Commission releases Child Protection System and Youth Justice System reports

The Queensland Commission for Children and Young People and Child Guardian has released the Child Guardian Report: Child Protection System 2009–10 and the Child Guardian: Consultation Report Youth Justice System.

The Child Guardian Report: Child Protection System 2009–10 is the fifth in its series and provides valuable insights on the outcomes the child protection system is delivering for children and young people against 10 important wellbeing indicators.

Some key findings in the report identify that:

• Against the critical ‘Safe out-of-home care’ indicator, the service system continued to perform on-par with the previous two years, with approximately 2% of children and young people in out-of-home care experiencing a substantiated ‘Matter of Concern’
• Slight gains were made in the Department’s management of its child protection Investigations and Assessments, but as with previous year’s scope for further improvement remains, and
• Performance across wellbeing indicators remains largely unchanged, including the significant disadvantage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people experience compared to non-Indigenous children and young people.

The full report, which contains key findings against each wellbeing indicator, along with a summary of the report highlights, is available here.

Of particular value to this report is the Commission’s ability to now use its ‘Jigsaw’ case management system to report findings of its Community Visitor independent monthly visits to each child in care. By collating and analysing Community Visitors’ monthly reports, the Commission presents a robust and credible data source representing the voices of children in care.

The second report released, Child Guardian: Consultation Report Youth Justice System, proposes a monitoring framework to support the Commission’s oversight and advocacy functions and to report meaningfully about service delivery to young people in contact with the youth justice system.

The aim, through collecting data, analysing it and converting it to evidence about outcomes, is to positively influence the service system, so that it is able to better meet the needs of the children and young people who depend on it.

The Commission invites constructive feedback on its proposed approach to monitor and report on the youth justice system by 30 November 2011.

For further information, you can view the report and summary highlights here.

Last Updated: October 24, 2011

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