Grandparent and Kinship Carers

The Hon. S.L. GAME (20:01): I move:

That this council—

1. Recognises that all South Australian children have the right to a safe, secure and nurturing family environment, to provide them with the opportunities they need to flourish, both personally and academically;

2. Acknowledges and values the enormous contribution made by grandparent and kinship carers, who are not formally recognised by government, but who are full-time carers of their kin's children;

3. Commends the endeavours of Grandcarers SA, which since 2002 has provided financial support, resources and a caring network to SA grandparents and other full-time informal kinship carers; and

4. Calls on the government to support all our carers, including those represented by Grandcarers SA.

A safe, nurturing and secure family environment helps ensure all South Australian children have the same opportunities to grow and thrive physically, emotionally and academically. Unfortunately, some parents are unable to provide this environment for varied reasons, including their employment status, their mental or physical state, incarceration, drug or alcohol dependencies and more.

In these cases, responsibility often falls to grandparents and in many cases to what are known as 'informal kinship carers'. Unlike formal kinship carers, informal kinship carers are not legally recognised as designated carers, precluding them from certain rights and benefits, including accessing services provided by the Department for Child Protection. This creates what has been described as an emotionally draining, physically exhausting and financially devastating scenario for these grandparents. It is life changing and it turns their world upside down.

All grandparents love their grandkids, but grandparents who double as informal kinship carers cannot hand their grandkids back at the end of the day of fun activities or a long weekend sleepover. They must feed, clothe, care for and nourish them, day in, day out.

Today, I present the plight of informal kinship carers and the need for better support for this often neglected but crucially important sector of our carer community. Informal kinship carers put their own lives and plans for a blissful retirement on hold, sometimes permanently, draining their hard-earned lifetime savings. Do they have a choice? Ask yourself: if the Department for Child Protection removed your grandchild from a harmful or damaging environment, arrived at your home and said, 'Here are your grandchildren. Take them or they go into state care,' what would you do? What choice would you have?

If your answer is: why not become a formal kinship carer and become eligible for government benefits, it is not that simple—not by a long shot. A major, often insurmountable, hurdle is attempting to navigate a path through the family courts. As pointed out by the not-for-profit Grandcarers SA group, this option is often cost prohibited with one grandparent recently having to fork out well over $100,000 to do so. We are told other such court cases run into the tens of thousands of dollars and many grandparents simply cannot afford this option.

Grandcarers SA has an Education and Development Fund that supports its clients—grandparents—to help them pay for things like school uniforms and school excursions for their grandchildren. Being without these basic privileges and opportunities enjoyed by their classmates naturally has a negative impact on the schooling and the lives of these children. Grandcarers SA recently had a grandmother ring and ask for $15—that is $15—to pay for her grandson's school excursion that she could not afford. That is how much of a difference Grandcarers SA can make.

Unfortunately, Grandcarers SA cannot provide anything like the funding it needs for the 1,300 South Australian families and 2,200 South Australian children on its books. It has increased its client base by 30 per cent in the past 2½ years and the call is growing all the time, exacerbated by the current cost-of-living crisis.

With an average age of 65, informal grandparent carers come from across the state, including all corners of Adelaide. Grandcarers SA currently receive some state government funding, but that only covers the group's operational costs, not the families it supports. That money comes entirely from philanthropic grants secured by the group.

It is worth considering that formal kinship carers receive somewhere between $14,000 and $60,000 per year, including all claimable allowances per child per year. I believe South Australia should consider the model adopted by the Western Australian state government, which provides dedicated funding for informal grandparent carers.

Grandcarers SA informs us that the children we are talking about across our state are very often already traumatised before moving into their grandparents' care. They are traumatised as a result of their experience with their parents, then they get removed from their homes and maybe even their schools. The last thing they need is to be further disadvantaged at school because their grandparents, despite doing the best they can, cannot afford basics to give these children the same opportunities as their classmates. Better South Australian government support for Grandcarers SA would lead to tangibly better outcomes for these disadvantaged children.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.