“I contacted the Ombudsman with a as detailed as I could report. Because they only let you put a certain amount of letters into a report. So, I’m trying to get all this information in – so I gave them as detailed as I could. When they contact back, they had handed all the information over to the DoCS complaints line. But I’m not sure what happened all from there.”
– Parent, Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home research
– Parent, BTHKTH research
Aboriginal parents have said that the NSW Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) caseworkers often do not listen to or believe Aboriginal parents. One mum said:
“He told me that he was being really badly abused and mistreated. Through the years I had made reports of what was going on with my kids and my son and what he was telling me what was going on in that house and it was basically dismissed or DoCS would go and talk to them and they would find out what [young person] was telling me and it would get even worse for him.”
– Parent, Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home research
DCJ do not have good enough oversight of all children in OOHC and continue to have accountability mechanisms (like their complaints unit) that are not good enough (Audit office of New South Wales, 2024.)
“The big kicker was we ended up getting a letter at the end of all this saying that they had no reason to intervene into our family to start off with. That was three years later…They said FACS came out, but blankly said, look, we don’t know why they intervened to start off with. There was never a reason for this family to be treated – like, go through this over this time period”
– Parent, Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home research
They must follow the principles of respectful treatment and transparency, outlined in the DCJ Managing Complaints and Feedback Policy. They have the power to refer matters to an independent internal review if you are not satisfied with the review of a decision (p. 4). and there should be no unfair treatment to the person who made the complaint (p. 7, 9). The Policy says you should be given help to make the complaint if you want it, and it should be confidential and accessible (p. 7).
If your child is being case managed by a Non-Government Organisation or Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation, and you want to make a reportable complaint about the safety of your child, the agency is required to conduct a reportable conduct investigation. These reportable allegations need to be about either your child’s carer, an adult household member, or someone that works at the agency. Once the investigation is done, the agency needs to tell the Office of the Children’s Guardian (OCG) and DCJ what they found.
Examples of what “serious misconduct” is includes DCJ using bullying, harassment, assault, and blackmail. DCJ’s website says it’s serious misconduct when a DCJ worker has failed “to act in accordance with the applicable professional and ethical standards,” The standards DCJ have to follow are the DCJ Practice Framework Standards. It also says that it includes “blatant disregard for policies.” This website has information about these policies and standards. You can remind your caseworker that them not following their standards or policies can be considered a “serious wrongdoing.” The law that says what makes it a “serious wrongdoing” or not is called the Public Interest Disclosures Act 2022 (see section 13).
If your caseworker has committed a serious wrongdoing, you have the options of talking to your current caseworker to address concerns, requesting a new caseworker with the DCJ Office Manager, or Client Service Manager (who is the person above/in charge of the Office Manager), filing an affidavit in court with your lawyer, or following complaints processes such as the Community Services Enquiry, Feedback and Complaints Unit or NSW Ombudsman.
If you are worried for your child’s safety in OOHC, keeping a record of every time you call to make a complaint to the helpline could be a way to be strategic. You can use your complaint record to try and elevate your case, by saying “look at all of the times I have asked for help. You need to do something.”
Depending on your situation and the DCJ caseworker, and if you feel safe enough, you could choose to talk to the DCJ caseworker about your concerns.
If your child is in OOHC, DCJ should not be telling the carer information about your concerns if there is a risk it will harm your child.
For example, DCJ should not be telling carer’s that your child has told you or someone else vthat iolence in the carer’s home is happening, because it might put your child at risk of further harm from the carer.
You can complain directly to your local CSC office that is case managing or used to case manage your child. Google ‘DCJ Community Services Centre’ to find the number and location of the CSC you need to complain to.
This hotline deals directly with DCJ’s actions and decisions and other services that are funded by DCJ. They will try to handle the issue on the phone or give the issue to someone else to solve. They say they try to have the issue solved in 20 days, but experiences of parents is that it can take much longer than that.
You can talk to them about decisions and actions DCJ have made, like being treated badly or bad communication. If they say your complaint is ‘justified’, they can either fix the mistake, say sorry, tell you why they made that decision, or make promises to improve their polices, practices or systems. They can decide to handle the complaint by contacting the local DCJ office with case management to solve it.
Post: Reply Paid 63437, Complaints Unit, Locked Bag 4028, Ashfield NSW 2131.
If you know your child is in an unsafe placement or at risk of harm, you can call this helpline to make a child protection report. This is the same way that reports would have been made about your family, but the outcome might not be the same, and the type of assessment that they do could be different. However, just like with your family, DCJ is required to consider every report that they receive.
This is an independent body that deals with fixing legal problems by solving disagreements and giving out enforceable orders. This can include reviewing decisions made by NSW government agencies (including DCJ).
Solving these issues might include things like mediation, conciliation, case conferences or hearings. You can speak to the NCAT Registry if you are unsure of this option.
The OCG won’t deal directly with complaints or concerns about risk of harm to individual children. If you are worried about an organisation’s employee and how they behave around children, you can report this to the OCG. The report might be about sexual misconduct involving a child, ill-treatment of a child, neglect of a child, or assault against a child.
Postal address: Office of the Children’s Guardian Level 13, 418A Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010 Australia
You can complain to the Minister for Families and Communities and Minister for Disability Inclusion by filling out the form on the website. You can also write a letter and post it. Make sure to include evidence of what you are saying. They say they will try and get back to you within 20 days, but there are sometimes delays. Your complaint will become a formal departmental record. If there is a threat in the complaint, they will send it to the police. Lots of families have approached their local members of parliament before and asked them to represent them to government decision makers (Ministers and Secretaries). This is often a way of putting pressure on and getting things heard by the Minister.
Postal address: The Hon. Kate Washington MP, PO Box 82, Raymond Terrace, NSW 2324
The NSW Ombudsman is an independent agency that is responsible for investigating complaints about government and some NGO agencies (including DCJ, foster care, and OOHC agencies) and the actions they make. They will look at the information you give them and decide what action to take. If there are no current issues and the complaint is over a year old, they can say no to the complaint. They might find another agency to refer the complaint to, help to solve it with the agency involved, and suggest to the agency what they could do. They then make findings and recommendations to the service or agency and keep tabs on what the agency does to make it happen. The Ombudsman might ask for you to follow the other ways of complaining before they look at it. They receive more complaints than they investigate, and formal processes can take a long time and be complicated (Family is Culture Review Report 2019, page 304).
Some case workers are social workers, and some social workers are a member of the AASW. You can find out if your case worker is a member on their website.
You can make a complaint to the AASW if your caseworker has had unethical conduct or gone against the AASW code of ethics. The complaint can go to the Ethics Complaints Management Process.
AHPRA are the ones who monitor if psychologists follow their policies and procedures. If someone such as your caseworker or children’s court clinician is a registered psychologist, you can report them here. Their response will be to either take action to fix the matter if the psychologist went against their policies or procedures, explain the situation, apologise, or review their policies and procedures.
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.
