This will be your first assessment with The NSW Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) and will usually happen two working days after DCJ first visits your home. Sometimes this happens on their first visit or earlier, if they think there is immediate danger. DCJ assess if your child in your house is safe and if there is any immediate danger.
This is a document/plan that is based on your Safety Assessment. Its aim is to address DCJ’s safety concerns and to set goals for you to meet to address their concerns.
If your child has been classified as ‘Safe’ or ‘Safe with a plan’ after the Safety Assessment, then there are three more assessments/tools that DCJ will use to deal with ‘assessing risk.’ These assessments are important because DCJ uses these to decide if they will remove your child.
This is a document that will tell you if restoration is the case plan goal, and it will include a list of tasks and goals DCJ want you to complete to address risk factors they have identified for your child. This is a document that is filed in Court.
This document is often used by the Court to review restoration goals and is used by DCJ in assessing whether you have “made the required changes” and restoration is realistic.
This document outlines DCJ’s concerns and your family’s goals or tasks to address them. You’ll meet with DCJ to create the FAP, and can include your child and support people in the process. A FAP can be done before or after removal, or with no removal at all.
If you get your FAP and there are things you don’t agree with, you can and should get legal advice on it. A lawyer might be able to help you negotiate with DCJ to change some things in the FAP. With your lawyer or support worker, you can go through the document to make sure DCJ is only outlining goals that address what they say is ‘significant risk,’ and not anything else. A FAP should be an agreed document for it to be helpful and useful for a family.
This is a document written by DCJ telling the court why your children were removed, and includes the evidence they will rely on. You should be given this application before your first court date. You can go through this with your lawyer. Other things that are filed in Court are the SOPP, affidavits, applications (like the assessment order and joinder application), and the Care Plan.
This is when DCJ asks the court for a care order, usually to place your child with someone else and give legal responsibility to someone else (the minister or a relative). It has to be filed in under three working days (not including weekends or public holidays) from when your child was removed, and should include the grounds (reasons) for why they took action and why the Court should be involved.
This outlines DCJ’s decision on the placement goal, which could be restoration or long-term care. The Care Plan is based on the SOPP, but is final and legally binding, and details the agreement between parents and DCJ.
The Care Plan is important, because the judge at Court reads it and it tells them who your child is, what the future plans are for them and what type of Court orders are being asked for by DCJ. It is the document that the Court makes all of its final decisions on. The Children’s Court can’t make permanent changes Parental Responsibility (PR), or certain parts of Parental Responsibility, until the is a care plan. It is also what should guide the work your DCJ caseworker does while your child is in out-of-home care (OOHC).
This document is part of the Care Plan. The purpose of a Cultural Support Plan (CSP) for an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child is to plan for how that child is going to stay connected, or begin connection, to their culture, family, Country, language and overall identity. The CSP needs to be ongoing and updated every year, along with the Case Plan.
If the CSP has not included your family’s involvement, if it is not specific to your child, or if there is no CSP at all, you can remind DCJ of their legal responsibility to follow Section 83A (3) of the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 No 157 about providing a CSP, with the help of your lawyer, advocate, and support service.
This is the document that parents are involved with updating on a yearly basis. Its purpose is to review if there are significant changes like with your child’s placement and the Case Plan goal. The Case Plan is about how the agency does the work outlined in the Care Plan. It talks about things like travel, contact, and additional needs. You should be involved in the development of your child’s Case Plan.
Relative and Kincare assessments are completed by DCJ, other services, or contracted assessors. You can ask for these assessments to be done for a person, and these services can request this as well.
DCJ creates a case about you and your family using their own evidence. You can also make your own evidence by writing things down. Keeping your own evidence is an important way to support yourself in navigating the child protection system, especially in the restoration process. This is so you can go back to the documentation if something wrong is happening, DCJ are not doing what they say they will, or to keep track of what you are doing. An Aboriginal parent has said:
“I didn’t get a summary for a proposed plan for over a week. Then next thing you know I’ve got this stack of paperwork at my house. I’m having to go through it all… I just read it, seen what they done, see what they were saying. I went over it, highlighted the bits that I didn’t agree with, wrote them down. Then I started basically writing my own sh*t in a notebook as my thing back. Yeah, like sh*t that they were saying that wasn’t true or that I didn’t agree with.”
– Parent, Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home research
To find out more about how and what to document, click here.
“Now, another thing, always get the notes. Every case note, between every meeting with DCJ, every meeting with [your caseworker], every visit with your kid; you get every single note. They have to send them to you. You say, after every visit, I want my notes… it’s very important that you get those, because if there’s something in there that you’re not aware of, you’re not going to find out until it’s already in the hands of the Courts, and something could be said really bad and blown out of proportion.”
– Parent, Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home research
Standard 4.2 of the DCJ Practice Framework Standards says DCJ need to “provide a copy of assessments, case plans and safety plans to the family.” DCJ caseworkers are required to follow their Practice Framework Standards. If you think or you know your caseworker has not followed their Practice Framework Standards, you can document this and talk to your lawyer. You can also speak to your caseworker and ask why they have not followed their Practice Framework Standards. If you are not happy with their reason, you can make a complaint. Be mindful that anything you tell DCJ, or ask for help with, is documented and could appear in Court. If someone is using violence or coercive control, it could be a smart idea to keep your DCJ documentation in a place you think that person will not find it.
AbSec and our partners acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout NSW and their continuing connections to land, waters, and communities. We also acknowledge the lands on which these stories were told, the lands of the Dharawal, Yuin and Wonnarua people.
We acknowledge the Elders, leaders and advocates that have led the way and continue to fight for our children. We also acknowledge the Stolen Generations who never came home and the ongoing impact of government policy and practice on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, young people and families.
This website shares the experiences and advice of Aboriginal families involved in the NSW child protection system who participated in the Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home research at UNSW. We acknowledge and thank the families who generously gave permission to share their stories.
These experiences reflect what worked for those families and do not constitute advice or views of AbSec. AbSec recommends seeking independent legal advice for your own circumstances.
