The NSW Department of Community Services has confirmed that its Bega caseworkers were aware on Tuesday, June 24, that an Apprehended Violence Order had been taken out by Karen Bell against her husband.

Caseworkers were told that no specific concerns had been raised about the children and that the father, Gary Bell, had not had specific conditions imposed that he must not reside with or approach the wife or children, a DOCS spokesperson said.

She said that DOCS does an assessment of the risk of harm to children on all reports to its Helpline, from police or elsewhere.

The information provided was used in making an assessment of the best response to a report.

“In this case it was decided that caseworkers would try to contact the mother to provide support, starting that day,” the spokesperson said.

“The mother could not be located through the single phone number provided as a contact point, and all telephone calls to this number from June 24 went unanswered.

“DOCS caseworkers were determining their next step when the horrible tragedy came to light on Friday afternoon,” she said.

The spokesman said DOCS statistics demonstrated the extent of the problem of domestic violence in NSW.

From the beginning of the December 2006 quarter to the end of the December 2007 quarter, the DOCS Helpline received almost 100,000 reports of domestic violence, primarily from mandatory reporters such as police.

This was almost twice the number of reports received about physical abuse and represents an 8.6 per cent increase over the year.

“The increasing tidal wave of domestic violence reports, and the difficulties in assessing the risk of harm to children from these cases, has been raised with Special Commissioner James Wood by both DOCS and police,” the spokeswoman said.

Commissioner Wood had undertaken to examine the complexities of this problem as part of his investigation into child protection, and is expected to report back to Government by September 30, 2008.