Page 397 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
young people often have no alternative sources of support. I would like to emphasise the point that the territory is the parent and has to more than fulfil an administrative burden to ensure that there is a roof over these young people’s heads while orders are in place. The community is supposed to fulfil the role of parent, and this involves a complex relationship and ongoing responsibility with reciprocal responsibilities and an inherent level of dependence.
Just the same as for most other young people in our community, that relationship does not end at their 18th birthday. It is our responsibility as community representatives to set the standards of care that we expect for the young people in our community’s care. We have an obligation to legislate to support this group of young people. This is why the Greens believe that protections such as a statutory charter of rights are so important. As a community, we have set up a statutory system to look after the children who can no longer remain with their birth parents. In doing so as a community we have collectively agreed on what standards of care we expect to be provided to these young people. Something as important as this should not be simply left to policy made by the government of the day. Community standards of care and the rights of children in out-of-home care should be clearly stated to provide the highest levels of protection and care to all.
There are many issues where the government of the day should certainly be able to exercise their particular policy views—planning-related regulations, for example, as the city planning needs change with population growth and competing land needs. Any government should have the right to develop and mould policy to meet those needs. However, the lives of young people should not oscillate between political parties, election cycles or changing policy of governments. The basic and bare minimum expectations should be set out within legislation clearly for all to know, understand and adhere to.
In October 2010 the ACT Greens released “Strengthening our support of young people transitioning out of care: a new framework”. The paper raised many issues but concentrated on providing a solution-based focus for the future—an action plan to get better outcomes for young people transitioning from out-of-home care.
The Greens put forward a five-point plan to strengthen supports for young people transitioning out of care. This included the provision of material and non-material support until young people reached 25 years of age, the development of a comprehensive leaving care plan for every child leaving care in the ACT, and free access to personal identification materials such as birth certificates and other personal items and information such as education documents, photographs and case files.
The Greens also strongly believe that the ACT would benefit from a non-government post-care service to provide ongoing and coordinated support to young people and young adults who have left care. We will continue to lobby for this as a priority for those who are leaving the out-of-home care system.
Through ongoing pressure and awareness raising about this issue, we saw several announcements made by the government during the 2011-12 ACT budget process. This has included provision of extra funding to provide financial supports to young
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video