The NT Royal Commission said there were not enough staff in Katherine to look after the children in care.

Several months since the commission first discovered the extent of the problem, little has changed.

There is still only one social worker for every 71 children in care in Katherine, it was about 1:100 when the Commission first raised the alarm.

A previous inquiry into children in state care said the ratio should be one worker to every 15 child protection cases.

If a social worker was to check in with each child once a week, they would need to make more than 14 visits per day. 

In June this year there were 1313 open child protection reported cases in Katherine, with just 14 case managers to look after them.

That is an average of 93.7 children per worker.

A Territory Families spokesman said they attempted to fix the problem by hiring an extra four case managers in September.

They also sent in a strike team from Darwin to try and deal with overwhelming numbers.

That reduced the ratio to 71 children per worker. Still four times the recommended ratio.

The NT average is 39.3 cases per worker, Commission documents reveal.

Earlier this month the Commission expressed fears about the ratio in the Katherine region, with some staff handling 100 child protection cases each.

The Commission said high case loads indicated “children in Katherine are currently at risk and that more staff are needed to prevent further increases in the number of overdue investigations”.

The Commission heard that despite ongoing efforts to recruit quality staff members, there are simply not enough people to do the work.

An unnamed team leader, quoted in the Commission report, said “excessive caseloads clearly jeopardise the achievement of best practice in child protection”.

Territory Families appear to have a significant problem keeping qualified staff in Katherine.

The NT government is offering more than $108,000 a year for a child protection practitioner in Katherine. 

The Victorian Government offers $30,000 less for the same role.

WHAT THEY DO

“Territory Families continues to implement strategic and targeted recruitment campaigns to attract quality professional staff to fill vacancies within the agency, particularly in regional locations,” a Territory Families spokeswoman said.

“Our recruitment to senior management positions has supported enhanced systems and processes, enabling cases to be finalised more quickly.”

“An intensive focus on recruitment means that Katherine currently has 22 case carrying professional staff in the field, as at October 23 2017; compared to 14 case-carrying staff on June 30 2017.”

The government sent a task-force to Darwin in September to help staff in Katherine close about 400 cases.

“The Team Leaders in the Katherine Office have an agreed ongoing program in place to work with case managers to complete case closures for low-moderate cases, to help avoid the build-up of unclosed cases which are awaiting administrative closure,” the Territory Families spokeswoman said. 

Territory Families was also scrutinised  by the Children’s Commissioner. 

When preparing their annual report the The Office of the Children’s Commissioner discovered sixty five per cent of children in the care of Territory Families in Katherine did not have a care plan. 

That is the highest number in the Northern Territory.

“Given the importance of care planning, the Commissioner brought the findings of the review to the immediate attention of the CEO of Territory Families whom has since taken action to address the concerns.”

A Territory Families spokeswoman said they have since acted to ensure care plans were made for the children. 

“Every child in Territory Families’ care for more than 60 days has an out-of-home care plan. This is a mandatory requirement,” the spokeswoman said.

The report also found “of the seven young people aged 17 years in the Katherine region, only one had a specific leaving care plan”.

“Of particular concern was one of these young people transitioned out of care without any leaving care planning, demonstrating a failure on the behalf of Territory Families to support the transition to independent living.”