budget enhancement

building a bigger and better DoCS

In December 2002 the NSW Government demonstrated its ongoing commitment to helping children, young people and families with the injection of $1.2 billion in funding for DoCS.

This funding will help DoCS strengthen its prevention and early intervention approaches, decrease demand for child protection services, recruit more staff to better meet current demand, build organisational capacity and improve systems and professional support for caseworkers.

The new funding will be rolled out in escalating amounts over a five year period from 2003/04-2007/08.

DoCS has allocated the funding across more than 40 projects in four key areas—prevention and early intervention, child protection, out of home care and organisational performance.

Some projects will build capacity by broadening the scope and reach of services provided by DoCS and the non-government services we fund. Others will improve efficiency and effectiveness through better management systems, human resource management, communications, infrastructure, technology, policy and procedures.

key initiatives

Following is a summary of key priorities. For details on achievements to date see DoCS: Foundations for Change.

prevention and early intervention

child protection

  • recruit 375 additional child protection caseworkers to deal with high priority cases
  • recruit 35 additional caseworkers to strengthen the DoCS/Police/Health Joint Investigation Response Teams (JIRTs) that investigate serious cases of sexual assault and physical abuse where criminal conduct may be involved
  • employ more legal officers and psychologists, providing additional
    support for caseworkers
  • improve client information and data systems
  • see our fact sheet on child protection projects.

out-of-home care

  • recruit 150 additional out-of-home care caseworkers
  • improve support for foster carers
  • increase Aboriginal foster placements with Aboriginal agencies
  • build capacity in a range of out-of-home care services
  • improve assessment of the needs of children and young people when they are entering care
  • expand services for children and young people with challenging behaviours or high support needs
  • see our fact sheet on out-of-home care projects.

organisational performance

  • improve the way in which client and other information is collected, stored and used through improvements to information technology and data collection and analysis systems
  • provide a wide range of staff training
  • improve human resource management systems
  • improve Occupational Health and Safety systems
  • develop new systems to improve work flow and introduce a performance management system for all staff
  • establish and equip specialist Economics, Aboriginal and Multicultural
    Service units to better support frontline staff
  • significantly improve DoCS’ research capacity
  • see our fact sheet on organisational performance projects.
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To report suspected child abuse or neglect, call the DoCS Helpline on 132 111 (24 hours/7 days)