Page 2904 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 14 August 2019
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The Community Services Directorate acted well before the mid-term evaluation was released. We remain committed to ensuring that all children and young people in out of home care do have an initial therapeutic assessment. The Community Services Directorate has engaged the Australian Childhood Trauma Group to facilitate the completion of approximately 270 therapeutic assessments by June 2020. There were 110 therapeutic assessments completed in 2017-18 and 229 in 2018-19.
This is a challenge that the Community Services Directorate was aware of, and certainly made me aware of, well before the completion of the mid-term evaluation report, and has acted to address it. The work of the Australian Childhood Trauma Group will, as I said, facilitate the completion of approximately 270 therapeutic assessments by June next year.
MRS KIKKERT: Minister, why did you allow this significant backlog of important therapeutic plans to occur during your first 18 months as minister?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mrs Kikkert for the supplementary. In terms of the challenges that are faced in recruitment and retention of specialist staff in this area, the first attempt was to try to ensure that we recruited and retained appropriate staff. When it became clear that that was not going to be the case, the Community Services Directorate took steps to engage an external provider to ensure that those therapeutic assessments could take place. I acknowledge that that resulted in a lag in the process, but I would certainly reject any assertion that either I was not aware of or acting on it or that the Community Services Directorate was not aware of or acting on the issue.
MR PARTON: Minister, how are providers able to give kids the right placements or supports when this government provides so few of them with the required therapeutic plan on which those decisions should be based?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mr Parton for the supplementary question, but I think it goes to a point around what exactly a therapeutic assessment is. There is quite a lot of misunderstanding around this. It is not that a therapeutic assessment is required before a caseworker can understand the needs of a child or young person. So it would be a mistake to say that without a therapeutic assessment no-one can make any decisions about the right place or choices or programs for children and young people.
Ms Lawder: The question was not about the assessment; the question was about a therapeutic plan and only 22 per cent having a plan, not an assessment, and how—
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: They are the same thing!
Ms Lawder: Well, how can you make decisions about them if you do not have it?
MADAM SPEAKER: There is no need for a conversation across the floor, Ms Lawder.
Ms Lawder: Apparently there is.
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