Page 4183 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 21 September 2010
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materials and other records used for the home education of a child and the role of mandatory reporting.
As part of care and protection processes, the care and protection act requires that the chief executive prepare an annual report for children or young people on reviewable care orders. A reviewable care and protection order means a care and protection order that is enforced if the order has been enforced for longer than six months and includes a parental responsibility provision, giving parental responsibility for the child or young person to the chief executive or includes a supervision provision.
An annual review report outlines and informs us about the circumstances and living arrangements of a child or young person who is the subject of the care and protection order and whether the chief executive considers the existing arrangements for the care and protection of the child or young person to be in the best interests of that child or young person. This annual report is given to the child or young person, the carers who have daily responsibility for them, the Public Advocate and the Children’s Court. The ACT Greens understand that this amendment clarifies the timing of these reviews to ensure they are completed within a year of the order being made.
The final amendment is looking to increase consistency within the legislation between the written documents and information given to the parties to the proceedings, which must be treated as protected information and ensure that any release of this information is in the best interests of the child. The amendment does this by requiring that the same requirement apply to oral or direct evidence. This allows the best interests of the child to remain paramount and provides the ability to protect reporters. I call on the minister and the department to monitor these amendments to the act and the act itself to ensure that the best interests of the child or young person remain paramount. The ACT Greens will support this bill.
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (11.18): I am happy to be able to speak to this bill today, the Children and Young People Amendment Bill 2010. This bill encompasses four minor amendments, as other members have said, which, when considered holistically, improve the care and protection of children and young people in the territory and continue to strengthen the protection of persons who report their concerns, regarding the care and protection of children and young people in the ACT.
The amendments cover a broad range of issues, including mandatory reporting to protect children and young people receiving approved home education, the timely provision of annual reports for children and young people on reviewable care and protection orders, the provision of sensitive information given or produced to a court, and broadening the capacity for a person who exercises daily care and responsibility for children or young persons under the act to receive appropriate dental advice and treatment. I commend the minister for these amendments and the priority given to ensuring that the care and protection of children and young people for whom this act applies is attended to. There can be no more important objective than this.
The amendments to the mandatory reporting provision places the responsibility for reporting concerns for children and young people receiving approved education with the Department of Education and Training. These officers will monitor the home
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