ALECOMM

A new disease inflicting the NSW Public Service ... Conveniently Related Immediate Memory Exhaustion Syndrome

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Category: NSW Ombudsman

Written by Michael Hart

As readers will know, we at Alecomm have been interested in how the Department of Community Services treats the disabled for some time. You will all remember poor Emily's trauma at the hands of DoCS. We have recently seen in the media another apparent mishandling of a disabled child by DoCS. Unfortunately the outcomes for this poor girl was worse as she died shortly after the parents went to DoCS to find out what they could do for her. Here is one of the news articles about the case :-

 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/girl-was-a-barrier-to-travel-inquest-hears/story-e6frf7l6-1225986057728

At this stage we would like to refer readers to the DoCS Code of Conduct says "You should ensure you have taken reasonable steps to obtain necessary material to make a decision and be reasonably satisfied that the material is factually correct and relevant. You should record and file the basis for your decision." (Page 7)

In spite of this the reasons for decisions don't appear to be written in a form which allows the Coroner to review it. What is even more worrying is that we have noticed that, as in this case, when DoCS are asked why they make decisions they cannot seem to recall why they make them.

Despite having the memory of an Elephant and being able to quote word for word what the family says, when they are asked by the Coroner why they made a decision to take no action the response was "I can't recall," from a DoCS casework manager.

At first we thought this was a simple case of Convenient Memory Syndrome (CMS). However after a bit of thought we realize it may be a more complex and serious problem.  We have read many reports explaining how overworked DoCS staff are and how this causes errors in the management of their cases. We conclude this may be because the workload causes a form of worker fatigue (or exhaustion) which affects the memory on issues that are immediately related to their current case. We therefore have suggested these memory errors that are caused by worker overload is Conveniently Related Immediate Memory Exhaustion Syndrome (CRIMES).

We believe CRIMES in the NSW public service has a serious effect on employee performance. We would like the appropriate NSW authorities, such as the ICAC or the Ombudsman, to investigate CRIMES in the NSW Child Protection Industry (DoCS, JIRTs etc) to determine the affect they have in leaving children suffering.