Our commitment: working together for a stronger, safer and fairer NSW

Working together for a stronger, safer and fairer NSW is our commitment to ourselves, those we serve and those we work with. The priorities and the ways of working outlined in this Strategic Plan, and our values, will help to deliver on this commitment.

Working together

Working together has three core aspects, reflecting the bigger picture:

1. working together internally within DCJ, across our different divisions and services to fulfil our promise as an organisation
2. working together with the people, families and communities we serve
3. working together with our government and non-government partners, and in concert with an independent judiciary and independent statutory bodies and officers.

Stronger

The people, families and communities we serve and work with have innate strength, resourcefulness and resilience. We want to support people to harness their own strength, and provide services and systems that empower and help them to thrive.

We also want to build strong, trusting and positive relationships with our partners. For our staff, we want to strengthen our culture and our practices around inclusiveness, belonging and wellbeing.

Safer

Striving for safer outcomes for the people, families and communities we serve is at the heart of many of our functions. DCJ seeks to support people to have access to safe housing, to be free from all forms of violence, and to grow up with safety and the opportunity to thrive. These are basic human rights everyone deserves.

We know that for some people, families and communities, DCJ does not always feel like a safe organisation to deal with. Feeling unsafe is also true for many of our staff. Cultural safety, physical safety and psychosocial safety are all part of how we build safety in our workplace. Inclusion, diversity and belonging are part of how we will create safer outcomes for our staff and for those we serve.

Fairer

We aim for fairness, equity, accountability and transparency in our processes and in the way we make decisions about, and with, the people, families and communities we serve. Fairness is also core to our role as stewards of the systems we support.

We recognise the intrusive nature of, and power imbalance within, many of our services, particularly those in the justice and child protection systems. Our power must be exercised fairly and humanely – and in particular in our justice system – with a view to rehabilitation and preventing further contact.

NSW

NSW is a simple, if obvious, way to speak about the many diverse people, families, and communities we serve.

We are on a journey to work towards the outcomes of stronger, safer and fairer. We aren’t starting from scratch. These outcomes have always been a feature of our work, and we have made significant progress towards achieving them. We are and will always be striving for more strength, safety and fairness.