Child Protection Workers

The Hon. C. BONAROS (16:34): I move:

That this council—

1. Recognises that child protection workers dedicate their careers to caring for our state’s most vulnerable people;

2. Acknowledges that the safety of these children and young people is of paramount consideration but, to provide safe environments, child protection workers must also be safe;

3. Notes the key recommendation from the Nyland royal commission which recognised the substantial risk associated with staff working in single-handed shifts and recommended that single-handed shifts be abandoned; and

4. Calls on the government to abandon single-handed shifts to increase the safety of children in care and to improve safety for child protection workers.

The motion supports the campaign by child protection staff and the Public Service union, supporting them to highlight the need for two child protection workers to be on staff and working in a residential care setting.

SA-Best supports child protection workers in their campaign for added safety both for children and staff, and calls on the government to support this campaign. Child protection workers dedicate their careers to caring for our state's most vulnerable children. It is a tough job, and with it comes a great amount of responsibility to maintain the care and wellbeing of our most neglected, vulnerable children with complex needs.

Whilst child protection staff place the safety of children as being of paramount importance, similarly the safety of child protection workers must also be secured. Currently, staff in residential care work on a 24/7 roster with eight-hour shifts and 10-minute handovers. Ten-minute handovers are woefully inadequate. It is common for workers to be rostered on their own for a shift. What this motion is trying to address is that this is simply unacceptable. It leaves children open for exploitation and leaves the child protection officer at risk as well in certain circumstances.

We know only too well how things can go horribly wrong. The murder of outback nurse Gayle Woodford prompted legislation to protect remote nurses' safety. Known as Gayle's law, the legislation protects nurses by preventing them from working solo in remote areas. Similarly, the Child Protection Systems Royal Commission was prompted by the heinous crimes of Shannon McCoole, who I have spoken about several times in this place now. The royal commission examined systemic failures in the child protection system that allowed McCoole to repeatedly abuse vulnerable children in state care that he, and he alone, had access to.

Most of McCoole's crimes are too heinous to report in detail and were described as evil, sickening and depraved by the judge who sentenced him to 35 years' jail. The royal commission resulted in the Nyland report, entitled 'The life they deserve', which made a number of important recommendations. We have seen many of those recommendations implemented. However, recommendations remain that have not been implemented.

In the 'The life they deserve' report, Commissioner Nyland stated that rotational care, where children are cared for by adults who are employees and work on a shift basis, is, and I quote:

…developmentally inappropriate for most children and is a poor substitute for the care provided in a loving family home.

And:

The risks of sexual abuse in rotational care have been well known by the Agency for many years.

Commissioner Nyland went on to report:

Children in institutional care are especially vulnerable to sexual abuse, and if they are to stay safe, this risk must be addressed. Children and infants who are too young to understand what is happening to them, or for whatever reason are unable to complain, rely on the presence of consistent and attentive caregivers who understand when they feel secure and well, and when they do not. There are difficulties in providing this security in a rotational care environment.

Single-handed shifts by residential care workers should be abandoned. This too will take time and depends on building the number and capacity of the workforce significantly.

The McCoole case study showed up gaps in the knowledge of workers about the behaviour of child sex offenders and responses of children to sexual abuse. It highlighted a dangerous naivety about the risks to children in rotational care.

Abandoning single-handed shifts will cost significant money in building the number and capacity of staff, but when it comes to the safety and care of our most vulnerable children and the staff entrusted to protect and care for them, the government should not hesitate a moment longer.

As of August this year, there are 3,710 children in out-of-home care in South Australia; 429 of those children are in residential care. We need to look at different ways of doing things, because the status quo clearly is not working for our kids.

Last month the New South Wales government announced that it will pay specialised foster carers $75,000 a year to temporarily look after children with complex needs through an outsourced US-developed care program. The program to be delivered by a private not-for-profit company, OzChild, will be funded for a two-year trial with $4.87 million from the New South Wales government.

