Only one in four Illawarra children at risk of serious harm see a caseworker

Child protection caseworkers based in Coniston walked off the job on Wednesday, May Day, in protest over a sector they say is in crisis.

Department of Communities and Justice data shows there were 8098 children under 18 reported as being at risk of serious harm in the Illawarra, Shoalhaven and southern NSW in the three months ending December 2023, but only 2006 - or 23 per cent - were seen by caseworkers.

Elsewhere has it even worse: the proportion of children at risk seen is as low as 15 per cent in the state's north.

Seven per cent of caseworker positions in the region are vacant, but the Public Service Association says this can be as high as one in five on any given day due to people off on workers compensation or long-term sick leave.

Almost half of all DCJ caseworkers in NSW leave the job within their first two years.

Public Service Association (PSA) general secretary Stewart Little said caseworkers were walking off the job because the child protection system was "effectively in collapse".

Mr Little said children, who came from intergenerational disadvantage, faced the prospect of "being neglected by this system" and ending up in the criminal justice system.

"You can't have a system where we're seeing one child in four. It is a disgrace," he said.

Mr Little said child protection was a critical part of the response to the domestic violence crisis.

He said the government needed to intervene to attract and retain caseworkers to the job.

The PSA is asking the state government to recruit 500 new caseworkers, provide an "immediate and substantial" pay rise, and de-privatise foster care.

Mr Little said such a pay rise would, at a minimum, be in the vicinity of $10,000.

"We need to get the government to produce a road map out of this," Mr Little said.

"They need to give us a timeline ending the privatisation of out-of-home care, we need that money that's been blown out reinvested into these workers."

He said the wage cap imposed by the previous Coalition government had driven vacancies across the public sector.

Minister for Families and Communities Kate Washington said the Labor government had "inherited a child protection system that was spiralling out of control" but was undertaking "significant structural reform".

"A critical element of our reform will involve the attraction and retention of caseworkers," Ms Washington said.

"In the past year, I've met with hundreds of hardworking caseworkers and heard firsthand their frustration, exhaustion and fears for those they seek to support.

"This can't be fixed overnight, but we took the immediate step last year of abolishing the pay cap and provided child protection caseworkers with their largest pay increase in over a decade. But there's still much more work to do."

DCJ has a strategy to attract and retain caseworkers and a specific plan for each district.