We met with managers from the CSS on Friday as part of our regular statewide consultative committee.

The meetings are held regularly as an opportunity for workers and their unions to raise issues and talk about how we can resolve them. We’re growing increasingly worried that, despite the best intentions of operational managers, nothing is changing and managers haven’t been given the power to make positive changes without the Department butting in.

Nevertheless, we still told them about the ongoing issues with your building and the problems you’re running into. We’re going to chat with you more to make sure action is taken about any safety issues – because the reality is that your building is not suitable for CSS.

Further, we talked about your access to training. We were told by CSS managers that for the most part, training is available and accessible for workers and they’re doing what they can to ensure it happens – but this is not what we’re hearing on the ground from workers.

Now we need to hear from you about examples of training being canned at the last minute or what’s really at the bottom of your problems: your workload being too hectic to even think about training. Then, we’ll be able to take this evidence to the Department and force them to fix the issue.

We also talked about your ongoing recruitment issues and what the Department is doing to hire and keep workers. The truth is that an overarching statewide strategy is needed to fix this – but we’re hopeful an offer from the Department about a Child Safety and Advice and Referral Agreement will address these problems. We’re still waiting on the Department’s final position on this and we’ll let you know when we get it.

We’ll be holding member meetings in the coming weeks about these issues so please make sure you look out for an update from us soon. In the meantime, if you’ve got questions or need more information you can get in touch with us via HACSUassist.