Number of Risk of Significant Harm (ROSH) reports

This indicator allows monitoring the demand for child protection investigations, including making resource decisions.

Alignment: This aligns with national reporting in Report on Government Services (RoGS).

Caseworkers in DCJ Child Protection Helpline apply the Structured Decision Making (SDM) Screening and Response Priority (SCRPT) tools to reports to determine the level of response category.

• ‘Other’ in the ‘Other/NA’ reporting category for response priorities include reports marked as ‘no response required’ and those with the required information left blank. ‘NA’ (Not Applicable) relates to ROSH reports where additional children were recorded at the time of the field assessment. The data reported for “Other/NA’ in 2019-20 is not directly comparable to that reported in the previous years, because: the large number of ROSH reports with blank final response priority reported for 2019-20 were attributed to the Streamlined Response Pilot in Northern NSW District, where the Response Priority Tool was no longer being used to determine the response priority. ‘Not Applicable (N/A)’ mainly relates to ROSH reports where additional children were recorded at the time of the field assessment. The data reported for ‘Other/NA’ in 2019-20 is not directly comparable to that reported in the previous years as a large number of ROSH reports with blank final response priority reported for 2019-20 are attributable to the Streamlined Response Pilot project underway in the Northern NSW District where the Response Priority Tool is no longer being used to determine the response priority.
• ‘Prenatal reports’ are reported under ‘Carer: other issues’ prior to 2012-13. 'Other issues' includes ROSH reports where additional children were recorded at the time of field assessment; hence, Helpline assessed issue is not applicable.

The District reflects where the child/young person's case plan is held at their first ROSH report in the reporting period.

• The Hunter New England District was split into Hunter District and New England District from 2018-19. This means that no data will be displayed for Hunter District or for New England District before 2018-19 and no data will be displayed for Hunter New England District after 2017-18.
• The ‘Other’ reported in the DCJ District breakdown includes data from the former Hunter New England District which cannot be split into the new districts and data where District could not be identified.
• Statewide Services also includes 'not entered', in most cases where reports don't require a field response after an assessment/screening is undertaken at the DCJ Child Protection Helpline.

Since the implementation of ChildStory there has been a change in the way reporter type is reported. From 2017-18 onwards, the category of 'Non-mandatory reporters' has replaced the categories of ‘Community/Social organisations’, ‘Family members’, 'Subject child/young person' and ‘Other/Not stated’ which are no longer used.

NP (Not Publishable) refers to small numbers that are not published to preserve privacy of individuals.

Data ageing:

• Data ageing is two months, unless otherwise indicated. Therefore, the data for this indicator will be available two months after the end of the month in which the data first becomes available.

Data limitations:

• Nil.

Data source:

• KiDS/MDS - Corporate Information Warehouse (CIW))  for annual data up to 2016-17
• ChildStory – Corporate Information Warehouse (CIW))  for annual data from 2017-18. 

Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998