A two-year-old Wollongong boy could be alive today if the Department of Family and Community Services had been better resourced, caseworkers say.
Staff from the department, formerly known as the Department of Child Services (DOCS), have told the ABC’s 730 program that despite as many as nine notifications about Zoran Ivanovski’s well-being, staff numbers were so short that his case was not allocated for a home visit.
Caseworkers from the Coniston office say Zoran’s plight was discussed at a number of weekly allocation meetings, which are reserved only for the worst cases.
But on each occasion his file was held over for review.
One caseworker said: “The managers and the manager client services could see it was a case that should be allocated and they wanted to allocate it but there wasn’t any staff or capacity to do so.”
Zoran died on the evening of August 3, 2012 from multiple blunt-force injuries to the head and body. Police have charged his 32-year-old mother Tami Apps with his murder.
His death sparked industrial action by the department’s Coniston staff, who described his death as “avoidable”.
The ABC has obtained a draft copy of the department’s internal child death review report regarding Zoran’s case.
The review states that “most reports received in the 12 months prior to Zoran’s death demonstrated a concerning picture of escalating and significant risk to Zoran and his siblings”.
“After reports were received in July 2012 about physical injuries to Zoran, managers at Wollongong CSC intended to allocate the case, but did not have the resources to do so,” it reads.
“It was clear that this case was one of the highest priorities among the unallocated cases at the CSC at that time. In fact it appeared to regularly be next on the list for allocation between July and Zoran’s death in August.”
‘A lot of horrific circumstances’
Former caseworker Rob Bosevski says that warnings about Zoran came at the worst possible time, shortly after the department axed 100 frontline jobs in New South Wales and announced that temporary staff contracts would not be renewed.
The Coniston office lost five temporary child protection workers.
“There were a lot of horrific circumstances to a lot of reports and from personal experience you would sit there shaking your head thinking, we should be getting to all of these but we can’t and that is a tragedy in my own eyes,” Mr Bosevski said.
After eight years, Mr Bosevski left the department at the end of 2012. He felt he could no longer do his job. He says that while a normal case load should be between six and eight cases, he knows of caseworkers carrying loads or 12 or 16 matters.
He says that with chronic under staffing, the department’s workers are forced to make difficult decisions.
“Sometimes it would be a matter of has this person been reported multiple times, what was the likelihood of injury to continue, who made the report, was it an acute report from a hospital or police? All these factors play in to a decision that’s made,” he said.
‘He was gorgeous’
Kira Akrivos lived opposite Zoran’s family in Wollongong’s north-western suburbs, and was one of several neighbours who alerted police and welfare services about the child.
She says everyone in the neighbourhood was worried about him.
Her mother, Lee Akrvios, said it was obvious he needed help.
“He was gorgeous. I mean, aren’t all kids? But not his age, he was not a baby of his age, he should have been crawling and talking and eating properly and that just wasn’t happening,” she said.
“You’ve had seven reports from here, you’ve had reports from the preschool, you have had reports from where they ended up living – that boy was in danger.
“Surely someone could have spent half an hour to go out and have a look. That’s my opinion.”
It was not only the neighbours who were worried. According to police fact sheets tendered in court, workers at Zoran’s daycare centre notice bruises on three separate occasions in June and July last year.
They notified the Department of Family and Community Services each time.
Allegations that death due to mother’s boyfriend obsession
Police charge sheets allege the motive for Zoran’s murder was Apps’s obsession with her boyfriend.
They also state Apps referred to her youngest child as a haemorrhoid and had been heard to say she wished he had never been born.
The caseworker from Coniston believes the whole story about Zoran’s death needs to be told.
“We were very, very upset and we were crying. We were very upset that this could happen,” she said.
“But as time went on we did become very angry because it started at the top as far as we could see, decisions being made from the Government, the minister, and down to put in staff shortages or staff freezes,” she said.
She warns that what happened to Zoran could happen to another child under the current system.
“We still don’t have as many caseworkers in our office. There are empty desks everywhere,” she said.
Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward , but she has reiterated her claims that frontline child protection workers were not cut.
Mr Goward released this statement to the ABC:
Advice from the department is that the caseworker headcount at Wollongong increased between 2010 and 2012, and that budgeted positions remained constant during 2011 and 2012 at 37.7 full-time equivalent positions.
When it comes to operational matters such as human resources, the Minister relies on advice provided by her department.
According to the Auditor-General, caseworker vacancies in 2012 were the lowest in many years at 152, equivalent to 7 per cent, compared to what the he reported in 2010, under Minister Burney, which was 497, or 20 per cent of the total.
The Minister instructed her Director-General in March this year to fill all budgeted caseworker positions.
Updated figures will be made available online later this year, as the Minister has committed to many times.
