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Almost 100 child protection jobs are forecast to be cut over the next 12 months, with abuse prevention experts questioning how the system will cope with fewer resources.
NSW budget papers reveal 56 staff involved in the assessment of children at risk of serious harm will be lost in 2016-17.
The papers reveal a reduction of 35 staff supporting children in foster care.
The proportion of children at risk of serious harm receiving a face-to-face check from a caseworker has at stalled at about 30 per cent, according to figures from the Department of Family and Community Services.
Improving the child protection system has been identified as a NSW government state priority.
The deputy chief executive of the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, Leesa Waters stressed the need for better early intervention.
"You could keep investing in the child protection system but there is never going to be enough to adequately cover all the children at risk," she said.
"There needs to be a real commitment to prevention but I don't believe we are seeing a lot of that from the state government."
Premier Mike Baird said the government's greater commitment to child protection was already paying dividends.
"Protecting our most vulnerable is one of the most important things a government can do," he said.
"Of all of our priorities this one is the one that is already showing the most encouraging results and, while we have a long way to go we are already seeing a real difference.
"We can never be complacent but I am determined to get this right."
Opposition community services spokeswoman Tania Mihailuk questioned how cutting jobs would help.
"The child protection system was already stretched to breaking point," she said. "We simply cannot continue down this path and expect outcomes to improve."
A FaCS spokesman said the staff reductions would affect its central office and free up more resources for frontline child protection.
He said job cuts to early intervention programs would not reduce services directed to children.
According to FaCS, the child protection system will receive an extra $21 million this year and the out-of-home care budget will increase from $1.014 billion to $1.079 billion to support 22,000 children.
He said more children are receiving face to face assessments from caseworkers, with the most recent figures showing a 7 per cent increase.
The most recent FaCS data shows 75,394 children were reported to be at risk of serious harm with 21,547 receiving a face-to-face check.
The state's child protection system is the subject of an upcoming parliamentary inquiry with a case worker telling Fairfax Media that staff were pressured to complete cases quickly without doing adequate risk assessments.
"The shift away from quality, actually building a relationship with the child and their family, is very short-sighted," said the caseworker, who cannot be identified.
"In the long term it will mean that more children end up in out-of-home care because the early intervention was not done at the outset.
"It's a train wreck being played out in slow motion."
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NSW government does not add up child abuse reports
The NSW government does not know how many reports of sexual abuse against children in state care it receives.
It decided that compiling totals of alleged abuse incidents was not a "reasonable" use of resources.
Government lawyers rejected a formal request for the numbers under freedom of information laws as NSW prepares for an Upper House inquiry into child protection services.
"It is not possible to auto-extract the information," a Department of Family and Community Services spokesman said.
Jacqui Reed, chief executive of the Create Foundation that represents children in care, called the lack of transparency "absolutely outrageous".
"They should have this information at their fingertips," Ms Reed said. "The data is very important to us. It's a way to keep governments accountable."
The department assumes the legal responsibilities of a parent for nearly 6000 children.
The Labor opposition had formally asked: "How many reports of sexual or physical abuse against children currently in the care of the Department of Family and Community Services has the Department received in the year 2014/15?"
It asked the same question about non-government care providers, which look after about 7500 children.
The legal unit of FACS rejected the requests, citing "certain limitations" of the department's IT systems.
In response to questions from Fairfax Media, a department spokesman then said: "While we do capture [the information requested], our ability to represent it over a year is limited."
The spokesman also said the department could not "readily determine" if an alleged abuse incident took place while the child was in state care or before. It is running a trial that would fix this for new reports of children found at risk of significant or actual harm.
"How can the government determine where resources are most needed if accurate statistics about abuse aren't readily available?" opposition community services spokeswoman Tania Mihailuk said.
"The minister must intervene and make this information available immediately. What has he got to hide?"
A spokeswoman for Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard said the department made its own decisions on information requests but was improving data collection.
The NSW Ombudsman, which tracks allegations against out-of-home carers, recorded 609 last year, of which 23 per cent were verified.
But the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse last year exposed deficiencies in record keeping by state governments.
Children are responsible for roughly half the sexual abuse of children, experts estimate, but these cases are not recorded by the NSW Ombudsman unless the victim has a disability or staff are said to have neglected their responsibilities.
The last national survey of child abuse reports, by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in 2014, found more than half the reports were not investigated.
Ms Reed, of the Create Foundation, said the NSW government often took months to supply "the most basic information" about child welfare.
"When we do get it, it's often inaccurate," she said.
The Upper House inquiry into child protection services will examine "the capacity and effectiveness of systems, procedures and practices to notify, investigate and assess reports of children and young people at risk of harm."
Labor has said it would appeal the department's decision not to provide the totals.
Patrick Begley, smh.com.au