They have been building over many years and have been comprehensively identified in a series of significant reports and reviews issued over the last decade. This suggests that governments have been unable to deliver on the kind of reform needed to address these issues."
"Uniting urges the government to be aware of the risk of repeating this pattern if its reforms do not address the underlying issues. We don't want the OOHC system to be stuck in a Groundhog Day scenario."
"Uniting holds a unique perspective because we are not only a service provider in OOHC, but we also work across the spectrum of the early intervention, child protection and aftercare system. Which is why Uniting is seeing this as a huge opportunity to be innovative and challenge the traditional ways of working across all parts of the system,'' Dr Montague said.
"Uniting, as part of the Non-Government Organisation (NGO) sector, is an important part of the child protection system and stands ready to partner with the NSW Government to address these issues."
