The mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse by police and teachers may prevent DoCS from identifying children genuinely at risk.
NSW opposition leader John Brogden made these claims to 100 representatives from church and charitable groups last year at the launch of the Coalition’s new social policy document, Testing the Heart of our State.
“The evidence over five years suggests that significant increases in Child Protection Reporting have not resulted in any significant increase in the levels of identified abuse or neglect of children,” he said. “It could be argued that mandatory reporting in its present form has become noise within the system making it more difficult to identify cases of abuse or neglect.”
But the Minister for the NSW Department of Community Services, Carmel Tebbutt, denies the claims. “The protection of our children is of the highest priority for the NSW Government and mandatory reporting is a way of ensuring that professional people dealing with children day-to-day, police, teachers and doctors, notify DoCS of suspected abuse.
“I should point out that Mr Brogden is shedding crocodile tears over protecting children from abuse. He was the man who just 48 hours before last March’s State election, announced that he would cut $700 million from the DoCS budget,” Ms Tebbutt said.
But Anglicare’s Chief Operating Officer Peter Gardiner says there may be some merit to Mr Brogden’s allegations. He says there is ambiguity in what constitutes child abuse and confusion over reporting criteria.
“Schools and police are particularly affected by this legislation and thus we have seen a substantial rise in reports coming from these sources,” he explained. “This has to do with a lack of clarity in the definition of child abuse. This needs to be tightened along with a consistency of reporting. For example, teachers have to report any instances of ill treatment regardless of whether they think the child is in danger or the situation constitutes child abuse or not.”
However, Mr Gardiner warned that if the community is not vigilant in reporting incidents of suspected child abuse, cases where children are genuinely in danger may be allowed to slip through the system. The solution, Mr Gardiner says, is the clarification of definition and reporting criteria along with adequate resources to follow up reports.
“We are still seeing reports of babies who have died even though their situation had been reported as dangerous. Our awareness of the issue as a community has grown, which is a positive sign, but we haven’t yet succeeded in always being able to identify those who are truly at risk and following them up,” Mr Gardiner said.