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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-06-18 Daily Xml
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Residential Care Workers, Psychological Testing

Ms STINSON (Badcoe) (14:20): My question is to the Minister for Child Protection. How many people have failed the mandatory residential care psychometric testing?

The Hon. R. SANDERSON (Adelaide—Minister for Child Protection) (14:20): Clearly, I don't perform the psychometric testing and don't have access to that number, but what I can let the house know is that Shannon McCoole actually—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Minister for Education, I heard that, and you are called to order.

The Hon. R. SANDERSON: What I can inform the house is that the whole reason psychometric testing came to this chamber was because, under the former government, Shannon McCoole, who was employed by the Department for Child Protection, then known as Families SA, actually had red flags on his psychometric test—which was a different test at the time—that was ignored by the department and then by the Labor government.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Dr Close interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Deputy leader!

The Hon. R. SANDERSON: As a result of the red flags being ignored and Shannon McCoole going on to be employed in child protection, in residential care, and then raping children in his care, under the former Labor government, under your testing process, there was a royal commission. The royal commission found that psychometric testing should go ahead.

That was put into our laws, and everyone in my department, I am advised, who is working with children in residential care has passed the psychometric testing. That is the latest advice that I have. The non-government sector was given a slight extension under the regulations to also adhere to that. My latest advice as of April was that everyone had adhered to that, so that all people working in residential care with children under the guardianship of the now CE, but in my department and my responsibility, have passed that test.

During COVID, you would be aware—because my department briefed you, and it has also gone to another committee in this house—we had to plan for what could be the possible worst-case scenario, and what would happen if some of our staff got COVID, or our children, and we had to lock down houses or we had to move staff away from homes. We didn't want to leave ourselves short and not have any staff to manage residential care.

So we brought to the house, as part of the emergency planning bill, a regulation with a sunset clause of six months, which would allow for other staff employed by the state government—obviously a first preference would be in my own department—who already had their working with children check that if, in the emergency situation, we did not have enough staff to work at our residential care facilities they would be able to work without a psychometric test, and to my knowledge we have not used that.

We have not had any outbreaks of COVID in any of our houses, so we have not needed to implement that. However, it was a measure that we had to plan for the worst. None of us knew what a pandemic would look like, and that regulation was changed and amended with the consent of the opposition—thank you, and you were briefed. That is all I have to say.

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