The US-developed program, Treatment Foster Care Oregon (TFCO) targets children who are experiencing multiple placement breakdowns in foster care or who are not able to be moved into foster care from residential care because of their behavioural and emotional problems, often resulting from trauma and neglect.

It is expected that about 30 children, aged between seven and 17, will go through the six to 12-month program over the two-year period with the first placed with a carer by December this year. Once a child has been placed, carers will receive 24-hour support from specialists, including child therapists, family therapists and skills coaches. At the same time case managers work with the child's birth family or a permanent carer that they will ideally return to at the end of the placement. The goal of the innovative program is to reunite children with their birth families or longer-term carers. The New South Wales Minister for Family and Community Services Pru Goward said:

…that there are some children in out of home care with incredibly complicated behaviours—these children often need intensive support so they can thrive through childhood and adolescence.

OzChild is one of the state's biggest providers of out-of-home care and has also run the TFCO program for children in Victoria for the past 18 months, while Anglicare ran it for adolescents. It will run both age groups in New South Wales. These sorts of programs are a step in the right direction. They place the best interests of the child at the forefront. A child's health and wellbeing must always be the paramount consideration.

We know that children in foster care consistently showed better experiences and outcomes than children in residential care. Children should not be raised in facilities but in homes. I think there is a recent report showing that the cost of raising children in foster care arrangements as opposed to these residential homes—there is absolutely no comparison. I think the costs of the residential homes was in excess of $600,000 a year, whilst the cost of a foster care home was more around the $35,000 mark. Ultimately, we can see that cost of $600,000, especially given the numbers in South Australia, is just not sustainable.

Whilst these programs are a step in the right direction and must be considered by the Marshall government, child protection policy still needs to concentrate on reunification policies and building up kinship networks for Indigenous children who are an overrepresented cohort of children taken into care. The government needs to acknowledge that South Australia's child protection system is not achieving the best outcome for children and is unsustainable.

Escalating costs of the system are crisis-driven and reactionary. Money, energy and policy needs to be focused on early intervention strategies to keep vulnerable at-risk families together. Our child protection system is failing to improve long-term outcomes for children and families with complex needs.

The cost of providing out-of-home-care has risen dramatically since the government began outsourcing responsibility to non-government organisations. It is a sad indictment that the Marshall government believes that early intervention is the purview of the Minister for Education. This was confirmed by the Hon. Michelle Lensink in answer to questions raised by the Hon. Tammy Franks during debate on the Children and Young People (Safety) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill last month.

Clearly, early intervention is in the purview of the Minister for Child Protection and not the Minister for Education. This is the case in other states and it is time that the Marshall government got on board. If the purview of the Minister for Child Protection is only for children who have been removed from their families and placed in care, then it is a very myopic view of what child protection should encompass, and by then it is too late for many families. It represents a siloed approach to issues that are achingly interrelated and would achieve better outcomes for families if they were under the same ministerial umbrella.

A recent report was published by Anglicare Tasmania entitled Breaking the Cycle: Supporting Tasmanian parents to prevent recurrent child removals. The report, which my office has provided to Minister Sanderson's advisers, documents the prevalence and experiences of Tasmanian parents who have children recurrently removed by Child Safety Services, and the experiences of the services that support them.

Through research which formed the basis of the report, garnered from interviews with 15 parents and over 80 service providers and documenting the experience of removal and its consequences for parents, the report examines the current service network and its capacity to support them and reviews interventions which are being deployed in other jurisdictions, both nationally and internationally, to break this cycle of recurrent removals.

The findings from this research into recurrent removals sits alongside a partner project, 'In limbo', which examines in detail the material consequences of child removal for families by exploring income and housing barriers and how to prevent these consequences from forming an obstacle to successful reunification for families.

The report makes for sobering reading and provide a series of sensible recommendations which should be considered by the minister. With those words, I commend the motion to the house and hope that it is supported.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.S. Lee.