CHILD protection workers have threatened to take industrial action later this month if a "resourcing crisis" isn't resolved, but the state government says it is the union playing politics.
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The Community and Public Sector Union has continued its campaign against resourcing issues within Child Protection Services, and will target Human Services Minister Jacquie Petrusma's home electorate with a letter-box drop before Christmas.
Union secretary Tom Lynch said 118 workers, representing 75 per cent of the workforce, had written to Ms Petrusma.
"It's time the minister stopped blaming everyone else and accepted that her failure to resource child protection and family violence is putting children at risk and that she is the only person with the power to fix the situation," Mr Lynch said.
In the letter, workers told Ms Petrusma that "every day we are forced to make impossible decisions that no professional should have to make".
Mr Lynch said the CPSU had begun a "community awareness campaign" on child protection and family violence using electronic billboards, and would begin letter-boxing Franklin this month.
Ms Petrusma said the union was aware of the work the government was doing to fix the state's child protection system, but was playing politics rather than helping.
"Tom Lynch should stop pretending to be the leader of the opposition and start working with us on fixing our child protection system to better protect vulnerable children, because that's what is important here, not his party political loyalties," she said.
Ms Petrusma said the government was regularly advertising vacancies in child protection, which demonstrated that there was not a resourcing issue, but a problem with the system.
"That's why we have commenced a comprehensive child protection redesign with a reference group, under the independent leadership of Professor Maria Harries," she said.
