eCARL

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (15:16): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. Can the minister inform the house how many eCARL reports remain unchecked as of today? It has been reported that there are approximately 100 eCARL reports per day, and of these only 70 per day are assessed. It has also been reported that there is a backlog of over 1,000 reports that remain unchecked.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for the Public Sector) (15:16): The short answer is that I can't say the precise number for today. The slightly longer answer is that it would not be a surprise to anybody, including the member for Adelaide, who pays attention, I know, to these child protection matters, that we have had escalating numbers of notifications, some of which are screened in and some of which aren't. The numbers for eCARL have, in particular, increased dramatically over fairly recent times.

For the information of the house, eCARL is an electronic means of making a notification to the CARL team. It is designed for mandatory notifiers, and not only in the training of mandatory notifiers but also in the process of making an eCARL notification it is very clear that it is not to be used for any pressing and urgent and immediate matter. It is used to provide other notifications, all of which—or at least most of which—are likely to be of importance.

What we have is a situation where the numbers have escalated and outstripped our immediate capacity to deal with them in a timely fashion. What we are doing at present to try to manage that issue is filling some vacancies; we are deep into that process, and I hope to see that shortly. Members will also be aware that there has been discussion about whether we ought to introduce some non social worker staff in addition to assist with some of the workload in that area.

I know that the union is uncertain about whether that will be useful, and we are only contemplating it in the context of a pilot because what we are dealing with is not only an increasing number of notifications but also this ongoing challenge that we receive information that doesn't meet the threshold that is required for screening in as a notification.

We are managing a lot of calls, in particular, that are taking time out of that team's work day but don't result in a notification that requires screening in. So, there are a number of complex and very serious matters going on within the team at present, and not least, in fact, is filling those vacancies. It is extremely difficult for that team, who work very hard, to keep up, and I have enormous sympathy for the challenge that they are facing and I am monitoring very closely how we are responding to those challenges.