Protest to keep doors open amid child protection system 'death spiral'

At a protest outside the office on Thursday, union delegates banded together to demand the centre remain open and job vacancies be immediately addressed.

"The first thing that needs to be fixed with child protection services is addressing the appalling vacancy rates," Public Service Association (PSA) assistant general secretary Troy Wright said.

"Once offices are fully staffed, we can start to look at workload practices, we can start looking at refining things, but right now, we are on a death spiral in child protection.

"We're in a death spiral in the sense that too many people are leaving, and those that remain are picking up their loads, unsustainable loads, and burning out as well.

"It's got to stop."

It's understood the lease at the Edgeworth office, which has capacity to hold more than 50 people, is due to expire in September.

There are currently 16 staff who work from the site.

Issues with security at the building and under-use of the site is understood to be behind the move to close the office, but PSA delegate and caseworker Nin Bennett says that, although it may not be the busiest office, its role is still important.

"While it can appear that there's no one here, it's quite a filled office when everyone is sitting here," she said.

"In regards to the time that we spend travelling to and from to see our children, our carers, our families, even down to making those connections with schools, it would add significant time onto our travel each way if we were to move from say Edgeworth to Charlestown."

There are other community service centres at Maitland, Cessnock, Raymond Terrace, Mayfield and Charlestown and it's understood that if the centre does close, families will be notified about the change in location.

From the December 2022 quarter to the same period in 2023, caseworker vacancies have grown by more than 83 per cent across the state, according to Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) figures.

Mr Wright said the government needed to find measures to keep people in the job, attract new caseworkers and ensure child protection was fully resourced.

"When the department is alerted of a child that may be at risk of serious harm, only one in four of those children are being seen," he said.

"Can you imagine in a hospital emergency department if four patients came in and a doctor said, 'I cannot see all four of you, I'm only going to see one'?

"We would be outraged, and we should be similarly outraged by that happening in our child protection system."

Ms Bennett said feeling unable to do meaningful work was hard on the caseworker as well.

"It's certainly not easy, you walk out each night and you start questioning whether you've done everything you possibly can for all of the children across your caseload to make sure you are making sure you're giving them better outcomes," she said.

"For me personally I go home and I feel very deflated.

"I feel like I'm not able to do the job that I was actually employed to do, which is to keep our children safe and make sure those connections are everlasting."