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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-07-03 Daily Xml
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CHILD PROTECTION INQUIRY

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:27): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. How is the government addressing the recommendations of the independent education inquiry?

The Hon. J.M. RANKINE (Wright—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (14:27): While the independent education inquiry was being conducted, we began the process of making improvements to the way child protection matters were being dealt with by the education department. These included extra staff for the investigations unit, teacher screenings, adult re-entry screenings, preregistration screenings, contractor and volunteer screenings, the appointment of David Waterford as a deputy CE for child safety in the department, child safety notification guidelines to help guide the notification to parents, the development of a prescribed offences list and establishing the Office of Child Safety.

This groundwork means we have already made progress in addressing the 43 recommendations made by the inquiry. Importantly, we established the incident management division which, on 1 July, brought together five investigative functions which were previously dispersed throughout the department. These are the parent complaint unit, the investigations unit, the HR support, school care and the legislation and legal services unit.

This means that one division, including a legally qualified and experienced senior officer, will oversee the investigation of serious matters. This change expands on the inquiry's recommendation 8, that one person supervise and coordinate management of a matter and records be kept in a central file. We have already accomplished recommendations 20 and 37, delivering extra staff for both the DECD investigations unit and the DCSI screening unit. Three other recommendations have been completely or substantially achieved but will go through a due diligence process to ensure that they fully address the royal commission intent. These are:

Recommendation 4. Guided by internationally recognised experts in psychology, criminology and child protection, we develop a risk assessment tool that considers potential risks to children and informs decisions about notifications.

Recommendation 6. A CE circular is being developed to advise site leaders and members of staff of the requirement that they keep a record of conversations and events that occur in relation to management of an allegation.

Recommendation 18. All new DECD contracts with external providers will include clauses that impose a range of child protection obligations on relevant third-party providers.

Twelve other recommendations are expected to be implemented by late August. Agencies are committed to completing work on another 17 recommendations which require significant work and which we hope to have in place by the commencement of the 2014 school year.

Four recommendations relate to the processes for dealing with the report; four other recommendations require legislative change. Recommendations 28 and 29 concern a person charged with a sexual offence involving a child being required to disclose their workplace to police and to ensure that their employer is notified of the charges. I am pleased to report that these recommendations are addressed in a bill being addressed to parliament today by the Attorney-General.

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