Page 2562 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 5 June 2012
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MRS BURCH: Mr Speaker, I have been very willing to discuss care and protection with any member of the community or, indeed, any member of this place. As the Assembly knows, the Public Advocate handed down her Review of the emergency response strategy for children in crisis in the ACT. I absolutely want to thank the Public Advocate for her work and for the report she has produced. She has made a number of recommendations that I believe will improve the statutory care and protection services in the ACT and indeed how we as a government and as a community can help our most vulnerable children and families. As a result I am pleased to say that the government has agreed to all seven of the recommendations, with one being agreed in part.
This most current Public Advocate’s report and the interim report released last October came as the result of my request for an independent review of arrangements for children who required emergency placements. I made this request because I was deeply concerned about the quality of care for these children. I did not shy away from the issue. I acted promptly and had an immediate review done, and then went on to the second part of that review, for which the report was tabled last week.
Mrs Dunne feels that I have shied away or have tried not to be forthcoming in accepting the Public Advocate’s findings, and she could not be more wrong. The Public Advocate has found some serious issues in relation to the processes surrounding emergency responses for children at risk and for those children who have been placed in out-of-home care.
Her findings and recommendations present a challenge to government to do it better and we recognise and are ready to meet that challenge. Already the government has progressed some significant reforms and the interim report is having a positive impact. Indeed I am pleased to say that the Public Advocate has acknowledged that progress has been made since the interim report. She said to the Canberra Times on 26 April:
Over the past six months I have been most impressed with the improvements to the system that have been put in place by the community services directorate.
It is important to remember that the most current report looks at practices before those changes were implemented, so that it does not reflect the progress that has been made and the work that is underway. Indeed as Joe Tucci of the Australian Childhood Foundation noted:
The conclusions and recommendations—
of the Public Advocate’s report—
also need to be understood in the context of what has been achieved already by the ACT government. It is the only jurisdiction in the country that has managed to fill all of its front line job vacancies. It has an effective recruitment and retention program for its workforce. It has begun the long investment required to build early intervention support services for vulnerable families. It is offering more therapeutic support to foster carers and kinship carers.
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