On Monday morning we became aware that the Department for Education, Children and Young People have made plans to move more out of home care services over to Baptcare and expand the number of NGO support workers they contract.

We were surprised to hear of this as nothing has been put past us. The Department have an obligation to consult you and your union before making any decision like this – so we entered into a formal dispute with them over their breach of that obligation on Monday.

We have made it clear to the Department that that they can’t push on with these changes and they will need to start genuine consultation.

Any change they want to make needs to look at how it might affect current employees and whether there could be any potential loss of positions – and they need to consider why services can’t be delivered by the agency to begin with.

There’s simply no excuse for the Department turning to the private sector when they hold the legal responsibility of care for these children and young people.

We all know that outsourcing in Child Safety simply doesn’t work. We need to employ enough workers for you to be able to do your job effectively, instead of trying to pass the responsibility on to organisations that are in it for their own interests and profit.

We’ll update you as soon as we know more. If you have any questions or hear of any changes, please call HACSUassist on 1300 880 032 or email us at assist@hacsu.org.au