WATCH: Members from the Public Service Association spoke outside the Department of Community and Justice in Orange on August 7 with claims caseworkers were “intimidated” into not protesting.
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00:00We had intended to have an event here today with some of our members but
00:05unfortunately and perhaps it's an indication of the staffing numbers and
00:10morale in this office that none of them have been able to get off the get off
00:14the tools and come down. Do you know what has happened today here in Orange that
00:17has prevented workers from walking out on the job? We were meeting with them
00:20earlier it's quite clear to us that they've been intimidated from attending
00:24we'll be following it up with the appropriate levels of management they
00:28had a right to attend they've made the decision not to for whatever reason they
00:31don't feel comfortable we're not happy with that. This is quite unique for
00:35us we know those workers here are just as concerned about the crisis unfolding
00:39in child protection as every other location our union has visited in
00:43regional New South Wales over the last two months. For this to occur raises our
00:48alarm bells that this office may have a cultural problem far worse than we'd
00:51actually realized and far worse than its other locations around New South Wales.
00:58We need more police government to really recruit and pay these case workers what they need to do to get this job done.
01:05If we get it right here, that's the issue, if we get child protection right, the flow on to the rest of the community, youth justice, mental health, family violence, all of those community issues become less when you get the child protection space right and you prevent children coming into care.
01:23We need more case workers to do that early intervention work because, like Troy was saying, our case workers are going out at those extreme times when the families are being reported 10, 15, 20, 50 times before someone going out to see them and when they're out there it's dire circumstances and they're forced to make the choice to bring those children into out of home care.
01:47What's the impact on kids when that happens?
01:50They don't have connection with their family. All the resources need to be there to keep families together, not separate them. So you have children that are disconnected to their families, to their communities and they're in hotels, caravan parks, being looked after by a turnover of youth workers and people that they don't know.
02:12So it impacts their well-being, impacts their development and that has a flow on effect to the rest of the world.