Safety in Care

DCJ is designing a new approach to assess reports about children in out of home care – specifically those who are in the parental responsibility of the Minister or care responsibility of the DCJ Secretary. This includes a new Safety in Care (SIC) tool and improved policies and processes.

Changes to make better decisions for children

The changes will:

• recognise and respond to the unique needs of children in out of home care 
• improve DCJs response to children’s experience of connection, culture and identity in care 
• strengthen partnerships with carers and other services supporting a child at key decision-making points 
• respond to each child’s experience of cumulative harm to increase their safety and permanency
• increase the participation of children, cares, families, and networks in the decisions made.

Progress

• Improvements to SIC are being delivered in stages. The first step was introduced late 2021, with interim changes to policies and training for DCJ practitioners.   
• A new SIC tool was developed, and stakeholders consulted. Learn more about the consultation process.  
• DCJ used child protection research, the experiences of other state governments, and its own practitioners to inform the new design.  
• A pilot of the new approach ran for three months at eight different DCJ sites across five different operating models.  
• Further changes were made to the approach based on the results of the pilot.