The information listed below is from DCJ’s assessment manual on ‘Interim Approach to Assessing Risk’* and talks about what DCJ caseworkers should be doing. It is Aboriginal parents’ experience that the policy is not always being followed properly. How DCJ assesses risk has changed recently as well, so not everyone is doing the work consistently.
*DCJ document not publicly available.
There are three assessments that deal with ‘assessing risk.’ These assessments are important because DCJ uses them to decide if your child should be removed and if your child should be classified as ‘Safe’, ‘Safe with a plan’, or ‘Unsafe’ after the safety assessment.
In these assessments, DCJ decides if your child is ‘At risk of significant harm’ and if your child is ‘In need of care and protection.’ These two things are different. ‘At risk of significant harm’ means that DCJ thinks there are risks to your child’s safety, but this does not automatically mean that DCJ should remove your child. DCJ needs to decide if your child is ‘In need of care and protection’ to consider their options for intervention and where they chose to remove, to justify that removal. They make this decision by using the ‘In Need of Care and Protection Tool’ (INOCAP). The three risk assessments are done in this order:
The Family Based Assessment will happen within 30 days of the Safety Assessment (the first assessment DCJ does with you).The purpose of this assessment is for DCJ to decide if your child is ‘At risk of significant harm’ and if your child is ‘In need of care and protection.’
In total, there are 13 questions. Questions 1-6 ask you about you and your child’s experiences. Questions 7 to 13 ask about the possibility of the risk of significant harm. Each child is assessed individually based upon their strengths, vulnerabilities and experiences.
The assessment will look at if there were child protection concerns in the past and also the current concerns. It focuses on your child’s experience of what DCJ calls ‘Risk of significant harm’. If DCJ decides that your child is ‘At risk of significant harm’ they will assess you and your family’s actions and responses to decide if your child is ‘In need of care and protection.’ This is where DCJ makes decisions about whether or not they will remove your child.
They say that past reports can help to “understand patterns of behaviour” but that these reports can’t be relied on, and they should not be assessing things now that have already been assessed in the past. DCJ needs to think about if there are family or community members who also take care of and meet the needs of your child. They need to think about how culture is a part of how you care of your child.
DCJ should use this assessment when your child is labelled as ‘In need of care and protection’ and a Family Action Plan (FAP) for Change has already been made.
It is done at least every 90 days after making a FAP but can be done before these 90 days are over if DCJ says that you are making changes or progress.
The purpose of the Measuring Change Assessment is to monitor what DCJ sees as progress and to decide if they will continue to be involved with your family. The worries that DCJ have need to be based upon ‘risks to the child’ and not just something they believe you should change. Not all changes need to be made during this time for a Case Plan to be closed. DCJ’s policy says they need to consider the harms of continued surveillance on your family. It is split into two sections:
DCJ can decide to no longer be involved with your family if the Secretary (head of DCJ) believes there are “proper arrangements” in place in relation to care and protection of the child and the circumstances leading to the report have been adequately dealt with (Section 35(1) of the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998). It is common that DCJ won’t even give you the chance to do this though, as emergency removals are done often. DCJ looks at if you and your support team are willing and able to make changes, and if there are ‘worries’ you have not responded to. Your lawyer can respond to these worries and either agree or disagree with them. The way DCJ decides if you have ‘made change’ is by looking at the goal statements and outcomes from the Family Action Plan (FAP). DCJ caseworkers are told to focus on the parents’ behaviour, attitudes, circumstances, knowledges or skills. They are also told to think about if things like poverty, housing, transport or where you live are adding to your family’s ability or priorities. DCJ says that all of your goals don’t have to be done yet for them to close your case. DCJ needs to think about if there is an actual purpose for them to be involved with your family, and should always be considering how they can exit your life.
The purpose of the INOCAP Tool is to help DCJ to decide if they should take action (this action is most likely to remove your child) or if you and your family have enough protective factors and reduced risk that DCJ can decide that your child/ren should stay at home with you.
If the outcome of the INOCAP Tool says that your child is not ‘In need of care and protection’, DCJ can’t make you do anything, and they can stop being involved in your family’s life. You can ask for DCJ to refer you to a service for extra support, but they can’t force you to do this. If DCJ decides that your child is ‘In need of care and protection’, DCJ can ask you to do things such as participate in a support service, attend parenting programs, rehab or counselling. They can refer you to a family preservation service and then close the case after that, so that they are not involved with your family anymore.
DCJ should be using the safety assessment and Family Based Assessment to decide if they need to remove your child or if your family and support systems provide enough safety to lower what they call the ‘risk factors’. DCJ says that if you put “adequate measures” in place without DCJ’s direction, monitoring or support, then your child is not ‘In need of care and protection’ and should not be removed. DCJ might still have concerns, but they should understand that there are other people there to support your family that do not include DCJ.
The legal principles say that DCJ should use the least intrusive intervention, family-led decision-making and active efforts. DCJ says that if they labelled your child as ‘Unsafe’ during the safety assessment and safety planning stage but since that time, new arrangements have been made or circumstances have changed, then DCJ should not be involved anymore.
