Page 258 - Week 01 - Thursday, 29 November 2012
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The proposed amendments will remove references to good order being a basis to conduct a strip search. Further, the government has also extended this amendment to the removal of good order as a reason for body searches under the Children and Young People Act. These amendments protect the rights and interests of children and young people by limiting the grounds on which a strip search and body search can take place.
Aside from acting on two key recommendations of the Human Rights Commission’s Youth Justice Review, this bill also addresses the issue of revoking general parental authorities for foster carers and residential care services when they no longer provide or intend to provide care to children and young people.
Sections 519 and 520 of the Children and Young People Act enable the director-general to authorise foster carers and residential care services to exercise daily care or long-term parental responsibilities for any child or young person for whom the director-general has daily or long-term parental responsibility. Sections 523 and 524 enable the director-general to revoke a carer’s authorisation when carers have failed to perform their responsibilities or where the person has sought to have the authority revoked.
The act does not include a provision enabling the director-general to revoke the authority when the carer or entity is no longer available to provide care or where the carer or entity has not provided care during a period of time. Without the capacity to revoke such authorities, carers and entities remain authorised when no longer providing or intending to provide care to children and young people.
The amendment addresses this issue by incorporating additional criteria to apply to the revoking of foster carers and residential care services where they are no longer available to provide care or have not provided regular authorised care for a child during the past 12 months.
This new provision would not prohibit a carer or entity from applying to become a carer at a later time and the process to revoke a parent’s authorisation remains the same. It still remains that procedural fairness and natural justice provisions of the Children and Young People Act must be followed.
Madam Speaker, I would like to advise the Assembly that I propose to amend clause 8, revocation of foster carer’s authorisation, to make clear that the ground for revoking a carer’s authorisation is because the carer has not acted as a foster carer in the previous 12 months and is no longer willing or able to act as a foster carer, or that the foster carer has moved and reasonable efforts to locate the carer have been unsuccessful.
The final amendment relates to the Children and Young People Death Review Committee. Last year the Legislative Assembly passed the Children and Young People (Death Review) Amendment Bill 2010, which established the Children and Young People’s Death Committee. The committee has a number of important functions, including to help prevent or reduce the likelihood of the death of children and young people. The committee is required to maintain a register of deaths of children and young people.
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