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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1662 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

a statement as any submission that has come to this committee. The project presented students with an opportunity to represent their feelings through various mediums - sculpture, lino printing and drawing - in a couple of schools in the ACT. I was interested to hear the teachers explain that allowing the students to express their feelings in this way brought about an opportunity for broader discussion of the issues. In the PEACE Pack, a document submitted to the committee inquiry from South Australia, Professor Slee, who is leading research in this area, mentions the importance of arts of all kinds - visual arts, performing arts - in helping students articulate their feelings and find solutions to the issues of violence, bullying, personal relationships, the school system, the whole lot.

I will summarise the recommendations of the committee in three broad areas. What was very clear to the committee, from all the submissions, is that violence is a broad community problem. We have had various discussions in this place recently about violence. We had the Federal inquiry into violence referred to at length by Mr Moore on one occasion. We have had discussions about paintball. We have had discussions about Port Arthur. We have had discussions about violence. It is, indeed, a community problem and this has to be recognised when you are looking at the question of violence in schools. We cannot say that the schools can deal with the problem alone. There has to be recognition that broader support is necessary, for the whole community to deal with the issue of violence.

We have had mandatory reporting introduced into this Assembly recently. That is crisis management, once again. This committee makes recommendations, as all committees have which have looked at this topic in any detail, which refer to early intervention and to preventative measures. This committee, like the other committees on behavioural disturbance and the Federal inquiry into violence, has stressed the need for early intervention and for the provision of family support services. This will include parent teaching; parent advice; support in terms of child care, if parents need assistance with that; support in conflict resolution for whole families; and involvement of families in the schools. It is interesting that research shows quite clearly that, the more the community is involved with a school, the more likely solutions are to be found. So schools need to be encouraged and supported in this outreach sort of work.

Our recommendations ask the Government to produce a strategy for the provision of family support services. We do not see that this exists. We also ask for a publicity campaign. Once these services are in place and we have a clear picture of what the Government strategy is, there should be a real effort to let the people in the community know that the Government does want to help and that there are services available. That was the issue of community support and violence being broader than the schools.

The second really obvious issue that came up was that while there is a problem of violence in schools, for students and for teachers, some schools are more successful than others in dealing with the issue. That is not always just about resources; sometimes it is about an individual teacher. You will find in the text of the report that the committee had interesting discussions around the question, "Where do these people who have particular skills in dealing with these particularly troubled kids and difficult situations come from?

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