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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-05-15 Daily Xml
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Child Protection Regional Visits

Ms LUETHEN (King) (15:02): My question is to the Minister for Child Protection. Will the minister please inform the house about some of her recent regional visits as Minister for Child Protection?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The minister will be heard in silence.

The Hon. R. SANDERSON (Adelaide—Minister for Child Protection) (15:02): Thank you, Speaker, and I thank the member for King for her question and for her long-term interest in child protection; she's been a very strong advocate in her electorate. It's been an absolute joy to visit the regions, to visit not only with my office staff. I visited Kadina, Port Pirie, Gawler, Murray Bridge and Berri to meet with many of the other service providers while I was in the regions. I also obviously took the opportunity to meet with NGOs and service providers, such as ac.care, Uniting Country SA, Relationships Australia, Life Without Barriers. I also visited many residential care facilities.

I planned my trips in the school holidays so that as many children as possible would be available to meet. Many of the officers that I visited invited in foster care children. Some of them have their youth councils, where I met some of their members, who were absolutely amazing young people. I also met foster carers and kinship carers so that I could discuss issues that have been raised with me over four years as the shadow minister. It was a wonderful opportunity, but in particular visiting children in their homes where they live in residential care facilities.

We know the absolute disaster that occurred at Oakden. As a minister, that will never happen on my watch. I will make sure that I do visit where my children live to see the conditions they live under. I can't say I'm entirely happy with the conditions that they are living in, but it is early days and there's a lot of work for me to do to make up for 16 years of a failed Labor government in this area.

I also had a teleconference with staff from the far regions in Coober Pedy, Ceduna, Whyalla, Port Lincoln and Port Augusta, and I do plan to visit those officers as well as soon as possible. I have had a very, very busy schedule and it has been quite difficult. I have met with dozens and dozens and dozens of people. As any new minister would know, you get hundreds of requests.

I have prioritised, I believe, meeting my own staff in the departments; that is a high priority for me. Many of them have never met a minister. In fact, several of them have said that the last minister they met was the member for Cheltenham, and that was four ministers ago. So it is an absolute shame and disgrace that many of the ministers who preceded me took little or no interest in their departments to even go out and visit their own staff.

When I was visiting, I met staff members who have been in their positions for up to 18 years. Many of them are very proud of the work they do, and, whilst they all acknowledge that this is a very, very difficult department to work in and a very difficult area of child protection, they go to work every day because they want to make a difference. They believe in the work that they do and they seek to do the best possible job. So what we need to do as a new Liberal government is to resource them properly.

We know that the PSA union for four years was threatening strike action due to a lack of staff. We have taken a policy to the election of diversification of the workforce in order to widen the breadth of qualifications. We are working with both the AASW, who I have met with, and the PSA, who I have also met with, to discuss what qualifications they believe would be secondary—of course, social work is still the preferred degree for employment. However, rather than having empty FTE vacancies around the state, which puts all the staff under pressure—and we have seen how they have not been able to manage—we are working with all the stakeholders to get better outcomes for our children.

The SPEAKER: The member for Badcoe.

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