Official Community Visitors

The NSW Ageing and Disability Commission (ADC) will work with Official Community Visitors (OCVs) visiting children and young people in residential out-of-home care (OOHC) in NSW to support their actions to identify, raise, and refer issues relating to the access of children in care to health and wellbeing checks.

OCVs are independent Ministerial appointees who visit children and young people in residential OOHC in NSW to understand the issues affecting them, and to raise those issues with the service provider and other appropriate bodies to enable early and local resolution. Aboriginal children and young people are highly represented in OOHC.

In 2023-24, access to preventative health care was a focus area in the visits of OCVs, including access to necessary preventative health checks and actions taken on identified health needs. The OCVs were supported with guidance information and practice forums to inform their work. Following the increased focus on health and wellbeing checks for children in care OCVs identified and raised with providers and other appropriate bodies an increased number of issues relating to health. In 2023-24, OCVs raised 377 issues relating to the health of children in residential OOHC, up 63% on the 232 health-related issues raised in 2022-23.

The health-related issues raised by OCVs in 2023-24 included:

• the adequacy of actions to address identified health, medical, psychological and developmental needs (124 issues)
• the adequacy of actions to support the child to access appropriate health and medical services and treatment as needed (106 issues).

In 2023-24, OCVs raised 71 issues specifically about the access of children in care to preventative health care, including health checks.