Top WA child protection worker called in to take reins of South Hedland probe
Western Australia’s top child protection worker has been ordered to take the reins of investigations into vulnerable children in South Hedland following revelations children as young as five were staying at a Department of Housing and Works house unsupervised.
Child Protection Minister Jess Stojkovski flew to the Pilbara on Monday morning following reports in The Australian revealing that at times up to 15 children were staying at a house on Frisby Court in South Hedland without adult supervision. The Department of Communities had been made aware of the issues at the home for up to nine months.
Stojkovski met with Department of Communities staff as well as other agencies in the child protection space and visited Frisby Court twice before returning to Perth ahead of question time on Tuesday afternoon.
She also met with Port Hedland grandmother Dorothy Papertalk, whose grandchildren Jamelia, 10, and her brothers, Arnda, 7, and Kelvin Hawke, four months, were killed at the hands of their mother in 2022 while a request for a Department of Communities child safety investigation into their situation sat unopened.
The Frisby Court home was in a squalid state with dirty walls and rubbish strewn across the property, but cleaners attended the home on Tuesday after the minister’s visit.
The Australian’s report contained allegations from former child protection workers and neighbours that current staff were too scared or lazy to enter the house.
The revelations heaped pressure on Stojkovski and the Cook government’s handling of child protection in the state.
“The situation is absolutely harrowing,” Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas said on Tuesday.
“It’s incumbent upon the government to answer the question this morning: Are those children who appear to be living unsupervised in a property on Frisby Court, are they safe?
“And the question right now, the immediate question is: who is going to take responsibility for the safety of those children?”
Stojkovski said there had been a child safety investigation ongoing into the Frisby Court house, but that it had gone on for too long.
This prompted her appointment of WA’s chief practitioner for child protection, Amber Fabry, to oversee all child safety investigations in Port Hedland until the end of 2026.
“The department is working urgently to conclude this investigation,” Stojkovski said.
“This will provide a direct focus on completing investigations and ensuring that senior direction on complex cases is embedded.”
Stojkovski said she would not provide a running commentary on the vulnerable family at the centre of the controversy, but said the parents were now at the house, and she was confident the family was getting support they needed.
However, she pushed back on the claim that up to 15 children were sometimes at the house unsupervised.
“I did not find evidence of this occurring. My view has been informed with input from the department and sector,” she said.
The state will also convene a “dedicated inter-agency group” that focuses on child safety efforts across child protection, police, housing, education, youth justice, and other government agencies.
Premier Roger Cook hit back at criticism from the opposition over the Frisby Court revelations, calling it a “reprehensible and disgusting” topic on which to score political points.
Papertalk has been pushing for a coronial inquest into the deaths of her grandchildren, but that was rejected by the coroner’s office.
Despite the leaks to The Australian that the Department of Communities had requested a child safety investigation that hadn’t been acted on at the time of the children’s deaths, the Cook government says it can’t reverse the coroner’s decision to not conduct an inquest.
In parliament on Tuesday, Stojkovski thanked Papertalk for her time.
“I just want to take this opportunity, Mr Speaker, to acknowledge her generous time, her grace, and her bravery in speaking about the tragic circumstances with me of the death of her grandchildren, which she is with every day, I expressed how sorry I was for her loss,” she said.
First Nations human rights legal expert Hannah McGlade called on the Cook Government to convene an urgent roundtable of Aboriginal women working in child and family safety to discuss the issues raised and extend that invite to Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy and Aboriginal Children’s Commissioner Sue-Ann Hunter.
“There are Aboriginal grandmothers and senior women in every Aboriginal community who are very worries about violence and children’s safety. Still they are not being heard and listened to,” she said.
“Too often Aboriginal women are not heard or included in critical decision-making about child safety. We are here, ready to work with the government and share solutions we know will work.”
McGlade also called for the appointment of a WA-based Aboriginal children’s commissioner and peak body for Aboriginal women’s and children’s safety and wellbeing.
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