Foster Care

Ms STINSON (Badcoe) (15:00): My question is to the Minister for Child Protection. Has the minister ever advocated for the usual checks to be waived or for applications from her friends to be fast-tracked to enable them to be foster carers?

The Hon. R. SANDERSON (Adelaide—Minister for Child Protection) (15:00): Absolutely not. That's ridiculous. Everybody should go through the exact same checks. Certainly, in other regions—and I believe it was maybe Key Assets, mentioned in other countries; I believe they've got agencies in England—there are other ways of doing the training. There are some programs where there's intensive interviewing and psychological testing before you do the training, so that culls people early on, rather than going through extensive long courses in training.

There are many ways that we can improve the system, potentially having the training standardised and modulised so that, if you happen to ring an agency that doesn't have any proposed training in your area for six months, you could train with another agency so that we can fast-track and get people involved as soon as possible. I have met with—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. R. SANDERSON: —people who have told me it's taken 18 months—

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. R. SANDERSON: —to become accredited as a foster carer. We can't afford for people to drop out of the system because it's an inefficient system. We need to look at how we make this a smooth professional transition from somebody interested in being a foster carer to accrediting them as a foster carer. I would never, ever suggest that anybody would skip that system and become a foster carer without the appropriate training. They may have other qualifications that could be considered, but there is a training level that is expected, and everyone goes through that same training.