Having disability supports involved made a child protection report less likely to get a caseworker

What the investigation was

An own motion investigation, meaning the Ombudsman started it rather than responding to a complaint, into the practice of closing a large proportion of reports it receives about risks of significant harm (ROSH) to children and young persons without a face-to-face assessment, and without being assured that the child is not at ROSH.

Deciding whether a child is at risk of significant harm is, as the report puts it, typically the first step in considering any child protection intervention, and one of DCJ’s core responsibilities under the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998.

The scale

The two numbers are the story on their own. In 2024-25, DCJ received 244,710 ROSH reports. And: Based on a stated reason of lack of capacity or competing priorities, DCJ closed 64% of these reports without allocating them to a caseworker for further assessment.

The full report, released on 6 February 2026, gives the series behind that, counting reports closed with the label no capacity to allocate. In 2022-23 it was 60 per cent of 228,347 screened-in reports, in 2023-24 64 per cent of 246,846, and in 2024-25 65 per cent of 244,710. Over the same three years the share of children in those reports who got a field assessment and were seen fell from 25 per cent to 19.5 per cent. The department itself noted to the Ombudsman that, allowing for double-counting where a child had a second report that was allocated, at least 54.8% (134,036/244,710) received no response from DCJ.

The Ombudsman is direct about what that has become. Closing cases on resource grounds has become ‘business as usual’ and a tolerated cultural norm within DCJ, and the department’s triage policy, under which a report not allocated within 28 days is to be closed, is not consistent with DCJ’s statutory responsibilities under the Care Act.

Which reports lost out

This is where it becomes a disability story. The report describes concerning practices when deciding which ROSH reports receive a response, and says a staff survey confirmed anecdotal evidence that performance targets had created an incentive for some staff to preference or avoid allocating certain ROSH reports.

Two kinds of report were named as losing out. Those with less immediate but longer-term risks to the child – such as chronic neglect, whether medical or educational. And then the disability finding, quoted in full at the top of this piece: where a child or a carer had disability, the fact that other services were already involved was too often treated as a reason not to send a caseworker.

Read plainly, that is disability support being counted as a substitute for a child protection assessment. The services around a family are not there to establish whether a child is at risk of significant harm, and the Ombudsman’s point is that they were being allowed to stand in for the assessment that would.

What the full report adds

The special report gives disability its own section, and it opens more strongly than the Casebook’s summary: A standout issue in the cases we reviewed concerned children with disability (or whose parents or carers had a disability), falling through gaps between child protection and other services. It names three problems: inadequate information gathering during triage, over-reliance on the involvement of other services when deciding to close, and failing to give sufficient weight to vulnerability when assessing risk to the child with disability.

Its case studies are de-identified, and one shows the trap exactly. A disability service made two reports within ten days about a young autistic, non-verbal child who had NDIS funding for services but whose family was reported as not engaging, and a separate report from the school confirmed the child was not attending. Both of the service’s reports were closed, partly on the involvement of support services, despite the fact that the reports had been made by that service itself. The school’s report was closed as a duplicate. In the Ombudsman’s view, DCJ placed too much weight on the involvement of school and disability services when deciding to close the report, given that the key issue in the report was non-engagement with those services.

One of the recommendations is aimed squarely at this. Until the wider reform lands, DCJ should instruct staff not to close ROSH reports in reliance on the availability of, or a referral to, a service where the service itself made the report, indicating it cannot mitigate the risk, or where staff are aware, or have clear evidence to suggest, that the family will not in fact use the service.

Our view, and it is a view. Of everything in this investigation, this is the finding most likely to be read as reassuring and is not. A family with disability supports in place looks, on a triage screen, like a family already being seen by somebody. The report says that appearance was doing work it should not have been doing.

What happens next

The Ombudsman made findings of maladministration, including by reason of being inconsistent with statutory responsibilities, and recommendations covering Policy review and reform; legislative review; staff training. Four recommendations were made and, the report records, all four were accepted by DCJ. A full report of the investigation was tabled as a special report to Parliament in February 2026.

The full report is plainer about the limits. Because DCJ told the Ombudsman it could not or should not stop such closures at once without wider reform, the report says we have not made a recommendation that DCJ must immediately cease its practice of closing ROSH reports without a decision having been made under s 30, adding that for so long as this practice continues, DCJ will be failing its responsibilities. DCJ was asked for a final response with an implementation timeframe within two months, and for a progress report every three months after that.

Acceptance is not implementation, and the recommendations name a legislative review, which is not a quick thing. Up to 2024-25 the share closed has gone up, not down. Beyond the Casebook’s note of acceptance, we have looked for DCJ’s own published response, any progress report and figures for 2025-26, and found none.

Spotted an error? Request a correction and we will check it against the source and log the outcome here.