Families SA

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (14:50): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. What is the government doing to ensure Families SA is adequately resourced so that children are not put in danger? The Public Service Association has today launched a radio campaign, At Breaking Point, which claims that Families SA is understaffed by 187 positions and that the organisation is dangerously under-resourced.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (14:50): Yes, the PSA is engaging in some industrial action and some activism on the subject of Families SA, and there are many reasons for this; one is that it is an extraordinarily difficult area of work. The workers there have been under a lot of pressure from public attention and from coronial inquests and of course, as we all know, a royal commission investigating the way in which we manage child protection in this state.

There are constant challenges in keeping enough staff to do the work. There is a slight disagreement in the figures, but I am advised that we have around 120 vacancies at present out of the 1,900 or so cap of the FTEs. One of the challenges we have (as I have mentioned in this place before) is the rate of attrition, which runs at about 7 or 8 per cent in Families SA, whereas the standard government attrition rate is around 3 per cent. That means losing around 150 staff a year which, as you can see, then makes it very difficult for us to continue to bring people on.

We are running constant panels, so we are constantly advertising for positions to be filled and constantly assessing people's capacity to undertake the work. That has resulted in appointing a large number of people in the last year. However, that's been challenged, of course, by a commensurate loss through our attrition rates.

I have, in concern with what has been raised by the PSA—and I have always had a very good relationship with the PSA previously as public sector minister as well—asked the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment to become involved in discussions with the union in order to make sure that the management through the department and the union, as the representative of the workers in Families SA, are having a productive conversation about ways in which we can make sure that there is a pathway.

The letter that they wrote to me did acknowledge that they see the complexities, and that they see the challenges, and that what they are looking for is assurance that there is a pathway to making sure that we have enough people employed to undertake the work. The royal commission will also be very interesting on the subject of the way in which we structure child protection in this state. We do have a lot of people working in the department, albeit with some vacancies that we would very much like to see filled, but it may be that there are other ways of constructing this form of work which makes that more productive and a better outcome for all involved.