Page 3585 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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part in. I believe it goes to issues around respect for people’s religion and culture. I hope that there will be an incorporation of more meaningful indicators in future budgets.
MS BURCH (Brindabella—Minister for Community Services, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Women and Minister for Gaming and Racing) (12.16): I want to start by saying that Mrs Dunne did have an opportunity to talk positively about the work that the Community Services Directorate does, but as usual she spoke on and on and attacked not only me personally but also the hard work of the Community Services Directorate. She did not once offer a vision, a plan or anything positive that she would do; it was just a typical Dunne spray of attack.
This budget does provide increased levels of help and support to Canberrans, providing vital services to people who are in distressing circumstances. The budget sees us allocating significant resources for front-line services, gives support to fresh policy thinking and provides enhanced support for the vital community sector. In short, it is a budget that delivers for the needs of today’s community while planning ahead for the demands of tomorrow.
I would like to go to some areas in the budget. Overall, this budget focuses on caring for our vulnerable children and young people and their families by allocating more than $20 million to support and strengthen the delivery of out-of-home care and protection services. Funding of $15.3 million provides an increased base of funding to the out of home care program. This is in recognition of the increasing number of children coming into our care.
Based on current models, funding will support an additional 89 places in foster care, kinship and residential care arrangements. There is an additional $5.3 million over four years for care and protection services to improve services for children and young people. We are supporting care and protection staff by providing $550,000 over three years to support our practices and processes. A retention bonus will be introduced to encourage front-line staff to stay. In fact our turnover of staff has halved. We now have a turnover rate of five per cent, which is extraordinary in such difficult areas.
In the area of youth justice, we have provided $5 million over four years to support services. I also remind those here that we launched the youth justice blueprint recently, which was well received by all.
The important work of implementing the early education and care services under the national quality framework has been recognised in this budget through the provision of $1.6 million over two years to embed the framework and support the childcare sector—that is, support the childcare sector, regardless of what Mrs Dunne would say, as the new standards are implemented.
At a meeting recently with the CEO of ACECQA, the national body overseeing these reforms, when she was in Canberra, she noted publicly that the CPRU, the regulation unit within the Community Services Directorate, has the best relationship with the children’s services sector that she has seen across the country. So thank you to the
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