DCJ can decide that your child is ‘in need of care and protection’ at any point during the 30-day assessment period when there is reasonable belief that:
DCJ says that your actions and responses will guide them in their decision of if your child is labelled as ‘At risk of significant harm,’ in combination with the information they have. Aboriginal families are subject to oversurveillance and bias in decision-making. This continues to impact on how Aboriginal families experience child protection assessment (DCJ ‘Interim Approach to Assessing Risk’ manual, page 16*.)
DCJ should not be intrusive: DCJ’s Interim Risk Assessment guide says that: “Children and their families should not experience intrusive assessment beyond reported or identified child protection concerns” (Interim Approach to Assessing Risk, DCJ manual 2024, page 1*). This means DCJ should only be focusing on reported risks and concerns or what DCJ say are ‘identified risks’, and not just things they would like you to change.
DCJ need to consider culture: DCJ caseworkers should respect culture by increasing their knowledge, respecting traditional roles, consulting with cultural experts and including the voices of those with cultural authority.
How should DCJ be gathering and analysing information?
*DCJ document not publicly available.
DCJ says that if they give you a call before they come to your home, this shows that they want to work in partnership with you. They also say that asking for consent to talk to your family members shows transparency and respect. This does not always happen. It is Aboriginal parents’ experience that DCJ will go behind their backs and tell their family their version of the story.
DCJ needs to ask you about who you want to be involved, and what role they might play in your child’s life. They need to be clear about how they will make sure the assessment is being led by your family and informed by culture.
DCJ needs to be clear and purposeful about their concerns. They need to give parents time to ask questions, check that you understand, and provide information in multiple ways (such as talking, writing, in-person conversations and having conversations over the phone).
DCJ should offer supports that could help and ask about what has helped you in the past and what your experiences have been like with different kinds of supports.
DCJ needs to explain the process of what will happen next and when they will contact you again. They should not make you promises but should follow through on the things they have committed to doing for you and your family
Domestic and Family Violence
DCJ need to include the things they see and conversations they have with the victim/ survivor about how the family has created safety for their child even when someone is using violence. DCJ should understand that the person using violence might try to undermine you by saying that you have mental health issues. DCJ should not document the things a person using violence has said to try to discredit the victim/survivor (Interim Approach to Assessing Risk, DCJ manual 2024 page 48).
DCJ should give you an opportunity to respond to those statements. The manual DCJ have to follow says “Be curious about the behaviour you are worried about to identify any acts of resistance that may be misconstrued as mental health concerns (e.g. a victim-survivor is seemingly paranoid or regularly distressed or described by the perpetrator as ‘crazy’). Be curious about whether the behaviours are in response to the violence they are experiencing.”
DCJ should also be considering how the experience of domestic and family violence might be impacting a person’s mental health or use of substances. It is important to consider the ‘big picture’ and how what look like separate concerns might be connected. Even though DCJ should be doing this, it is the experience of Aboriginal mothers who have experienced domestic and family violence that DCJ often don’t do this, and together with the perpetrator, the system causes more harm.
One mum has said “Yeah, well, he liked to lock me in psych wards, even when I am just sitting on the lounge, having a cuppa with the baby breastfeeding, and the cops walk in and go, you’re crazy. Come into the psych ward. No I’m not… He was – he used the law as a tool, and he knew his shit.”
Be aware that DCJ may accuse the wrong person of being the primary aggressor or the person who started the violence. One way to try to avoid being wrongly accused is to write down what happened and when. Use the Know Your Rights Journal prompts to help you to describe the situation, how you responded and why you responded this way.
Mental health issues
DCJ say that caseworkers should understand that struggling with mental health does not always impact on how you can care for your children. They that say they will consider how your mental health can impact on your functioning and your ability to meet your child’s needs and will consider how long this has been going on. They will also look at whether you have professionals who are supporting you. DCJ should be thinking about how other people who also care for your child have strengths. Even though DCJ are supposed to be doing all of these things, it does not always happen.
It’s the experience of Aboriginal parents that mental health is used as a reason to remove children and to not restore, even if DCJ is a part of the reason that parents are experiencing poor mental health.
One mum has said “Everyone goes through mental health, but they were trying to make depression and anxiety out to be like a reason to not have your kids…Can’t even go to a doctor or anything like that because, what, you’re going to tell a doctor and the doctor’s going to report it.”
Alcohol and drugs
DCJ will collect information about your alcohol and drug use if it gets in the way of your functioning. This includes in the past, now, or in the future. They will get this information from your child, family, and other professionals.
If you used to have a problem with alcohol or drugs and you don’t anymore, DCJ should acknowledge how you were able to get over those challenges and how you did this. They are also supposed to think about other things that might be happening in your life, like understanding that a victim/survivor of domestic and family violence might be using alcohol or drugs as a way to cope or as an act of resistance.
Disability
DCJ says that a parent’s intellectual disability or brain injury may impact on their understanding of their child’s needs. DCJ must check that a parent understands what they are saying and make sure the parent is included in decision-making processes.
In reality, some Aboriginal parents have been told that they have an intellectual disability by DCJ, without a medical assessment, just because they don’t understand the very complicated child protection system.
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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.
