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Victorian Coroner John Cain has refused to release a critical report from Children’s Commissioner Liana Buchanan on the deaths of four children over concerns its publication could deny procedural fairness to two of the agencies responsible for the children’s care.
Cain is overseeing an inquest into the deaths of four Victorian children who were known to Child Protection when they were killed between 2015 and 2017.
Commissioner for Children and Young People Liana Buchanan.Credit: Justin McManus
The inquest is examining the children’s care and whether failings in the state’s child protection regime – including agencies the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) contracts to – may have contributed to their deaths.
The deaths of all four children, whose names have been suppressed, have already been the subject of criminal investigation.
As principal commissioner for children and young people, Buchanan was invited to make a submission to the inquest, and her report was tendered to the Coroner’s Court in the last fortnight.
Within hours of The Age applying for the report, lawyers for DFFH, which oversees Child Protection, and Mallee Family Care, which worked with one of the families, wrote to the court objecting to its release.
Lawyers for DFFH argued releasing the report would have a “deleterious impact on the morale of the department’s child protection workforce” and “a negative impact on the department’s efforts in relation to recruitment and retention of its child protection workforce”.
In March, barrister Erin Gardner, counsel for DFFH, told the inquest it was increasingly difficult to find people to work in a sector that had long hours, high caseloads and challenging conditions.
Mallee Family Care’s legal team argued the release wasn’t in the public interest and that The Age did not have sufficient legal interest in the report. It also argued releasing the report – before the agency had been given a chance to respond to its contents in court – could lead to a denial of procedural fairness.
Further, the organisation’s lawyers argued that Buchanan’s report – given her role as a statutory office-holder – would carry “great authority” if released.
State Coroner John Cain is presiding over an inquest into the role Child Protection and other agencies had in the deaths of four children.
In a ruling on Monday, Cain said releasing the report was in the public interest but, after considering the objections, he would not do so before releasing his findings in the inquest.
One of the cases Cain is examining involves a toddler who was violently killed in regional Victoria in August 2015.
Child Protection had received six notifications about the family, with three of them before the girl was born. After the fifth notification, in February 2015, Child Protection referred the family to Mallee Family Care for intensive support programs.
During this time, Gardner told the court, Child Protection conducted a criminal history check on the toddler’s mother’s new partner, “who had an extensive criminal history, including for perpetrating family violence”.
Child Protection then closed the girl’s file on July 13, 2015. According to evidence from a former Mallee Family Care worker, the Child Protection member who closed the case wrote before doing so: “I know [the man] is a concern, however given he hasn’t done anything to date, we can’t hold the case open on the chance that he does start committing family violence.”
The former Mallee Family Care worker also testified that the toddler’s father had texted her on August 17, claiming his ex-partner’s new boyfriend was using methamphetamine, or ice.
“I need to get the girls out of that house and fast … I must save the girls before it’s too late,” she said the father texted. “Please help.”
The worker said she had no evidence of the man using ice, and this type of allegation “is not uncommon in circumstances that involve acrimonious or volatile relationships between ex-spouses in the context of shared parenting arrangements, and particularly when a new partner is on the scene”.
Nevertheless, she said, she had planned to investigate the allegations during a scheduled home visit in late August 2015. Two days before the planned visit, the toddler was discovered dead in the family home.
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