New data released in Victoria has revealed six children, known to child protection, have died in just three months, continuing a worrying trend in the system.
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00:00These are very troubling figures and this is not an isolated set of data, there's been
00:08an uptick over the last four or five years in the number of deaths of children known
00:13to Child Protection as well as allegations of abuse.
00:16In this latest data we talk about six children who have died who are clients of Child Protection
00:21but there's also 586 major incident reports filed including 286 allegations of abuse and
00:28this is really serious.
00:29And there's been a general increase over the last couple of years and there's been lots
00:33of questions asked to the government over a very long time about why is Child Protection
00:38getting worse and what can the government do about it.
00:41The government, the Premier this morning says they are trying their best.
00:44There is more, absolutely more work to be done because any death of any child is a tragedy
00:49but particularly those who are the most vulnerable kids and that's why I again want to thank
00:54those Child Protection workers who just do such an incredibly important work.
01:00It's their commitment to caring for kids that I want to thank them for.
01:06These children deserve to be cared for, they are our most vulnerable and we need to see
01:11a government take responsibility.
01:13If the Minister can't fix this very broken, very overstretched system where case workers
01:19are not getting allocated children because the system is so overstretched, then the Minister
01:25should resign.
01:26That's the opposition there, Roma Britnell saying the Minister should resign.
01:31The Premier says she has full confidence in the Minister, Lizzy Blanthorn.
01:34But this is an issue that's gone on for a very long time.
01:36The Labor government here has been in power for 10 years now and before that the opposition
01:41was only in power for four years.
01:43So there's lots of questions about how this situation continues to get worse and what
01:48steps can government actually take to try and fix this very troubled system.