Page 3029 - Week 09 - Thursday, 21 September 2006
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Specifically, the recommendations address: the interaction and coordination of various government services; the needs of very young and unborn children, including the need for legislative change to support pre-natal reporting of suspected abuse; the specific needs of children affected by family violence and parental substance abuse; and the need for specific policy practice and training of staff in best practice responses to very young children.
Mr Speaker, as members know, in the last two years the structure and delivery of child protection services in the territory has been the subject of a comprehensive reform process. Many reforms have been completed. Others, of course, will be ongoing, such as improvements to policy, staff support and training, and continuous review and monitoring. As I have reported to the Assembly on three occasions, considerable progress has been made in implementing the recommendations of the 2004 Vardon and Murray reports.
The commitment of the department to transparency and compliance has been demonstrated by the Murray-Mackie study. As I have said, the study’s recommendations have provided new and more specific insights into the way we protect children. These will further inform policy and practice improvement. In line with these recommendations, over the next 12 months the department will continue to broadly improve the Care and Protection system while strengthening our response to the specific needs of vulnerable groups of children. It is this focus on vulnerable groups that will be reflected in new policy and procedures. The Murray-Mackie study goes further than the Vardon and Murray reports in that it provides a specific analysis of how interventions actually occur in practice and identifies further reform that is needed.
Mr Speaker, we need to continually examine what we are doing to ensure that we are providing Care and Protection to the best of our ability. This is a very complex area of human service that places great demands on children, parents, carers, policy makers and workers. There is no simple solution to addressing the needs of some families. There is no perfect model nor any magic wand.
We began a significant reform process with Vardon and Murray and this study will provide the basis of a further refining of a five-year reform agenda for Care and Protection and associated agencies. This agenda will encompass the system, structure, relationships, services, policies, procedures and practices, staffing, culture and training. Its focus includes child-centred practices, collaborative practices and improving reporting and information systems. In regard to these matters, the Murray-Mackie study specifically draws attention to antenatal reporting, vulnerable infants, drug-affected babies, discharge meetings at hospitals, urine and medical testing of children and the enforcement of urine testing of parents. All Australian jurisdictions currently face the effects of endemic abuse of drugs and alcohol and the generational cycle of abuse in families. In this context, the study acknowledges the day-to-day reality of the difficult work for front-line child protection workers.
Throughout the entire reform process in Care and Protection I have released to the public all the information available. The Vardon and Murray reports were released in their entirety, as were the government’s response to those reports. The Murray-Mackie study is different to the previous reports in that it focuses specifically on the individual files of
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