World Social Work Day

The Hon. T.T. NGO (15:26): Thank you, Mr President. My question is to the Minister for Correctional Services. Can the minister tell the council why World Social Work Day is of such significance to Correctional Services?

The Hon. S.G. Wade: I'm glad we didn't miss this one!

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS (Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (15:26): Neither you, Mr President, nor the Hon. Mr Wade should be disappointed about this question because the Hon. Mr Ngo has asked a very important question and for that I am grateful.

Last Tuesday marked World Social Work Day. The theme of this year's celebration was 'Promoting the dignity and worth of peoples'. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to those social workers within the Department for Correctional Services who do an extraordinary job, something that is often a thankless task.

It takes a pretty impressive individual or a special person to be able to work with an offender. To acknowledge that an offender has done wrong but then to go on and work with them constructively to create a different path to ensure a different future I think is an admirable profession. As a result, social workers in Corrections make an incredibly important and often unrecognised contribution to our community.

The Department for Correctional Services employs approximately 150 social workers. Social workers are employed across Community Corrections, intervention workers within our prisons and our people and business services. Social workers are at the fore of our mission to deliver a safer community and to rehabilitate those people who are in the state's custody. They contribute to public safety through the safe, secure and humane management of offenders and provide opportunities for rehabilitation and reintegration.

When an offender, mandated by the courts or the Parole Board, reports to the Community Corrections officer at one of our 16 centres throughout the state, it is more often than not a social worker with trained skills who will contribute to the lives of those offenders and, ultimately, the positive outcomes of their interactions keep our community safe. Whether they are performing risk-based offender assessments or performing evidence-based case management practices, our social workers play an important role in contributing to public safety, public confidence, offender responsibility and, of course, one of the most important things—the rights of victims.

It is our social workers working within the department's Offender Development Directorate who play an important role in facilitating the department's criminogenic programs throughout our prison system that contribute to the rehabilitation of our prisoners. It is our social workers working within our prisons on a daily basis who play a vital role in making sure our system is managed effectively.

Ensuring that prisoners are provided with one-to-one intervention and have access to higher-quality skilled people who are trained to deal with crisis intervention is incredibly important. Whether it be assisting someone on a mission or facilitating their reintegration into the community upon their release, our social workers are always there.

The theme of this year's World Social Work Day is, 'Promoting the dignity and worth of peoples'. I am happy to say our corrections system is all the better for the work that these special people do. I look forward to personally thanking them for their work as I continue to visit our state's institutions within the correctional services department. We appreciate their work; we honour their work; it is often thankless, but I think it's important that this place acknowledges their significant contribution.