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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-09-23 Daily Xml
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Child Protection

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (14:49): Supplementary: what additional resources are needed at Families SA to ensure that all critical incidents reported through the Child Abuse Report Line are fully investigated in line with the department's own requirements?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (14:49): One of the things that has always, I suppose, staggered me in the 12 years I have been in this place, when the periodic catastrophe occurs in child protection, is the opportunism of those opposite to leap on board—

Mr GARDNER: Point of order: the minister has just said that serious concerns are not being investigated, and the minister is playing politics and debating.

The SPEAKER: I will listen carefully to what the Premier has to say.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: It's a very important observation in the context of this very sensitive debate because the truth is that legislation—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: If you listen carefully—I remember being in the deadlock conference with you where we discussed these very questions. We amended the legislation to break the relationship between the notification and the investigation of these matters, and we did that for good reason. The truth is one in every four children to the age of 18 has a child protection notification. Are we seriously suggesting—

Mr Gardner: We are talking about the tier 2 ones, Jay.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —and many of them are tier 2. Are we seriously suggesting that the future for our child protection system is one of running the ruler over families for the purposes of finding sufficient evidence to remove that child from that family, or do we want a system that focuses on the support of those families to strengthen those families and allow those families to actually deal with the difficulties they may be facing so that they can be better parents and successfully deal with their parenting responsibilities?

One of the great advances that was made in the seventies, when we became, sadly, more aware of what was then described as 'battered baby syndrome', was the notion of needing to find out more about what was happening inside families, so all jurisdictions—many around the world, starting with the US—went for the mandatory notification paradigm. The problem with that paradigm is it led to an enormous shift of resources into the investigation phase, away from the helping phase.

The truth is that the more you run a ruler over a family and go in and investigate them, the more resistant they will be towards revealing their difficulties and sharing with the authorities the sorts of responsibilities they have, because if they think a child is going to be taken from them it's the very last thing they are going to do. They are going to avoid those authorities. They are not going to open up in a way which allows us to get close enough to those families to assist them.

These are not simple questions. Every time our child support workers go into these families and seek to support them, we know they are putting themselves in harm's way in many respects because often the last person who goes near these families and offers to help them is the first the finger of blame is pointed at by ill-informed criticism from people like those opposite. The sort of people who devote the whole of their lives to caring and protecting our children in our community are often at the forefront of ill-conceived criticism. The truth is that, as the finger of blame is pointed, many authorities have been associated with increasing the rate at which they notify child protection concerns. Police, for instance—

Mr Marshall: How about an answer to the question?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: I am answering the question. Police, for instance, notify routinely about domestic violence matters in every case. Many of them will be screened in as tier 2, yet everything conceivably has been done to ensure that child has been safe. The perpetrator may have been removed, the family may have been taken to a safe location; nevertheless, it will be a tier-2 investigation. Is it proper to investigate? No, because all has been done to ensure that child and that family are safe.

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