Page 810 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 March 2016
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This morning is an opportunity to talk about an issue that I know we all are very concerned about—that is, care and protection in the ACT, including the recently announced review into the system level responses to family violence in the ACT that is being conducted by Mr Laurie Glanfield AM under the Inquiries Act 1991. I am pleased to be able to speak on this important matter today. Of course we all agree that the best interests of our most vulnerable children and young people are the paramount consideration, as set out in the Children and Young People Act. Recently there have been some very tragic cases reported in the media involving a child or young person in ACT care and protection services where family violence has occurred. I will not go into the detail of those cases today except to reiterate that they are very tragic cases.
As we are aware, in February 2016 the ACT government announced a review into the system level responses to family violence in the ACT to be conducted by Mr Laurie Glanfield under the Inquiries Act. The terms of reference set out what Mr Glanfield will be looking at, including the effectiveness of interactions between government directorates, agencies and service providers in relation to the use of mandatory reporting as prescribed by legislation and the appropriateness of responses to those reports. The review will also consider the effectiveness of government directorates and agencies and service providers’ responses to family violence, particularly where children are involved, and the extent to which ACT authorities are legally able to and do actually share and receive information on at-risk families internally and with other jurisdictions.
At the outset I would like to congratulate the government on moving quickly to establish that review, which the Canberra Liberals very much support. It was swift action in response to a very tragic case. But there have been a number of reports in previous years about care and protection and some other examples. Again, I am not going to go into those specifics today. But recently in the Canberra Times the Victims of Crime Commissioner for the ACT, John Hinchey, made some comments about an urgent need for better information sharing on family violence matters. That was in response to this inquiry that has been announced. He highlighted the important issue of information sharing across services and systems and the need for governments to share information across borders.
It is a salient point, and I would like to reiterate it. In the ACT we need better information sharing between care and protection services and other directorates and agencies. The mechanics needed to implement any information sharing arrangements need to be worked out, and I am hopeful this review is going to look at some of those. But we have heard these things before, Madam Speaker. For example, back in 2003 a former member of this place, Mr Hargreaves, tabled a report from the community services and social equity standing committee on the rights, interests and wellbeing of children and young people. One of the points Mr Hargreaves made when he tabled that report was that we needed to effect a change in the turf war mentality of sharing information, a change to the one child, one file system whereby the information on a child’s life and care is collected at a single point and shared with other agencies in an interagency approach. Hopefully that is what we have been working towards since that report was tabled in 2003. We need to make sure we are making progress on all of these recommendations—there have been a number of other reports about care and protection matters.
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