Child Safety Staff Facing Disciplinary Action Over The Death of QLD Toddler

A workers’ union believe that the 12 protection staff facing disciplinary action for “errors of judgement” over the death of toddler Mason Jet Lee should not be made scapegoats of a ‘flawed’ system.

Queensland Child Safety Minister Shannon Fentiman said that the three child safety service centre staff who were stood down after the 21-month-old’s death from peritonitis in June were a child safety officer, a team leader, and the manager of the service centre. This comes after she was handed a report of her department’s interactions with Mason’s family yesterday.

Mason, from Caboolture, suffered traumatic ‘head to toe’ injuries including a ruptured intestine in the day before his death. He was found dead at the Caboolture home, north of Brisbane, of his stepfather William Andrew O’Sullivan, 37, in the early hours of June 11.

In July, Queensland’s Health Minister ordered an investigation into why the toddler had been allowed to go home after being treated in hospital.

Union spokesman Alex Scott said the staff should not be investigated by the same department that wasn’t able to provide them with enough resources leading up to Mason’s death.

“The Minister, the director-general and the department all need to own responsibility for the failures in the system.

“Mistakes will be made, and officers will and should be held accountable for it.

“But the people making the judgement about the nature of those mistakes should be coming at it with clean hands.

“We don’t believe the director-general and the ethical standards unit of the department, which has understaffed and overworked these officer, should be the one making that call,” he said.

Ms Fentiman said that the other “high risk” child safety cases worked on by the officers who were stood down are now being reviewed. “Those staff have been stood down immediately while the ethical standards unit investigates whether or not there has been a breach of the public service code of conduct,” she said.

She also added that ‘any staff member that has had any involvement in the case will be referred to the ethical standards unit’.

The report has been provided to the Family and Child Commissioner and the police as part of their ongoing criminal investigation.

Ms Fentiman said the report found no systemic failures in the department, but did find “serious local flaws at the Caboolture Child Safety Service Centre”.

She then decided to split the North Coast child safety region into two, including placing two regional directors because of the findings, and will be effective on January.

However, Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls said Ms Fentiman did not act fast enough to discipline staff over Mason’s death. “The only reason she’s acting is because she knows she’s under the pump for her failure to act. These reports are now becoming available, what’s worse, we understand the Minister was aware of the contents of this report for two weeks,” he said.

Source: Abc.net.au