A special ministerial inquiry into the workplace culture of the Office of the Children's Guardian (OCG) in New South Wales. The Children’s Guardian is an independent NSW public sector agency that plays an important part of ensuring children’s human rights are realised. The OCG does this by regulating and monitoring organisations that provide services to children, as set out in the Children's Guardian Act 2019 (NSW).

The report provides 21 findings and 16 recommendations. The recommendations are made to restore the OCG workforce, community and government’s trust and confidence that the OCG has the leadership, governance, policies and practices in place to achieve its mission.

Key findings

• The Inquiry found several gaps in the OCG policy framework, where policies, procedures and action plans are severely deficient or out of date.
• The OCG workplace is fragile and fractured. It is not a psychologically safe workplace.
• The cultural load on First Nations employees is overlooked and poorly understood.
• The OCG has no documented governance framework and its organisational structure supports the silos between directorates.
• The leadership of the OCG is principally the responsibility of the Children’s Guardian.
• There are aspects of the Guardian’s leadership which have directly contributed to the OCG having a poor workplace culture and failing to develop and maintain a psychologically safe workplace.