This report is part of the Queensland Ombudsman’s continuing oversight of the child safety complaints management system (CMS).
The investigation leading to this report follows on from this Office’s 2016 investigation into the then Department of Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services’ (now the Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women (the department)) management of child safety complaints. While the 2016 investigation focused on the accuracy of the then department’s complaints data, this investigation focused on the operation of the department’s CMS.
A CMS is a system for people to have their concerns about the actions and decisions of an agency reviewed and corrected if necessary. It is also an important source of information for service delivery improvement. For these reasons, the requirement for the department to have a CMS has been enshrined in law.
The Public Service Act 2008 (the Public Service Act) requires government departments to establish and implement a system for managing customer complaints that complies with the Australian/New Zealand Standard ‘Guidelines for complaint management in organizations’ AS/NZS 10002:2014 (the Australian/New Zealand Standard).1 The Australian/New Zealand Standard includes guiding principles for a CMS, including planning and design, operation, and maintenance and improvement.
The department administers Queensland’s child protection system through the Child Protection Act 1999 (the Child Protection Act). This includes the department taking custody of children who have been harmed or are at risk of harm. There are currently 11,411 children subject to ongoing intervention by Queensland’s child protection system.2 The system is complex and affects children, parents, extended family, foster carers and large parts of the community impacted by or involved in supporting the child protection framework. Given the nature and frequency of the department’s interactions with the public, it is crucial that the department has a robust and accessible CMS that results in efficient and effective complaints management for its clients.
Departments have the flexibility to design a complaints management system appropriate to their size, customer base, frequency and nature of interactions with customers, and other relevant administrative and staffing arrangements. However, departments must still comply with the requirements of the Public Service Act in a way that upholds the accountability, transparency and integrity of their administration.
Key issues
The investigation found that there are a number of issues intrinsic in the department’s practices that diminish the efficiency and efficacy of its CMS.
The investigation identified concerns about access to the department’s CMS. The department’s attempts to locally resolve a client’s concerns, before classifying them as a complaint, often resulted in a drawn out cycle of interactions with agency officers as the client’s concerns are escalated from Child Safety Officer to Senior Team Leader to Manager often without reaching a resolution or taking any action to rectify the concern.
Further, the concept of an ‘issue’ in the department’s Complaints Management Procedure has resulted in the department miscategorising many complaints as ‘issues’ rather than complaints. This often results in a frustrating cycle for the department’s clients before their concerns are correctly responded to as a complaint.
As a result of local resolution and the use of ‘issues’, the department is almost certainly under-reporting its child safety complaints and is potentially wasting resources through duplication of effort.
Even when a client’s concerns are classified as a complaint and the department’s CMS
is engaged, the process is unnecessarily complex and confusing, once again resulting in frustration and delay.
Decision-making in the management of complaints was a key concern identified in the investigation. A lack of clarity about how a decision about a complaint should be made and who should be the decision-maker has resulted in poor outcomes for complainants.
The investigation identified that the department does not offer a merit review process to its complainants as its internal review mechanism is limited to a review of the complaints process, without giving any consideration to the outcome or merit of any decision. This undermines the department’s capacity to identify and correct any issues in decision-making. Given the issues the investigation identified with complaint decision-making, it is particularly concerning that there is no adequate merits review mechanism in the department’s CMS.
The department has also failed to maintain a meaningful reporting framework to identify systemic issues in complaints management and child safety administrative decisions generally. This undermines a key benefit of the CMS in identifying improvements to the current complaint management practices within the department and to using complaints management as a key management tool to uncover patterns of administrative decisions that require remediation.
The Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) also relies upon the child safety CMS to refer child safety related complaints received by its Community Visitors to the department.
The 2016 investigation identified a need for better coordination between the OPG and the department. While both agencies have taken steps to ensure better coordination by establishing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), there are further steps to be taken before they can be seen to be working together seamlessly.
The provision of human services is complex and, from time to time, mistakes may be made. Each year, mistakes are identified through a number of complaints to both the department and this Office. While some decisions may be subject to statutory review, others are not, or clients are not able or inclined to use statutory processes.
Therefore, the availability of an accessible, fair and efficient CMS is critical to the proper operation of the child safety system in Queensland. The department’s current CMS, particularly in its practical daily management, is not meeting that need. This report makes recommendations aimed at assisting the department to implement best practice across all facets of complaints management.