Child Protection

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (14:48): How many other cases involving multiple notifications of child abuse have been closed with no action taken?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for the Public Sector) (14:48): I will just disentangle that. There are multiple notifications on many families; to find out how many I would have to take that on notice. There are notifications that are investigated and then closed and there are notifications that are not investigated because the case is already open, so I do not think your question could be answered by a single figure.

The reality is that there are, as I said, this year—last year it was 52,000 and this year it is going to be 60,000 phone calls that come in of notifications to the CARL line to say that there is an issue. A study was done in 2008 in South Australia that indicated about one in four children by the time they turn 18 will receive a notification. I do not believe that one in four children need to have either serious investigation or to be removed from their family. We are dealing with a large number of notifications, a large number of interactions, with families and a fortunately relatively small number of children who are actually in difficulty. Trying to create a system that identifies those and doesn't miss the ones who shouldn't be missed is challenging, but it is one that I am actively engaged in.