While struggling families might fear child protection will step in and remove children from their care, Ms Jones says that is a last resort where despite provision of support services the child is not safe at home, or where the threat of immediate harm to a child is too great.

But while the job can be confronting and emotionally taxing, Ms Jones cannot think of any other job that provides the sense of satisfaction, fulfillment and pride she finds as a child protection worker.

"Literally at times we are saving lives where kids and parents are in really risky situations," she said. "It can be confronting at times some of the things we deal with ... but it cannot be understated how important the work is."

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The pandemic has driven a surge in child protection notifications, compounding an already existing shortage of child protection workers particularly in regional areas. In a bid to attract more child protection workers, the state government has announced a generous incentive package to help boost applicant numbers.

"We have seen a big uptick (in notifications) since the beginning of the pandemic. Trends coming out of lockdown include increased family violence, controlling behaviour from perpetrators, mental health issues and mental health of young people has emerged as a big factor," Ms Jones said.

With restrictions easing, children back at school and families out in the community there is more evidence of what sometimes goes on behind closed doors at home.

Drug and alcohol use also increased during lockdown, contributing to more child protection reports.

Ms Jones said reports were screened through intake workers in a central hub before being sent to a local team to investigate.

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The investigation and response team then conducts interviews with families, police, schools, doctors, maternal child health nurses or other agents to work out whether children are at risk. They then work with families to address any concerns or, if the concerns are serious enough that the children cannot stay with the family, they find alternative accommodation with extended family, foster carers or in residential care.

"We are always working with the family with the goal for them to have the child back," Ms Jones said.

The case then goes to the case management team where Ms Jones and colleagues work with families to address protective concerns.

"It could be a month or years depending on the case, but we work with parents to address protective concerns, refer them to other agencies to support them, drug and alcohol counselling, family violence counselling ... all sorts of different agencies to help them make the changes in life that will enable them to safely care for their child.

"Or sometimes we are working with families where the child is still with the parents but there is concern about the quality of care and we need to be able to keep involved with them for a little while."

Among her daily tasks are making calls to parents for updates, referring clients to other services, meeting with services for updates and her favourite - visiting families to see how they are going.

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"What I love most about the job is being able to see a family turn things around. From that initial contact where families can be very worried about what's going to happen and when they are not in a place where they can make changes... to building a relationship with them and seeing them make changes and become much more stable people who are able to look back and say this was necessary and I wasn't in a good place - I needed help but couldn't reach out and get it."

But the flip side is one of the hardest parts of the job

"It's difficult work. There's no sugar coating that side of it - it's emotionally taxing at times and there are things I struggle with, mostly we really want parents to succeed and make changes but for whatever reason they're not in a place to be able to make that change."

Child protection workers have a legislative timeline on how long they can work with families in different situations before more permanent decisions must be made on a child's future.

"Timelines don't always match up with things like drug addictions. It's hard working with a family over time and not seeing a lot of progress in terms of protection concerns. Then we would be looking at how to make sure the child has a strong relationship with their parents even if they can't be living with them."

But a shortage of kinship (extended family) carers and foster carers in regional areas sometimes means children, particularly teenagers, go in to residential care units.

"I have a few kids living in residential care and it's not ideal ... but they have to go somewhere ... because unfortunately there may just not be family either appropriate to look after kids or able or willing to do so. Foster care is preferred but there's a lack of foster care in the regions."

Child protection work is something Ms Jones "stumbled" into after seeing a job advertisement much like the current regional recruiting campaign.

She moved to Horsham to start work as a child protection worker after studying psychology at university.

"I had never considered it before stumbling across it. There's an awful lot of transferable skills. Studying psychology at Monash was quite research-based which really helped me in making risk assessments of families and piecing things together in a linear way, being able to make plans on that case. What's required is high level organisation skills to be able to manage your time effectively, and it's quite people-heavy so you need to enjoy interacting with people.

"There's also strong communication skills needed and I've always enjoyed writing so that skills transfers in to being able to write court reports and case notes.

"The important thing is obviously having a strong sense of advocacy for children and want to improve society as core motivation."

Ms Jones said ensuring children had the best childhood possible would translate in to them being the best possible adult they can, reducing the need for child protection services in the future.

"Successful families and children build successful adults who won't go on to be known to us," she said.

She has also enjoyed the experience of moving to a regional city.

"There's such a stark contrast when I go back and visit family in Melbourne. There's a sense of community in Horsham, and in the office we've got quite a small team. I think it makes a big difference. It's a nice feeling people know you and you are part of the community. That community feeling is sadly lacking in Melbourne."

Ms Jones urged anyone thinking about a regional shift or new job to consider child protection.

"People are much more suited to child protection work than you would think. There are a lot of people who would never think about working in child protection - it still operates in the shadows a bit and people don't know what the job entails so it gets a bad rap ... but we are literally at times saving lives," she said.

"They are in significantly traumatic situations and that's exactly why we are needed and we can help children and families."

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