Page 4500 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 18 October 2011
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We saw serious and repeated breaches of the law. Seven years ago, this government and the whole community were aware things were going very badly in this area. This is from the Vardon report:
On 11 December 2003 the Chief Executive of the Department of Education … told the responsible Minister that the Department had failed to comply with s.162(2) of the Children and Young People Act …
That states that when children are removed from their families they must be placed and that external scrutiny is necessary to monitor their safety. We had breaches of the law back in 2003. This is still happening. The report goes on:
This was poor advice, and it is an example of the unreliability of departmental systems.
This is still happening. In fact, part of the minister’s defence is that the systems broke down. This was happening back in 2003. It goes on:
… the safety of children and young people has been compromised.
This is still happening. It goes on:
This report shows there are consequences for children from a statutory system which has been failing, staff with workloads that simply could not be met, adversarial attitudes between people meant to be working together for children and high staff turnover at all levels.
The Vardon report, referring to the territory parent as a conscientious parent, states that there are three questions that a parent should be able to answer immediately:
How many children do you have?
Where are they?
How are they?
Family services could not answer the second and third questions with the speed and accuracy that would engender confidence. This is still happening, and it is shameful.
We do not need to rely on the words of the opposition to damn this minister. We can rely on the words of the Public Advocate. Her report speaks for itself. The Public Advocate’s report speaks for itself. So I am going to read out a number of quotes from the Public Advocate on this matter. This is from page 3:
The findings and recommendations highlight the deficiencies in the systems and application of due process by your Directorate.
From page 14:
It is interesting to note that current Policy/Procedure on Placements is dated 2004, and does not reflect current practice.
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