Page 2110 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 22 June 2010
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The representatives of the kinship carers, who represent slightly more than half of those people who look after children in the care and protection system in out-of-home care situations, came to this committee and made two substantial complaints. One was that in 2008 they had been promised money by this ACT Labor government to provide non-government services to kinship carers, support services to kinship carers and, as at the time that this committee had congregated and this group came to the committee, they had received none of the money. Of all the money allocated, $20,000 had gone to Marymead. No-one objects to the $20,000 going to Marymead. But $800,000 was promised and $780,000 was still ungranted to the community sector. That was their first complaint.
Their second complaint, a much more serious complaint, as a group was that the children that they look after and the people whom they represent are the victims of systematic, institutionalised abuse. They characterised that by: “We cannot get answers. We ask for assistance and we cannot get it.” These people have possibly the hardest jobs in the ACT—often these are people in their 60s and their 70s who have taken on responsibility for children who have lived through extraordinarily traumatic circumstances—and what they are asking for is assistance to look after their nieces, nephews or grandchildren in a way that will make them whole human beings again and probably will not kill the aunts and uncles, and particularly the grandparents, in the process.
What they said to the committee was that they were subject to institutionalised abuse. The person who said that is a person that I have known for 30 years in a range of community organisations and who has the highest reputation in this town for her advocacy for disadvantaged people, especially refugees. She is a person who has said to me, privately—but she will not mind it being said here—that in all the years that she has worked with the bureaucracy she has never found a bureaucracy more difficult to deal with than the bureaucracy in care and protection. That is saying something for someone who has been a refugee advocate and who has beaten her head against the walls of immigration departments for 30 years to say that she has never had a harder job. And this is someone who knows her way around the bureaucracy.
And what has been the response to that? It characterises everything that is wrong with this report. It was interesting to hear Ms Hunter and Ms Bresnan interject their comments when Mr Smyth and Mr Seselja criticised them for their lack of attention to this important issue, and it is emblematic of what is wrong with this report. They said, “There are two recommendations there, so you can’t criticise.”
Let us listen to the recommendations. On the back of this organisation saying that $780,000 was promised by this government, which is outstanding, has not been given as it was promised at the election, and that they were subject to institutionalised abuse, these are the recommendations that come from this. Recommendation 40:
The Committee recommends that the Department of Disability Housing and Community Services ensure that adequate support and appropriate written information, including contact details of support services, is provided to all kinship carers who come into contact with the care and protection system.
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