Child Protection Screening

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (14:40): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. Has the minister now identified the flaws in the process of screening and ongoing monitoring of Families SA staff that allowed issues of high concern regarding 20 per cent of residential care workers going undetected and unactioned until they were uncovered via the audit of front-line workers undertaken by Mal Hyde last year?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for the Public Sector) (14:40): I think we just need to disentangle some of the assumptions there because that is a characterisation that does not ring well in my ears. What the Hyde audit undertook to do—and it was initiated by my predecessor in a very responsible move—was to ascertain what processes had been used to employ people who were working in the residential care area.

A variety of processes had been undertaken over several years and it was the view that some of them were less satisfactory than others. The process has been gone through and a number of staff have been cleared and are at work. I believe a couple are still being investigated, and we are aware of that investigation. However, it was a very responsible approach in order to make sure that high standards were being applied. In saying that, I note that our standards improve over time. Our expectations improve and our capacity to test and measure the qualities that we are looking for in our staff also improve.