Page 1807 - Week 05 - Thursday, 2 April 2009
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that I looked forward to the opportunity to make a more substantial statement on the government’s agenda for action in the children and youth portfolio this year. And I am pleased to have that opportunity today.
In one way, children and youth is not a very political portfolio. Our real goals are very practical: help children and young people in all Canberra families—all kids, not just the challenging cases or the teen prodigies—and help the most vulnerable to help themselves. In another way, children and youth is all about politics, because it is all about values. The progressive political values of fairness and community are the values which mark a good society for our kids. And these are the values that drive Labor politics and these are the values that drive our policies. And that is why 2009 will be a year of action and a year of planning for the future.
In my ministerial statement last December, I said the government had hit the ground running. We began as we intended to continue and we continued as we have begun. In the children and youth policy area, 2009 is already a year of action—action to make sure more parents can get childcare for their kids. We have opened four new early childhood schools at Southern Cross in Scullin, Narrabundah, Isabella Plains and Lyons. We have created an additional 120 childcare places and 15 occasional care places in areas such as Gowrie, Rivett and Yarralumla, meaning an extra 850 licensed childcare places will be made available in 2009—action to make sure kids get childcare of the highest quality.
We have launched new childcare services standards to improve the quality of childcare. We will publish a childcare standards report annually, to improve transparency and accountability in the childcare sector. And, under the third phase of the new Children and Young People Act, we are driving new policies and procedures, staff and stakeholder training and compliance in monitoring measures—action for the professionals who care for our kids.
We are helping childcare workers gain vocational education and training qualifications through the Canberra Institute of Technology. Enrolments in the Diploma of Children’s Services have more than doubled and this will mean more than 100 extra child carers every year.
We are helping new child and protection professionals make Canberra their new home, with a buddy system for 33 new workers from Ireland, Scotland and England.
And this is only the beginning of our year. During 2009, the government will be doing much more. We will be listening—listening to our new youth homelessness working group; listening to our children’s services forum and their ideas to beat the shortage of childcare workers; listening to the needs of playgroups in the territory. And I am very much looking forward tomorrow to listening to the many young people who have been involved in Youth Week activities.
We will be investing—investing $250,000 in the forward design work for a new child and family centre in Belconnen; investing $3 million to build two new childcare centres in areas of high demand in the ACT; investing $1.9 million to expand youth health services in Belconnen, Gungahlin and Tuggeranong. And we will be
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