Family Support Services

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:16): My question is to the Minister for Human Services about families. Can the minister outline for the council how the Marshall Liberal government is supporting children getting a better start in life in South Australia?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:16): I thank the honourable member for her question. Can I also outline, in terms of things that are outside the human services portfolio, one of the areas that I think we all greatly welcome from the budget that is being funded is a renewed focus on the early years for children in terms of ensuring that, once they reach five or six years of age and when they start school, they have had a range of screenings and appropriate support services so that nobody is falling behind.

That is an area that is being led by education, although health has a significant role in that, in what is often termed as 'universal services', that is, the services that all children will access, rather than the specialist services. Those of us who have had children and who have the infamous Blue Book know that there are services within the first three months to support particularly new parents. There is a screening that takes place usually at four years of age in the kindergarten setting and there are screenings at 12 months and at three years as well through those universal services. We look forward to those being rolled out through education and health particularly.

Within human services we have a number of programs that support families who are generally considered a bit more at the specialist end, particularly for what we call the pre-statutory services, that is, families in which the children are at risk of entering the child protection system. There are a number of services that human services has commissioned, which are particularly being led by an evidence base. We have a trauma-responsive framework that is being rolled out to ensure that our services understand the impact of trauma and how to respond, for frontline workers in particular.

We have the CFSS services, which are in addition to intensive family services funding, and there are some programs that include Safe Kids, Families Together, which is a three-year pilot in the northern suburbs being delivered by Anglicare; a pilot for Aboriginal families, which is a two-year pilot in the western suburbs that is being delivered by Kornar Winmil Yunti; and the Resilient Families Social Impact Bond, which commenced on 1 July to run over six years and seeks to reduce the number of children who need to enter care.

Tiraapendi Wodli is a justice reinvestment community program to improve safety and wellbeing for Aboriginal families, particularly in the Port Adelaide and western area. Breathing Space is being delivered by Centacare, which is a service targeting young women whose children have been removed and placed in the child protection system and are at risk of repeat removals from future children. We also have Grandparents for Grandchildren, which continues to receive support to fund its peer support information and advice to grandparents who are providing kinship care for vulnerable children.

Those are just some of the programs that we are providing to particularly assist children in that at-risk area. We also at the same time have, bringing closer and closer together, women who are impacted by domestic and family violence, and the children who are the drivers for child protection removals are often in the same situation. A number of those services are being informed by each other's practices, and we are working towards making sure they are working as closely together as possible into the future.