The Queensland Government will be conducting mandatory drug testing of parents whose children have come into departmental care.

Key points: Tests mandatory for parents identified with having problem with ice who want to keep their kids at home

Tests mandatory for parents identified with having problem with ice who want to keep their kids at home Drug and alcohol nurses to be embedded in family support services

Drug and alcohol nurses to be embedded in family support services Concern the approach will just separate more families

It comes after new government statistics revealed one third of children in protection have at least one parent who has used or is using ice.

Queensland's Child Safety Minister Shannon Fentiman said the latest quarterly child protection data from the state's first ice summit had helped the Government come up with strategies to combat the problem.

She said that parents in families identified to be having problems with ice use, but where they wanted to keep their kids at home, would be forced to undergo the mandatory drug testing.

"Our officers need that information to be able to make better decisions about the potential risk of harm to kids," she said.

"We have also announced for the first time we will have drug and alcohol nurses embedded in our family support services.

"We know that there needs to be better coordination and collaboration on the ground between family safety and our family support team, and health practitioners.

"And that's why I think that model will really help families earlier on, before the family reaches crisis."

Approach 'risks more kids being separated from family'

Lindsay Wegener, from the child protection body PeakCare Queensland, said the mandatory drug testing might be seen as a heavy handed response.

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"The difficulty is if then we lock ourselves into a corner, that we use results of that test to say because the test has come back positive we now will need to remove your children," he said.

"It simply provides a piece of information that is useful, and that we should be able to use in a constructive manner."

Mr Wegener said he did not want to see the statistics cause departmental overreaction, and result in more children being removed from their families.

"If it is absolutely necessary to occur, it should not be regarded as the end of story," he said.

"What we need to understand is that children shouldn't be robbed of their parents' love because of this substance.

"But in some instances it may be necessary for that to be taken as a temporary measure until parents can be assisted to kick the habit of using this dreadful substance.

"But it's also about ensuring that we support other family members."

Statistics 'are a smokescreen for real problems'

Opposition child safety spokeswoman Ros Bates said she had seen evidence of the devastating impact of ice, but that the epidemic was not new.

And she said the Government was using the latest statistics as a smokescreen.

"Certainly Shannon Fentiman has been cooking up this excuse for her own incompetence in child safety," she said.

"So I'm not surprised this is an excuse that has been given for the latest child safety data — the crisis still persists in child safety.

"We have seen no change in the times for children to be investigated, we are still seeing 66 per cent of all at risk kids not even having their investigations started.

"And we know there are 10 per cent of critical cases still requiring 24 hour response times that are being missed."

But Ms Fentiman has maintained there have been improvements in time taken to commence and complete investigations of alleged child abuse, at a time when the number of notifications were also increasing.