Page 564 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011
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comment for me to say yet again that children in care and protection are some of the most vulnerable in our community, but it is important to say it. In order to ensure their protection and best interests are at the heart of what we do, we need to ensure that we have included them in the child and young people’s deaths register and the reports that flow from this register.
This amendment very narrowly defines the children in state care who must be separately reported on. As I said earlier, this simply is not good enough and I think it reflects poorly on the minister. I have moved an alternative definition that will much better reflect the nature of the community’s responsibility to vulnerable children. Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia all have death review teams that identify children and young people that have involvement with the care and protection system in some way.
In 2008 New South Wales expanded their criteria to include as vulnerable children and young people any child or a child with a sibling involved in child protection reports to the New South Wales Department of Community Services within the team’s annual reporting year and the two years prior to it. The Northern Territory reports on the deaths of all children and young people and the ACT is the only jurisdiction not to have a deaths review committee.
The prevention of deaths and serious injury to children from causes that are possible to change is a significant step towards improving the health and wellbeing of children in the ACT. Opportunities for prevention can be identified through the systemic collection and analysis of morbidity and mortality data. Improvements to child-focused systems and services and changes to policies or practices can assist in the prevention of further deaths and injuries and contribute to reducing human and financial costs to the community and to government.
The majority of deaths of children are from natural causes such as diseases and infections, genetic conditions and cancer. Some of these deaths may be preventable. Deaths from external causes such as transport-related fatalities, suffocation and suicide can also offer opportunities for prevention, and the circumstances and causes of these deaths are very important for our community to consider.
The children and young people death review committee will become an important mechanism for in-depth analysis of legislation, policies, practices, systems and service delivery. This mechanism will demonstrate a commitment to openness, transparency and accountability. Where the committee makes recommendations there also needs to be a commitment to fostering a learning and development culture within the community, including government departments, in order to promote continuous improvement in practice quality.
This is a real benefit that the children and young people death review committee will provide. The nature of being a child or young person known to Care and Protection is a risk factor in itself. However, that does not automatically give way to blame or cries of wrongdoing by anyone involved in that system. The role of the committee is to very strongly provide a narrative context of the death and the circumstances surrounding that death. The role of this committee is not to attribute blame, but rather
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