Inquiry into Intensive Therapeutic Care Consultation Paper - Call for submissions

Under the Community Services (Complaints, Review and Monitoring) Act 1993 (CS CRAMA) the NSW Ombudsman has functions to: monitor and review the delivery of community services, conduct inquiries into matters affecting service providers and receivers and make recommendations for improvements in the delivery of community services. This includes community services that are provided by the non-government sector, with funding or authorisation from the NSW Government.

In July 2024, the NSW Ombudsman announced the commencement of an inquiry into Intensive Therapeutic Care (ITC).¹ Once the Inquiry is completed, we will prepare a Special Report to Parliament (the Report) by the end of 2025 about what we have found and our recommendations. The Report will be available on our website.

The ITC program provides residential care placements for children over 12 years of age with high and complex needs “…who are either unable to be supported in foster care or require specialised and intensive supports to maintain stability in their care arrangements."²  

The Inquiry’s central purpose is to assess whether ITC is meeting its objectives for children and to recommend how ITC can be improved.

The ITC service system is “designed to be flexible enough to respond to the needs of children and young people with the most complex support needs”,⁶ so they can recover and heal from “the most severe forms of trauma, neglect, abuse or adversity.”⁷

The Inquiry will seek to answer the following questions:

Further details about these questions and the ITC inquiry can be found here.

You can choose to address in your submission any or all the questions being considered by the Inquiry. You can also tell us what you think is most important about ITC and suggest ways to improve outcomes for children in ITC.

In your submission, we would appreciate you including your name, contact details and information about your connection to ITC (whether you are/were a child in ITC, are a family member/friend/carer of a child in ITC, a worker, a provider, researcher etc). This will help us to understand the different perspectives of stakeholders.

We will also accept anonymous submissions.

You can make a submission by email, by post or by completing the form below

• Email: ITCInquiry@ombo.nsw.gov.au
• Post: Level 24, 580 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000

Submissions close:  09 May 2025

If you require assistance to make a submission or would like to make a verbal submission, please contact us on ITCInquiry@ombo.nsw.gov.au or telephone 1800 451 524 and we can discuss this with you.