Page 3078 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 24 September 2014

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care; building the government’s oversight of out-of-home care functions, including developing an accreditation and monitoring system; improving our information management to support children and young people in care; piloting health passports for all children entering care as a way for children and their carers to track their health needs; establishment of a pool of independent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural advisers to provide advice to government on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people in care, the recruitment for which is underway; and, most importantly, training for staff and carers to deliver a trauma informed system of care. The training will be available for all carers and will help to build on many carers’ existing knowledge of how to support very vulnerable and traumatised children.

The strategy has been developed with carers, and carers will play a key role in how the strategy is implemented over the coming years. I want to thank all the carers that have participated in the consultation activities and I would like to thank Minister Burch for initiating many of the consultation events, such as the ACT carers roundtable which I will gladly continue to host.

Carers will be instrumental in supporting a new system as we go forward. Foster Care Week and Carers Week are wonderful opportunities to acknowledge the hard work of all of our volunteer carers.

Lastly, I would like to take this opportunity to encourage anyone who is interested in becoming a foster carer to contact our community organisations, Barnardos and Marymead, for more information. As we saw at the seminar on the weekend, I am hoping that a number of new carers who attended that seminar will take up that role.In conclusion can I thank Ms Lawder for raising this important issue. I look forward to meeting carers at the Carers Week function in October and to hosting another ACT carers roundtable towards the end of the year.

MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (10.31): It is in many ways terribly sad that so many children in our community are in need of foster care. Equally, though, it is amazing that there are so many people in our community who make their homes and their lives available in looking after those children, and who invest so heavily in the lives of these children. I would like to thank Ms Lawder for bringing this motion to the Assembly this week, the week after Foster Care Week in the ACT, as an opportunity to acknowledge those who work together to support children in need in our community.

In the ACT, as Mr Gentleman just mentioned, there are over 600 children living in out-of-home care. These are children whose families were not able to offer them the safe nurturing environment that we know all children deserve. Obviously, when we think about foster care, we think first of the children and their families that are in such need of care and support.

Foster Care Month raises the awareness of not only the children but the very important role that foster families and kinship carers play in providing a loving and caring environment where children feel safe. Different foster families are able to offer


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