Page 1732 - Week 06 - Thursday, 30 July 2020
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are issues in relation to the sharing of information which we would like to address. I am sure the hard work that the committee have done and the recommendations they have made will inform that work. That is already underway, and if I have the opportunity to be back here in the next parliament I will certainly be pushing to take that forward.
I absolutely acknowledge many of the issues Ms Cody, Ms Le Couteur and Mrs Dunne have raised in relation to trust and the power imbalance in the child and youth protection system. To some extent, these matters are inherent in the system. We know that even the best and most restorative child protection systems in the world face challenges, but we also have acknowledged consistently that we have room to improve.
I want to acknowledge Ms Cody’s comments about the fact that keeping children and young people safe in our community is a whole-of-community responsibility. Often there is commentary about child and youth protection services, but they are at the end of what should be a continuum of support for children and families. That is why we are putting a lot more effort into early support and keeping children safe in their families.
On that note, I want to acknowledge our hardworking child and youth protection services, our community partners and our policy people across the Community Services Directorate. I acknowledge some of the change we have seen in the child protection system over the last five years. Since the A step up for our kids strategy in 2015, significant changes have been made that would not necessarily be reflected in the examination of the individual case in part 1, given the timing of that, but that has led to improvements in outcomes.
There has been a significant investment in early intervention and prevention programs, including Uniting. The vast majority of families involved with the Uniting preservation and prevention service have seen children staying at home safe with their families or being restored to their families. A result of these changes and investments has been a significant reduction in the number of children and young people entering care over the past two years. That is despite an ongoing and very significant number of child concern reports being received. They have significantly increased since 2016 and remained high. The total number of children and young people in care decreased from a peak of 829 in 2017-18 and stabilised at around 810 since the end of 2018-19.
This is a very significant change in the stabilisation of the number of young people in care and goes against the national trend. It is important to recognise the work that our child and youth protection services and our community partners are doing to keep children and young people safe with their families. Sometimes you hear the contributions and think nothing is happening in this space, and that is simply not true.
It is also simply not true in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families. I am the first person to say that the level of over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in our child protection system is unacceptable, and that is why we established the Aboriginal-led Our Booris, Our Way review and have been responding to the interim recommendations made throughout
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