Page 257 - Week 01 - Thursday, 13 February 2020
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Public Advocate and Human Rights Commission play a vitally important role in the monitoring of child protection and youth justice services in the ACT. Child and youth protection services remain absolutely committed to the continual improvement of services for children and young people, and an open and ongoing dialogue with oversight agencies contributes to this ongoing improvement.
The joint operational protocol between child and youth protection services and the Public Advocate continues to support effective and efficient communication processes between the agencies. I note that the Public Advocate and Children and Young People Commissioner, Ms Griffiths-Cook, spoke very approvingly in recent hearings about how that is going, and the continued improvement in the relationship between child and youth protection services and the Public Advocate. They meet regularly to address issues as they arise.
Child and youth protection services and ACT Together are also committed to continual improvement in providing annual review reports for children who require one to be prepared annually. In the ACT Human Rights Commission annual report for 2018-19 the Public Advocate and Children and Young People Commissioner acknowledged the improvement in timeliness for the provision of annual review reports within the agreed lodgement times. Ms Griffiths-Cook also talked about further improvements in relation to reports being provided under section 507 and section 879 in those hearings.
I am happy to speak further in response to supplementaries, if Mrs Kikkert can provide some further information on context.
MRS KIKKERT: Minister, what has changed to make your government start challenging the Public Advocate’s team in recent times when this did not happen before?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: As Mrs Kikkert has been completely unable to provide the context for her assertion, I reject it. I do not believe that that is the case. The Public Advocate is able to ask for lots of information, including under sections 507 and 879 of the act.
Also the Public Advocate and her representatives are able to sit on care teams, and that is a really important mechanism available to the Public Advocate to obtain information and to contribute to improved outcomes for children, and certainly through that mechanism the Public Advocate can seek to attend and be a member of a care team and, where they choose to participate, they can inform discussions and contribute to decision-making about individual children and young people.
If there was a specific matter that Mrs Kikkert is aware of, where she has a concern or a concern has been expressed to her by a parent, by a carer, by a child or young person or by the Public Advocate—where these concerns have been expressed—I would be happy to follow that up. But that is not the feedback that I have had from the Public Advocate and certainly that is not the conversation that I have been having with the senior leadership of child and youth protection services and the Community
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video