Child Protection

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (14:58): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. Can the minister advise whether Families SA is contacting foster care service providers prior to children being placed in residential care facilities or whether they are just sending them there straightaway although there are beds available?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for the Public Sector) (14:58): I imagine that there are different things that happen depending on different circumstances. At times, tragically, a very speedy process of going into the household and removing children is required. I have seen the collection of clothes that are kept in various sizes and colours in one of the offices that I visited recently, because sometimes these children are taken with just the clothes on their backs, and there are little backpacks that are ready to provide the nightwear, the change of clothes, the toothbrushes. Now, under those very distressing circumstances a bed for the night is of paramount importance.

There will be other occasions in which there is more of an extended process of investigation, discussion and determination about the best location for that child, even in the short term. Now if what sits behind the member's question is, I think, a very genuine concern about the desirability for children in the foster care system or in the out-of-home care system to be placed with a family, then I agree with her; it is far more desirable for children to be in a loving and supportive household, and if it cannot be theirs, then it needs to be somebody else's.

I take my hat off to the people who provide emergency care in those circumstances where the children have been taken abruptly, and also the longer-term care arrangements leading up to taking other person guardianship where they, in fact, take on the legal responsibilities otherwise assumed by the minister. I am committed to doing everything I can, and the department is also, to increasing the number of foster care and kinship places. We have a substantial amount of money set aside in the budget for the next four years to increase foster care, and also to increase the other person guardianship which creates that stability.