Page 478 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 2019
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The first objective of A step up for our kids is to intervene and provide support early to ensure that children can stay safe at home with their families or be returned to their families where possible. But the second objective, where that is not possible, is that children and young people in out of home care receive a secure, loving, permanent home. One of the outcomes of ensuring that children stay in the system and do not bounce in and out of child protection—that, if they are not able to be returned safely to their families, they have a secure, loving home—is that children will stay in the out of home care system until they are 18 years old, unless they are adopted. They will be counted in those numbers.
So, yes, there is a complexity in this system. Our early intervention supports through Uniting Children and Families is having an impact on restoring children to their birth families and seeing them united. We have implemented family group conferencing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, which has seen families make their own decisions, understand their challenges and keep children safe at home. We are starting to see the impacts of those policies. But this takes time. We are 2½ years into a five-year strategy. It will take time.
MRS JONES: Minister, what precisely is the ACT government doing to increase adoption for those who cannot go back to their families?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mrs Jones for her supplementary question. Of course we had a task force on the timeliness of the adoption processes and we have made some changes in relation to providing better information for potential adoptive families and for birth families around adoption processes in response to that.
In addition, one of the findings of that task force was that additional resources would help to deliver more adoption outcomes and permanency outcomes. I think it is really important to emphasise that we are also talking about ensuring parental responsibility orders which provide permanency. As a result, the 2018-19 budget invested $3.46 million over four years to continue to support an increase in permanency for children and young people where restoration to their birth family is not possible, through either an enduring responsibility order or through adoption.
We also have a discussion paper out at the moment in response to another one of the recommendations from that report around the process of dispensing with parental consent. I must emphasise, because this has also been the subject of media reporting recently, that this is about improving the timeliness and the process for adoption. This is not about increasing the number of children who are available for adoption or dispensing with parental consent willy-nilly. This is about ensuring that the process reflects the best interests of children and young people.
Adoption is a very serious decision that affects the legal identity of children and young people. It affects the human rights of parents and it is absolutely critical that our processes reflect those very important factors.
MRS KIKKERT: Minister, why has the ACT government not committed to a two-year maximum in out of home care as the New South Wales government has?
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