Education and Child Development Department

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (15:05): Excellent, thank you, sir. My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. Can the minister advise the house about the education and care services available to South Australian families with young children?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (15:05): I thank the member for his question, and I am always delighted to talk about the services available for young children and, of course, for their families who are intimately involved in the quality of experience that young people have. If we do not support families, we do not support young children.

Yesterday, I had the very great pleasure of attending a lecture given by Nigel Richardson, who is from Leeds, where they have done a tremendous amount of work to improve not just their child protection system but more generally the way in which young people's experience leads, from the full experience from their education and their health and also, of course, very much about their safety. What was interesting was that a good part of the talk he gave resonated very much with the role of our children centres, which, of course, were the initiative of one of my predecessors in this role who is now the Premier.

The idea of these children's centres is that you not only provide services that support the children themselves but also you are able to provide in a non-threatening way very much needed services for the parents of those children in a way that is not about intervening from a child protection statutory perspective but is about ensuring that parenting is improved and of the highest quality possible. The capacity in these children's centres to integrate with allied health services as well as with social workers as necessary and, of course, primarily with educators is a tremendous effort which is absolutely crucial in our response to supporting young children and their families.

As we deal with the reality of our child protection system, we have understood in recent times—having to deal with so many children in South Australia—that by the age of 10 we know that nearly a quarter of all 10 year olds have had at least one notification into our system and that 19 per cent of all 10 year olds have had a notification that has been screened in, yet we only have in the out-of-home-care system 1.8 per cent of our children. Between those two statistics lies an enormous amount of support and help that needs to be given to families to stay strong and to be the kind of supportive and loving and nurturing families that children deserve.

In South Australia, we have had a very long tradition of supporting early childhood development, and particularly early education. We have the visionary Lillian de Lissa and also Lady Gowrie, both of whom have lent their names to various centres to this day. But it is in recent times, through the work of this government in establishing these children's centres and establishing a focus on the importance of the development in the early years, that we have really seen an acceleration in the quality of what is being offered.

Of course, Professor Mustard has given advice, and Carla Rinaldi again has been in Adelaide very recently and met with the Premier, whom I know she cherishes as one of the most visionary leaders in early childhood in the world. She has worked closely with the method of engaging with children at a young age in order to ensure that through play, through enjoying being a child, children are able to develop the skills and the capabilities that will serve them in the long term.

So, we have done much, but we have more to do, and we will be working very hard not only on the child protection, the statutory end of our system, but also on supporting kids from birth and their families.