Page 4068 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 23 October 2018
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and Procurement, Minister for Urban Renewal) (11.23): In April this year I presented the first of the six-monthly progress reports on A step up for our kids—one step can make a lifetime of difference (out of home care strategy 2015-2020). I am pleased to now present the second progress report. As members would be aware, this transformational out of home care strategy aims to improve outcomes for children and young people in the care of the Director-General of the Community Services Directorate by providing more flexible, child-focused services and to reduce demand for out of home care places.
The Community Services Directorate generates a snapshot report that provides point-in-time data on the service demand and performance of the out of home care system and compares this with the same period last year. The snapshot report provides an indication of service demand, capacity of the system to respond to this demand and throughput data. I will talk to the highlights of the report shortly.
In introducing the report, it is important to note that this report is the first opportunity to view the 2016-17 and 2017-18 data side by side, which allows the data to be examined to identify where there are trends that should be responded to, or if we are seeing temporary fluctuations in service demand.
In order to provide a more holistic view of how the out of home care services system is performing, the Community Services Directorate will continue to increase the number of headline measures as the service system matures and more data becomes available. A key focus of the strategy has been the investment in intensive parenting and family preservation supports. This aims to prevent children and young people from entering care and seeks to support children to exit from the system as early and as safely as possible through reunification services. To this end, as an important element of A step up for our kids, the number of children and young people supported through prevention programs not entering care within six and 12 months of support commencing has been added to the latest snapshot report.
This addition to the data complements the existing headline measures, which include: the number of children and young people entering care in that quarter; the number of children and young people exiting care; a comparison of the number of children being case managed by ACT Together and child and youth protection services to monitor service capacity and indicating the number of children on short-term orders versus long-term orders; the types of placements that children are in at that time and the number of children in each placement type; the number of enduring parental responsibility orders and adoptions completed; and the number of newly approved carers and the number of carers exiting.
As I have said previously, reform of this nature takes time. A step up for our kids aims to create generational change, to break the cycle of intergenerational harm, and to improve long-term outcomes for families, children and young people. The inclusion of the new measure relating to the diversion of children and young people from statutory care will help the Community Services Directorate to track the efficacy of the vital investment in family preservation.
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