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5. Case plans

Graphs

Proportion of children subject to ongoing intervention with a case plan, Queensland, as at 30 June 2020

Tables

What is a case plan?

When a decision has been made by the department that a child is in need of protection, ongoing intervention will be provided to the child and family to strengthen their capacity to safely care for their child. A key part of this process is the development of a case plan to address the child's care and protection needs. Case planning involves a cycle of assessment, planning, implementation and review.

The initial case plan for a child is developed at a family group meeting to ensure an inclusive and collaborative process that empowers children, their family and other significant people in their lives to plan and make decisions about the child’s wellbeing, protection and care needs.

A case plan is a written document that explains why the child is considered to be in need of protection (worry statements), what needs to be done to achieve safety for the child (goal statements) and how safety will be achieved (action steps). Each action step will clearly articulate the roles and responsibilities of the participants in addressing the child's care and protection needs. When it has been determined that the child’s safety and wellbeing can only be achieved through a child protection order, a case plan must be developed and submitted to the court prior to the court granting a finalised child protection order.

Why this topic is important

Case planning plays a significant part in improving a child's safety, belonging and wellbeing by helping to address their care and protection needs.

There are a number of valid reasons a proportion of all children subject to ongoing intervention on a certain day may not have a case plan recorded. These include:

• A collaborative family decision making process is required to develop a case plan. This process must be held within 30 days of the decision a child is in need of protection, or within the timeframe set by the court on an adjournment. For example, it would be legitimate for a child who enters ongoing intervention on 5 June to not yet have a case plan approved and recorded on the client management system by 30 June.
• Exceptional circumstances may delay a case plan being recorded for the child. These include cases where parents may be unwilling to engage in the case planning process.

For children in the custody or guardianship of the chief executive, case plans are required to be reviewed at least every six months to be considered current. Where a child has a long-term guardianship order, and the guardian is a relative or other suitable person, the child is contacted every 12 months to determine whether the case plan requires review.

Trends

As at 30 June 2020, there were 13,152 children subject to ongoing intervention. Of these, 95.4 per cent (12,547) had a case plan recorded. This is an increase of 1.4 percentage points since 30 June 2019 when 94.0 per cent of children subject to ongoing intervention had a case plan.

Of the 12,547 children with a case plan as at 30 June 2020, 10,890 were in the custody or guardianship of the Chief Executive or subject to intervention with parental agreement and required regular reviews of their case plan. Of those, 9,825 (90.2 per cent) had a current case plan. This is an increase of 3.7 percentage points since 30 June 2019 when 86.5 per cent of children had a current case plan (i.e. either initially created in the last six months or reviewed in the last six months).

There are a number of reasons why a case plan review may not be completed within six months. These include instances where:

• parents may be unwilling to engage in the review process
• the review is still in progress
• the review has been completed, but not yet recorded
• the review is completed and recorded, but is yet to be approved.