In a damning report tabled in state parliament yesterday, NSW Ombudsman Bruce Barbour slammed the performance of DOCS, saying children were dying unnecessarily.

Mr Barbour criticised a practice by DOCS of closing children’s case files when there were insufficient resources to deal with them.

He said there was evidence some DOCS regions only dealt with reports to the department’s helpline that were initially classified as requiring urgent attention. Some of these cases were identified as being about children who were neglected, in domestic violence situations or whose parents used drugs.

CHILDREN as young as two weeks old are dying because the NSW Department of Community Services is failing to adequately protect children at risk.

In a damning report tabled in state parliament yesterday, NSW Ombudsman Bruce Barbour slammed the performance of DOCS, saying children were dying unnecessarily.

He found an under-resourced DOCS closed files of children at high risk and did not respond adequately to concerns about unborn children.

In a number of cases, DOCS had failed to take steps to protect children after they were born, even though concerns were raised during pregnancy that the mother had a history of mental illness, drug abuse or other serious problems.

“Children as young as two weeks, four weeks or six weeks of age are dying in circumstances which seem to be preventable,” Mr Barbour said.

The report came ahead of today’s funeral of six-year-old Rose Villanueva-Austin, who died last month from a methadone overdose.

DOCS officials admitted they had been told about Rose’s circumstances but denied reports the department had been notified about problems in her family on up to 200 occasions.

The Ombudsman’s office investigated the deaths of 11 children in 2004-05.

Mr Barbour criticised a practice by DOCS of closing children’s case files when there were insufficient resources to deal with them.

“Unfortunately, many of the cases that we see being closed are ones where risk has been assessed to be very high.”

He said there was evidence some DOCS regions only dealt with reports to the department’s helpline that were initially classified as requiring urgent attention. Some of these cases were identified as being about children who were neglected, in domestic violence situations or whose parents used drugs.

The report also criticised DOCS’s reliance on informal undertakings by parents as a method of protecting children.

And it raised concerns about DOCS’s collaboration with other agencies involved in child protection.

Opposition community services spokesman Andrew Humpherson described the report as damning.

“It’s little wonder that children are slipping through the cracks and dying when government departments can’t even communicate properly,” Mr Humpherson said.

In disability services, the report identified poor documentation and implementation of plans to meet the health and other needs of individuals.

In 2004-05, the Ombudsman’s office dealt with 1815 notifications from government and non-government agencies relating to child protection issues.

Mr Barbour’s report came as a report out of Victoria revealed almost 300 babies born in the state last year died before their first birthday.

The report, from Victoria’s Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity, also showed that the rate of stillbirth was 610, up on recent years because of a rise in abortions.

Associate Professor James King said the major cause of baby deaths soon after birth was birth defects and genetic conditions, followed by birthing problems such as prematurity and birth asphyxia.

Also published in The Courier-Mail under the headline Children dying as DOCS officials ‘fail to act’.