Page 2196 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 August 2016

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Back in September 2015, when I brought a motion to the Assembly about adoption, Mr Gentleman, who was then the Minister for Children and Young People, put forward an amendment to my original motion. It called on the ACT government “to recognise the benefits for children, young people and families in making sure that adoption processes give careful consideration to the circumstances of each child, that each adoption is in the best interest of a child and accommodates the need to appropriately work through issues around birth parents’ consent to adoption, and works with prospective adoptive parents in a collaborative manner”. That is the point we got to at the end of the motion back in September.

The a step up for our kids strategy has, at its core, the aim to provide permanency and long-term stability for children and young people in out of home care who are unable to live with their parents. We all understand, I think, that that is the basic starting point, and for children who can remain with their birth family that will often be the best outcome. But there is always a small cohort of children and young people for whom that is not possible. Trying to reduce the amount of time that a child must be in a foster care placement before being considered for adoption was part of the reason for bringing additional legislation to the Assembly to give effect to the strategy.

We have not seen that take place as yet. It is difficult to imagine and understand that for a child who has been in out of home care, in a foster care placement, for a period of 12 months on a care and protection order and who has then been part of an adoption application for one, two or three years, that might not be in the best interests of that child. If it is not in the best interests of that child, surely the department, the government, in some way, will have changed the placement of that child.

If we take it for granted that it is in the best interests of that child to remain with that family, why are they being forced to wait one, two or three years into the process? And when I say three years, that particular case is still ongoing. It is still ongoing, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I would like to thank Dr Bourke for his amendment today. I support the major thrust of his amendment, but I have circulated an amendment to Dr Bourke’s amendment. I seek leave to move an amendment to my amendment to replace the word “March” with “February”.

Leave granted.

MS LAWDER: I thank members for their indulgence. I move:

Omit paragraph (2)(b), substitute:

“(b) report back to the Assembly by the last sitting day of February 2017 on the work of the cross-directorate Domestic Adoptions Taskforce; and

(i) what progress, if any, it has made in prioritising faster processing of local adoptions since September 2015; and

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