Page 2187 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 August 2016

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(a) take immediate action across all relevant government directorates and agencies to prioritise faster processing of local adoptions;

(b) provide a detailed outline of the following:

(i) what progress, if any, it has made in prioritising faster processing of local adoptions since September 2015; and

(ii) what action, if any, it is taking to prioritise faster processing of local adoptions; and

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to again bring the local adoption process to the Assembly’s attention. The Canberra Liberals hope that the government will support the motion today. In September last year the Assembly debated a motion about the local adoption process and at that time we called on the government to prioritise faster processing of adoptions in the ACT court system.

Since that motion in September 2015, a number of constituents who are very concerned about the length of time the local adoption process takes have been in contact with me. Some of those constituents are the same constituents who contacted me prior to the September 2015 motion and they are still going through the same process now almost a year later.

The ACT government’s out of home care strategy, a step up for our kids, is costing approximately $39 million from 2015-16 to 2018-19. It originally talked about including prioritising efficient and faster processing of local adoption where that is in the best interests of the child or young person. Securing permanency for children and young people where it is in their best interests is pivotal to their development. In an essay “Children in the out-of-home care system” published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, author Judy Cashmore notes:

Adoption has the benefit of providing three elements of permanency …

And these are:

a sense of belonging and security in being connected to a family for life; the physical space called home and community, and the legal framework that secures both of these with parental responsibility.

In October 2015 an answer to a question on notice showed that, according to the government, in 2014 the average time from lodging adoption paperwork in the court system to the adoption matter being allocated a court hearing date was seven weeks. But this time frame provided by the government in response to my question on notice is very different to what constituents have told me they have experienced.

I will give you one example of the length of time the local adoption process is taking. One couple I have spoken to started the local adoption process with the Community

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