Elizabeth Struhs’ child protection case was not “prioritised” or worked intensively because the staff member assigned to her case was “very busy”, a coroner has heard.
The Queensland coroners court also heard the case worker may have been “overly influenced” by the presentation of Struhs’ “upper class home”, putting cases that believed to involve a more immediate risk ahead of Elizabeth’s.
The eight-year-old died on 7 January 2022 of diabetic ketoacidosis, after her father, Jason Struhs, stopped providing insulin to treat her type 1 diabetes at their home in Toowoomba, Queensland. A long-term sceptic of his wife’s beliefs, he had converted to them and joined her religious sect – which subscribed to an extreme form of Christianity and denied the use of medicine – in 2021.
Coroner Ainslie Kirkegaard is holding an inquest into Elizabeth’s death. She has previously heard the eight-year-old came to the attention of child safety after a 2019 incident where she presented to hospital in a coma.
Child safety ended its involvement with the family after just 17 weeks of what was supposed to be an intensive intervention, assessing her as “safe”.
But the single child safety officer assigned to Elizabeth’s case told the court on Friday her approach wasn’t intensive and she didn’t make weekly check-ins during that period, despite departmental guidelines.
The department chose to release her back into Jason’s sole care over the objections of specialist doctors who treated Elizabeth in Brisbane, subject to a voluntary intervention with parental agreement (IPA).
The coroner heard just a single child safety officer was assigned to the case, and would often conduct home visits alone.
The officer gave evidence on Friday.
“Ideally I wanted to visit with the family at least once a week, in accordance with our IPAT (intervention with parental agreement team) guidelines,” according to her statement, presented to the court.
“During my management of the IPA for the Struhs family, I recall that I was not always available to conduct home visits with the family. I recall this being a very busy time for the CSSC (child safety service centre) and I also recall being regularly out of the office travelling to visit other families.
“I note that one of the home visits to the Struhs family was conducted by a student who was working in the team at the time.”
She said Elizabeth’s case wasn’t treated as a complex case, which it should have been due to the intervention.
But at the time, she had a “big caseload” – approximately 25-28 children in 15 families on the same intervention– she said. The coroner has previously heard that the Toowoomba region was among the busiest in the state for child safety.
Counsel assisting Simon Hamlyn-Harris said most of them were experiencing significant domestic violence, drug use, sexual abuse and it was not often that she was required to work with “upper class families” like the Struhs.
The case worker agreed that she may and may have been “overly influenced” by the presentation of the Struhs home.
“I believe that we may have prioritised other cases at the time for children who were presenting at more immediate risk,” she told the court.
She also told the court that she may have had a bias because her own child had nearly died of type 1 diabetes at age 6. She had asked not to be assigned to the case, she said.
Several witnesses have previously told the coroner they expected the intervention to last months or a year, but the case worker said they were supposed to not last longer than three months, because they were an intensive approach.
On Friday, Kirkegaard asked another child safety witness whether they felt “organisational pressure to get a matter like this finalised quickly”.
“Absolutely,” the witness said, adding an IPA could be intrusive and potentially harmful to a child if dragged out.
“I don’t believe it impacted our decision making,” she said.
On 13 November 2019, a more senior child safety officer assessed Elizabeth as “safe” and the intervention was ended.
The case worker told the coroner on Friday that she hadn’t appreciated the danger of Elizabeth’s mother’s church group, which was considered a source of support for the family.
All 14 adult members of the sect – known as the Saints – were convicted of Elizabeth’s manslaughter last year, including Elizabeth’s parents, Kerrie and Jason, and the group leader, Brendan Stevens.
In her statement she said Jason had agreed to continue to treat his daughter against his wife’s beliefs and that she had “faith” that should Kerrie stand in the way he’d leave her.
None of the witnesses can be identified for legal reasons.
The inquest continues.
