Page 254 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 February 2018
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This year a new client management system for child and youth protection services will also be completed, supporting child protection workers, who make difficult and important decisions every day. The existing system, CHYPS, is 18 years old, and although it has been reliable it is a legacy system which has a high administrative overhead and limited future support options. The new system will make recording and accessing information about families simpler and bring together all child protection and youth justice information onto one system. It is designed to help caseworkers spend less time on administration and more time with families, through the introduction of electronic records and functionality that decreases duplicate entries.
I have spoken often of the success achieved through the blueprint for youth justice in the ACT 2012-22. The 10-year strategy provides a framework for significant youth justice reforms by focusing on early intervention, prevention and diversion of young people from the youth justice system, and it has delivered nation-leading results in reducing the involvement of young people in the ACT justice system. The blueprint task force I established last year will shortly provide me with a mid-term report against the blueprint’s goals and objectives, which will include their initial advice on what is working well, what are the emerging challenges and what the focus should be for the final five years of the blueprint. I look forward to receiving this report.
In 2018 the ACT government will continue to demonstrate its commitment to achieving equitable outcomes and opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the ACT. We want to create an empowered, resilient and sustainable future for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the ACT. The over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out of home care continues to be a concern in the ACT community and has again been the subject of national conversation over the last fortnight. This concern is shared by the ACT government and me, as both Minister for Disability, Children and Youth and Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs.
The review of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people involved with child and youth protection services is fundamentally about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people making decisions about their children and their community. It is underpinned by a co-design partnership with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community and will involve in-depth case analysis for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children involved with the child protection system.
The steering committee for the review—the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and experts overseeing it—have recently given this project a name: “our booris, our way”, “booris”, of course, meaning children in language. We have heard the Aboriginal community and we accept that we must do more as government to listen to them to know the way forward. This will not be always easy or simple, but I am confident our community can step up to this enormous challenge and lead the way forward. I will have more to say about the progress of the review very soon.
We are not standing still while we wait for the outcomes of the review. In November 2017 the family group conferencing pilot program commenced. This pilot program is
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