Hundreds of Queensland children under Government care are choosing to forego state support, sparking an audit within a wider child safety Commission of Inquiry.
State Child Safety Minister Amanda Camm said almost 800 vulnerable children were “self-placing” across Queensland.
Minister Camm said a self-placing child was one who was under the care of the Department of Child Safety, but chose to leave either their foster, kinship or residential care placement, often putting themselves at risk of homelessness or in dangerous environments.
She said an audit would be held, as part of a Commission of Inquiry into the Child Safety System, to gather the names, ages, locations of the children who were self-placing, as well as uncover what efforts were being made to engage them and what support was being provided to them.
“Allowing one vulnerable child to self-place in Queensland is unacceptable to me, let alone 780 young people, that’s why I have ordered a full audit of the kids in care who are self-placing, to understand how the current system can be improved.”
Minister Camm said over the past five years the number of children self-placing had remained unacceptably high, from 694 in March 2020, to 871 in March last year.
She said the Commission of Inquiry, which began this week, would also review contracting processes that resulted in an over reliance on for-profit, unlicenced providers in the residential care sector.
“Unlicenced and for-profit providers have thrived in a billion-dollar industry with little to no checks and balances on their service delivery.”
Minister Camm said unlicenced residential care providers received $474.3m of funding from the State Government last financial year.
“There are currently 110 unlicenced providers, compared to 36 licenced providers (and) of the 102 for-profit providers in the residential care sector, only 11 were licenced.”
She said unlicenced providers were not required to have a Human Services Quality Framework certificate, which sets standards based on governance and management, service access, responding to individual need, safety, wellbeing and rights.
Minister Camm said they were also not subjected to legislative suitability requirements, other than holding a blue card, and there was no other documented process for reviewing the organisation’s performance.
“Licenced providers are held to strict conditions bound within the Child Protection Act and are regularly monitored by the Department and are mostly not-for-profit organisations operating in an outsourced service delivery model.
“It is this Government’s intention to reign in the billion-dollar industry, by moving contracts to an outsourced delivery model and in doing so push the sector to becoming licenced providers.”
