Page 1236 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 March 2013
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Clauses 8 and 9 refer to revocation of foster carers and residential care service’s authorisation. These clauses simply make it clear that an authorisation for carers is revoked when they have not acted as a foster carer or residential care service in the previous 12 months or if they are no longer available to be a foster carer. It makes some sense for the director-general to have the capacity to revoke licences under these circumstances so as to ensure that authorisations do not remain current for carers or entities that no longer provide care or no longer intend to.
This would not prevent people from reapplying for an authorisation and would probably also allow for a useful review of skills and training as people do so. There are constant updates to training provided. While carers may have lots of experience, even so it is not a bad thing for updates to occur.
The government’s amendment distributed the other day also requires a reasonable effort to be made to contact a foster carer before revoking the licence, which would seem sensible as we do not want to revoke licences of foster carers who may actually be interested in further care placements but simply not have participated for 12 months, perhaps for quite legitimate personal reasons.
Of course, the provision to revoke an authorisation due to a failure in providing care or complying with a direction still exists and should be used when it is appropriate. This new measure should not be used as a way to revoke authorisations by a less confrontational backdoor method at all.
Clause 10 discusses or brings about changes to details that can be recorded on the children and young people death register. The children and young people death review committee was a welcome initiative of my colleague Meredith Hunter in 2010. The committee is proving to be a very valuable resource in assisting us to do our very best to prevent future child deaths. This was a basic rationale for the establishment of a comprehensive child and young person death review mechanism in the territory.
We are not completely sure why this amendment is necessary, as it merely prevents information in relation to a child going on the register at all until a coronial inquest or a review by the territory is completed. Previously the legislation stated:
… the CYP death review committee must not include any information on the register about the cause or circumstances of the death until the coronial inquest or review has ended.
This amendment ensures that no information is entered on the register until any coronial inquest or a review by the territory is complete. We do not have strong opposition to this amendment at this time. However, we will be monitoring any implications that may unexpectedly arise. Of course, we certainly do not want to see anything put in place that might prevent the child death review team from undertaking its work effectively.
In conclusion, I would like to make a few broad observations and close by talking about other work in the complex area of youth justice. I note that after some initial
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