One of these recommendations included a commitment from the government to employ  two hospital child safety liaison officers in the North and North-West regions as part of the coronial recommendation.

A baby on an unborn child protection notice born in the Launceston General Hospital was sent home with its mother and remained with her for 14 days before intervention from the child protection service.

The baby had spent 28 days in the hospital suffering from drug withdrawal prior to that.

The Northern child safety liaison officer was on a months’ worth of sick leave at the time of the incident, but Human Services Minister Roger Jaensch said the position had been back-filled by the department’s standard operations staff.

As well as employing hospital child safety staff, Mr Jaensch said the government was auditing the unborn baby notification process to ensure notifications were being assessed and responded to in accordance with the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act and the Child Safety Services manual.

He was it was expected the audit would be completed by the end of the year.

In line with the coroner’s recommendations, Mr Jaensch said a serious events and review team had been established to identify practice and systems gaps and develop a program of improvements.

He said there had been progress in the recruitment of 10 clinical practice consultant educators to provide practice support and education to frontline staff.

According to a report released by the state’s acting-Children’s Commissioner on Friday, the rate of Tasmanian children under one year old subject to substantiated child protection notifications was higher than any other age cohort at 12.2 children per 1000 children.