Queensland inquest hears Elizabeth Struhs case was not prioritised amid high workloads

Elizabeth Struhs's child protection case was not prioritised or worked intensively because the officer assigned to it was very busy, a Queensland coronial inquest has heard.

The evidence concerns Elizabeth, aged eight, who died on 7 January 2022 of diabetic ketoacidosis after her father Jason Struhs stopped providing insulin for her type 1 diabetes at their home in Toowoomba, Queensland, The Guardian. Coroner Ainslie Kirkegaard is holding an inquest into her death.

Elizabeth had come to the attention of child safety after a 2019 incident in which she presented to hospital in a coma. The department later released her back into Jason Struhs's sole care, over the objections of specialist doctors who had treated her in Brisbane, subject to a voluntary intervention with parental agreement.

That intervention was meant to be intensive. Child safety ended its involvement after 17 weeks and assessed Elizabeth as safe. Only a single child safety officer was assigned to her case and would often conduct home visits alone.

The officer told the inquest she aimed to visit the family at least once a week under IPAT guidelines but was not always available because of a busy period at the child safety service centre and travel to visit other families. One home visit was conducted by a student working in the team at the time.

The officer said the case was not treated as a complex case, though it should have been because of the intervention. At the time she had a caseload of about 25 to 28 children in 15 families on the same intervention. She told the court she believed other cases involving children at more immediate risk may have been prioritised over Elizabeth's.

She also told the court she may have been overly influenced by the presentation of the Struhs' upper class home. She said she may have had a bias because her own child had nearly died of type 1 diabetes at age six, and that she had asked not to be assigned to the case.

Fourteen members of a religious sect were convicted in connection with Elizabeth's death before the coronial inquest continued, The Guardian. Her parents withdrew her insulin injections because of their extreme religious views, and were each later sentenced to 14 years in jail, according to ABC News. The inquest is set to examine whether system failures contributed to her death.

Child safety had earlier had brief involvement with the family in 2013, during which it was made aware of Elizabeth's mother's religious views.