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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Thursday, 1 July 2004) . . Page.. 3163 ..

points of order. But, in closing, I would like to commend the staff who have remained with us during this very difficult time in family services; they have been under pressure like nothing else, and they have done a fantastic job in very difficult circumstances.

MS DUNDAS (4.16): I thank Mrs Burke for putting this debate on the table. As many have said, child protection is a very important matter and one that we must all take very seriously. One of the reasons I think we need to have such a focus on child protection is that research has clearly shown that a significant portion of harmed children can and do descend, as adults, into homelessness, welfare dependency, failed or dysfunctional relationships, substance abuse, crime and suicide. A majority of those in our prisons were harmed as children, and antisocial behaviour often has poor childhood as a cause. If we can look after our children today, then we can definitely build a better society into the future by having adults who are less likely to lash out and continually show antisocial behaviour.

I think early intervention is definitely something that we need to focus on in relation to child protection. Most of this debate today has focused on the Vardon report, but I wanted to turn back to the Community Services and Social Equity Committee report into the rights, interests and wellbeing of children and young people. I await the government’s rewritten response to that. The committee spent some time focusing on early intervention, particularly in relation to children’s services, and we noted something that the Community Advocate had said. I repeat that quote:

One of the things that I think has happened over the years is that, with the reduction in resources that are available to care and protection agencies and the poor record that care and protection agencies have had—in Australia and overseas countries–care and protection systems have narrowed their focus and not become so involved in preventative work as might well have been the case

The committee went on to note that recent analysis has shown that:

… while the ACT has above average real expenditure per child on child protection and out of home care services … it has the second lowest real expenditure per child on family preservation services.

We are actually supporting the intervention programs that mean that families do not get to the point of crisis where a child needs to be put into protective care.

There is a lot to be said for early intervention and the work that can be done to help families when they are at the cusp of going into full crisis mode. We need to go back a step and look at why children need to be taken away from their families. What is happening in that situation, such that their parents can no longer care for them or that there is systemic abuse happening to those children? Why is that going on? What are we then doing to support those families once it has reached crisis point and the child needs to be removed, so that those families can deal with the issues that led to ongoing harm?

A lot more needs to be focused on in relation to child protection services besides the crisis management end that we seem to be focusing on and besides the record-keeping end that we are focused on at the moment. I think the minister made this point—if not today, she has made it before—that we need to have a focus on the children here, the children who are in care, and what is actually happening to them. There have been

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