Family-Based Carers

Mr BASHAM (Finniss) (14:48): My question is to the Minister for Child Protection. Can the minister advise the house how the Marshall government is improving outcomes for vulnerable children and young people by growing family-based care?

The Hon. R. SANDERSON (Adelaide—Minister for Child Protection) (14:48): I thank the member for Finniss for his question. For many years under the former Labor government, more foster carers left the system than entered. We have turned this around with a net increase of 50 foster carers in the 2018-19 financial year.

Our foster care agencies have worked hard to promote, advertise, recruit and train new carers. The department has also worked hard scoping families for kinship carers. These two factors working together have led to an increase in the number of children and young people in family-based care to approximately 86 per cent of all placements.

We know that under the Labor government the Productivity Commission's Report on Government Services (RoGS) reported that South Australia had double the national average of children in non-family based care. The Liberal government is working hard to turn this around. We know that for the great majority of children family-based care leads to better outcomes, such as better mental health, better school attendance and education outcomes, employment and life skills.

The 2019 Auditor-General's Annual Report shows that the Department for Child Protection is doing their job and doing it well. In fact, it shows that the average cost of care per child has decreased by 12 per cent, from $76,470 per child in the 2017-18 year to $67,130 in the 2018-19 year. One of the many ways we have been able to reduce the average cost per child is through increasing our use of family-based care.

We have improved performance through good management practices such as significant reforms in contracting and procurement, including incentives for not-for-profit organisations for providing growth in family-based care services, which have all contributed to us managing our costs well. This means that more children receive the supports they need and it enables my department to better target their resources. We have increased our front-line staff. We have answered more calls more quickly, we have undertaken more investigations and we have reduced the number of 'closed, no actions'. These are good outcomes.

I would like to say again that foster carer recruitment and retaining our wonderful and selfless carers in the system is one of my main aims, along with thorough scoping of kin. Whilst children continue to come into care and whilst we have children in residential care, I remain committed to continuing to recruit foster carers. We know that stability and permanency are important for good outcomes for our children and that foster care gives young people an opportunity to have a family when they are not able to live with their biological family for whatever reason.

There have also been targeted foster care recruitment strategies, including the development of a foster care recruitment and retention task force and a new foster care recruitment website, fostercare.sa.gov.au, if you would like to take the quiz to see if you might be suitable to foster. We are pleased with the results and we are delivering more to children and young people in need, but there is more work to be done. We are working hard every day to continue to improve outcomes for our most vulnerable children and young people.