Page 771 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 24 March 1993
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However, visits do occur when welfare authorities simply turn up, and I believe that that process is one that we need to discourage. The reasons for this are obvious. Most families lead extremely busy lives and organise their lives around timetables which may involve getting children to and from school, participating in school activities and their children's sporting activities, and their own careers, community activities, sporting activities and interests. On top of these are medical and business appointments and shopping trips. It is simply not acceptable or appropriate in these times for formal appointments to occur without warning. With the emphasis on cooperation and support, these visits will occur more naturally and openly in an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust.
My support for the provisions in the amendments is based on two counts of personal experience. Certainly in my experience as director of Weston Creek Community Service I often had requests from the department to come in and look at the books of the service at particular times. It obviously suited me and my staff much better if those visits could be arranged at mutually agreed times which suited the service. In the main, I am delighted to say that the authorities agreed with that approach.
Support visits, as understood by family support programs, are also important. My work prior to being director of Weston Creek Community Service, when I was responsible for the coordination of the family support program, really honed this point for me. It was important that, in visiting a family and offering support, that family recognised it as a support visit; that it was not an assessment process of the family concerned, that it was not necessarily a supervisory process, but was a support visit. It was very important for the families I came into contact with to understand the difference. I believe that the Minister's suggestion in terms of the ultimate handling of this amendment has been a very helpful one. It enables the Minister to authorise a visit to an adoptive family where concerns for the welfare of the adopted child exist, and I think that is a very good compromise.
MRS CARNELL (4.21): I rise to compliment the committee on the final wording of this clause. I am sure that nobody in the Assembly would have overlooked the fact that I was not terribly pleased about this clause as it first appeared, and many on this side of the house were not either. I believe that, in legislation such as this, the most important thing we as an Assembly can do is to make sure that the people involved and the children involved feel supported rather than supervised. I think Ms Szuty's comments were very well founded and well placed. I also thank Mr Connolly for coming up with the final wording that allowed the committee to come to a joint position on this. This was the one clause on which at one stage we believed that we would end up with dissenting reports, but Mr Connolly's grasp of the English language managed to overcome that problem. I thought it was fairly impressive.
I must say that I am not totally happy with the way it has finally been worded, but I hope that all the families involved understand that, as a committee, we went to quite substantial lengths to try to come to an end point that would suit everybody and make the whole adoption process easier for all those families involved.
Amendments agreed to.
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