Page 253 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 February 2018
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During Youth Week, in April, we will celebrate the achievements of young Canberrans who have significantly contributed through their personal endeavours and strong leadership to creating a more inclusive community for all. If you know an outstanding young Canberran I encourage you to nominate them for a Young Canberran of the Year award. Nominations are now open. Youth Week grants have enabled a range of activities and programs to be planned and delivered by young people for young people. We hope to harness this enthusiasm to explore ideas and themes to inform the next youth conference that we will deliver in partnership with the Youth Advisory Council later this year.
The implementation of the national disability insurance scheme is only the beginning of the work that still needs to be done to realise the full and equal participation of people with disability in our society. The NDIS is a groundbreaking reform for people with disability. However, eligibility extends to only a small proportion of the 62,000 Canberrans with disability. The ACT government has a responsibility to create an inclusive and welcoming community for all people with a disability. This is why we have established the office for disability, to continue to progress our commitment to achieving outcomes for people with disability through the priorities of the national disability strategy, as well as supporting the ongoing implementation of the NDIS to the full scheme.
One critical area of work that still needs to be addressed is the systemic inequality and disadvantage experienced by people with disability in accessing justice as victims, offenders and witnesses. To this end, I am pleased that we have progressed work on our commitment to develop a disability justice strategy, through a detailed gap analysis, and will shortly commence consultation on the way forward.
I am pleased to tell you that this year the ACT government will introduce legislation to establish a new ACT office of the senior practitioner to reduce and eliminate the use of restrictive practices. A key aspect of the senior practitioner’s role will be to work closely with the ACT community to provide education and improve awareness about restrictive practices, promote best practice and build sector capacity for more positive behaviour supports.
The Attorney-General has spoken of the priority the ACT government is giving to responding to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. We are committed to learning from the experiences of the brave survivors who came forward, and I look forward to working with the attorney to consider and act on the royal commission’s recommendations.
We are constantly improving the way we deliver services to the community, including to some of our most vulnerable children, young people and families. In 2018 proposed legislative amendments to the Children and Young People Act 2008 aim to enhance the way the ACT child protection system operates. This includes progressing our response to recommendations from the 2016 Glanfield inquiry into system level responses to family violence in the ACT, where the ACT government agreed to remove legislative barriers that can prevent child and youth protection services from effectively appraising the safety and wellbeing of a child.
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