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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 25 ..

responsibility and I am mapping solutions and a way forward. Whilst in the short term that might lead to some significant challenges and difficulties, the long-term protection of our children requires that action.

MS TUCKER (11.59): I seek leave to speak.

Leave granted.

MS TUCKER: It is important that we have an opportunity to respond to the minister’s statement on an issue that is obviously of great importance in the ACT. The committee report that was tabled contains a lot of important information and recommendations. The section entitled “Where to from here?—Monitoring improvements” contains the following statement:

While the committee is not recommending, at this stage, an inquiry into ACT Family Services or an inquiry solely on care and protection, it does believe it is necessary for the Government to report back to the community on the implementation of the Committee’s recommendations, as well as progress on Family Services’ Re-Focus agenda within a set period of time.

1. The Committee expects the Government to respond to this report in the November 2003 sitting period. Having reviewed the Government’s response, the Committee intends to seek regular updates, to the Assembly, on the implementation of the recommendations.

I was interested in the information that is contained in that section. I refer to this issue today because the committee report raises extremely significant issues for this Assembly and the ACT community. The government’s initial response was appalling—a point that I made immediately after it was delivered. I asked Ms Gallagher to go back and do it again. Since then Ms Gallagher, belatedly, has taken responsibility for much of what has been pointed out in this committee report, even though there were not particularly strong recommendations on some of the issues that are now receiving such a lot of attention and that have been met with alarm.

I commend the minister for responding to this crisis. It is not a new crisis; it has been around since I have been a member of this Assembly. In 1997, when I was chair of the social policy committee, I conducted an inquiry into the provision of services for children at risk in the ACT. I would like to take members through some of the recommendations in the report of that inquiry. The 2003 committee report made recommendations in relation to a number of issues; for example, the lack of effective and coordinated service provision for young people with intensive support needs. The 1997 committee report recommended the provision of services for young people with extraordinarily high needs.

The 1997 committee report referred to the turnover in caseworkers. We wanted to include a performance indicator to address that activity. The 2003 committee report referred to staffing and to a continuity of caseworkers—which is a good issue. It is common for a child to have five caseworkers over a two-year period. The OCA referred to a memorandum of understanding with Family Services and Quamby regarding weekly contact with clients in Quamby. The committee report states reasonably casually that that

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