Page 3060 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007

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offered for southside parents in 2006-07, with 24 sessions held and 100 attendees over that time. This was in partnership with the YWCA and Carers ACT. Parents who are under 25 can access a facilitated playgroup. Thirty-eight sessions were held for young parents, with 331 attendees in total. This was offered in partnership with the YWCA. Consultation is under way with the ACT Indigenous community about what services would effectively meets their needs, through a grant from the Australian government.

Targeted programs such as triple P, the positive parenting program, are for families with early signs of problems in dealing with children’s behaviour. More recently, participants included parents from the Karralika Drug Rehabilitation Centre. These participants commented that they did not feel that they stood out—again, testament to the inclusive practice of the Child and Family Centres teams. The design of the centres has been important in taking on board community input so that the centres are welcoming places for all families. Marketing the centres to all families means families do not feel stigmatised by walking into them. Having a range of integrated services also means families experience a coordinated service system.

Families can come in and chat with a trained professional during business hours, without having to make an appointment. Staff place a high priority on customer service, with a focus on conducting generalist needs assessments, thus listening to what families have to say even if their presenting issue is not something the centres can offer ongoing service for.

All families registered with the centres are contacted following case closure, for the purpose of gauging client satisfaction. In 2006-07, 96 per cent of clients reported feeling satisfied about the services they received. Clear themes in what clients liked were that they felt listened to, that staff were genuinely interested in helping them and that they followed through on any commitments they gave.

The government reaffirms its strong commitment to ensuring improved outcomes for people experiencing poverty. The above examples show that this is happening in a rigorous and sustainable way, and we continue to look at ways to improve the quality of people’s lives and to reduce poverty and disadvantage in the ACT community. Mr Speaker, I have asked my colleagues to share with us specific reforms, and, indeed, my colleague Karin MacDonald will particularly address issues around homelessness.

I say again, as I have said this morning in relation to our attempts to ensure that this most important issue was debated and discussed within the Assembly today, that it is at the heart of the role and function of government to ensure that those most disadvantaged within our community have the opportunity to participate fully in the life of the community. There is no more important issue facing government than this issue, and it is vitally important that we debate it today.

MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra—Leader of the Opposition) (4.09): I will come to the Chief Minister’s last point first. As I said earlier, we actually support this motion. What we do not support is digging into private members time, as we are now doing—and now we are going to have a number of speakers—when we could have done this at 6 o’clock this evening and when it could have been done at about 5 past 12


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