Child Protection

Ms STINSON (Badcoe) (14:16): My question is to the Minister for Child Protection. How does the minister plan to encourage more South Australians to take on a child in care?

The Hon. R. SANDERSON (Adelaide—Minister for Child Protection) (14:16): I thank the member for this very important question, and I further note that the numbers went backwards: more people left the foster care system under Labor than joined—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER Order!

The Hon. R. SANDERSON: —despite the millions of dollars that were announced. What I have been doing—and I also did a lot of work in this area in opposition—particularly in the regional areas, is I have met with lots of foster carers and kinship carers, and I held two forums in Parliament House in opposition.

What I was hearing consistently was that under the former Labor government there was a complete lack of respect for foster and kinship carers. They were treated as babysitters. They weren't given adequate information. They weren't given Medicare numbers. They weren't given their blue books to know of their vaccinations or their health. They weren't even told of the circumstances where children had come into care. Many of them were re-traumatising children by leaving them in a room at night by themselves with no light on, not knowing that they had been abused. There were many things that were going wrong under the former Labor government for foster carers, which was causing them to leave.

Another area of concern was the inability to find out what care concerns were regarding and to then put their case forward to dispute. For example, one lady told me of two foster children she had who were fighting at the top of the stairs. She grabbed one of the boys by the wrist to stop him from falling down the stairs and then had a care concern recorded against her as if she was some criminal. She was never given the opportunity to give her side of the story of what had happened.

What I will be doing is treating our foster carers and kinship carers with the respect that they deserve. They are doing a very, very important job on behalf of all of us, the state. The children of the state are all of our responsibility. As their legal guardian, I particularly take that with great responsibility, and I am very thankful to all of the foster carers and kinship carers. In fact, Anglicare has an information night coming up on 13 June, I believe it is, at 6pm, and I have been encouraging people I meet who are interested to please go along and find out how they can be part of the solution with a Liberal Marshall government.