Page 697 - Week 02 - Thursday, 16 February 2017

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(2) The number of permanent care placements varies from year to year. This is due to a number of factors including the number of foster or kinship carers who decide to consider a permanent placement and the number of suitable permanency placements identified.

(3) Child and Youth Protection Services (CYPS), within the Community Services Directorate, does not hold reliable data regarding the number of parents involved in the ACT child protection system with disability. Any information of this nature that CYPS collects is voluntary and self-reported and therefore limited. As the new Client Management System is built CYPS will explore methodology to monitor the experience of parents with disabilities in the child protection system.

Under the ACT Government’s Out of Home Care Strategy, A Step Up for Our Kids, new services have been implemented to support parents with children in care, or with children at risk of entering care, including parents with a disability.

Since December 2015, the Australian Red Cross has been delivering the Birth Family Advocacy Support Service. This service provides independent information and support to parents with children in care, or with children at risk of entering care. It aims to empower parents to effectively, and in an informed way, understand and participate in child protection processes.

From January 2016, Uniting began delivering a range of new services to vulnerable families in the ACT community through the Strengthening High Risk Families domain under A Step Up for Our Kids.

Uniting’s Child and Families ACT program delivers services that are focussed on providing supports within families to prevent children from coming into care, or returning them home as soon as it is safe to do so.

Children and young people—disabled parents
(Question No 38)

Ms Le Couteur asked the Minister for Disability, Children and Youth, upon notice, on 16 December 2016:

(1) How many children in the care of Child and Youth Protection Services (CYPS) have one or more parent with a disability.

(2) On what grounds have children under CYPS who have one or more parent with a disability been removed from their birth parents’ care.

Ms Stephen-Smith: The answer to the member’s question is as follows:

(1) Child and Youth Protection Services (CYPS) does not hold reliable data regarding the number of parents involved in the ACT child protection system with disability. Any information of this nature that CYPS collects is voluntary and self reported and

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