Australia | Ombudsman Western Australia releases 2017-18 Annual Report

The Western Australian Ombudsman has tabled his 2017-18 annual report in Parliament. The report outlines the work of the Office for the year, including:

• We finalised 94% of complaints within 3 months.
  
  
• Since 2007, we have:
  - decreased the age of complaints from 173 days to 33 days; and
  - reduced the cost of resolving complaints by 36%
  
  
• 100% of our recommendations were accepted for the eleventh consecutive year.
  
  
• We received:
  - 23 investigable child deaths;
  - 16 reviewable family and domestic violence fatalities; and
  - made 39 recommendations about ways to prevent or reduce
     these deaths and fatalities
  
  
• We tabled in Parliament the report of a major own motion investigation, Investigation into ways to prevent or reduce deaths of children by drowning, that contained 25 recommendations about ways to prevent or reduce deaths of children by drowning.
  
  
• We provided A report on the monitoring of the infringement notices provisions of The Criminal Code to the Minister for Police and the Commissioner of Police and the report was tabled in Parliament by the Minister for Police on 30 November 2017.
  
  
• Significant work was undertaken on A report on giving effect to the recommendations arising from the Investigation into ways that State government departments and authorities can prevent or reduce suicide by young people.
  
  
• We undertook a range of work to implement our inaugural Aboriginal Action Plan.
  
  
• We enhanced awareness and access to the Office for children and young people through a range of mechanisms, including continuing our visiting program to vulnerable groups of children in the child protection system.
  
  
• We enhanced regional awareness and access to the Office through visits to Bunbury, Busselton, Collie and Harvey in the South West Region and Geraldton in the Mid-West Region.

Source: Office of the Western Australian Ombudsman, Australia