Page 2016 - Week 06 - Thursday, 9 June 2016
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government in January 2015. The aim of the bill is to strengthen decision-making around children and young people in our out of home care system by giving out of home care providers more independence in overseeing care arrangements for children and young people on long-term orders through the delegation of decision-making from the director-general.
As with any legislation of this type, the best interests of the child or young person will remain the paramount consideration. We support the move towards giving out of home care providers greater autonomy in making decisions about children and young people in their care and moving those decisions closer to the child and their carer. We do want to make sure that this delegation of decision-making power about children and young people from the director-general to out of home care providers does not reduce our ability to make sure that the best interests of the child or young person remain the paramount consideration and we need to ensure that there are no unintended detrimental impacts on our vulnerable children and young people. So I am sure that we, along with the government, will be watching the implementation of the bill very closely.
The bill enables the director-general to delegate to an out of home care provider the ability to provide protected information about a young person or adult to the young person or adult. Making it easier for the young person to access information about themselves will hopefully make it easier for them to learn more about their history and develop their sense of identity.
This bill introduces a number of technical amendments, for example to clarify and simplify the time frames for preparing and submitting annual review reports and to change the reporting period for the ACT Children and Young People Death Review Committee annual reporting from financial year to calendar year.
The bill proposes amendments to the Adoption Act 1993 to clarify the interpretation of the act. The amendments clarify the intent to allow a couple, where one party to the adoption is a relative, to be able to adopt a child and no longer requires the principal officer of a private adoption agency to be an ACT resident. We hope that these changes to the Adoption Act 1993 will result in adoption matters being processed more quickly.
In conclusion, the Canberra Liberals will support this bill today and will watch the implementation closely and hope that it continues to ensure the best interests of the child or young person remain the paramount consideration.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (9.02): I will be speaking briefly in support of this bill, the most recent iteration of the ACT government’s ongoing reform of the care and protection system, reforms that are seeking to support parents to retain care of their children safely, reduce the rate of children coming into out of home care and improve the outcomes for those children and young people that are in care.
Madam Speaker, the care and protection system requires a constant cycle of review and improvement. There is little room for complacency in an area of human services that is so complex, so fraught and made up of such vulnerable clients. Around the
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