weekly hansard - Queensland Parliament - Queensland Government

2638 Child Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 23 Aug 2005
Keeping our children safe requires constant vigilance on the part of community, teachers, health
workers, police and, basically, all who have contact with children. Sadly, we live in a world where such
things as relationship breakdowns, domestic violence, drug taking, mental illness, financial stress and
so many others can place children in danger from adults. Very sadly, often that adult is a parent.
However, this child safety legislation has at its very heart and its paramount principle to do what is in the
best interests of the child.
Many times it has been demonstrated that given love, encouragement, nurture and support
children can respond and be healed. Foster-parents have big hearts. I want to commend the hundreds
of parents and individuals who have love and care to share with those children who often need a lot of
extra reassurance and love. There are many people involved in caring for those children. In closing, I
would like to congratulate the minister, our department and the vast number of people who just look out
for others, especially little people. I commend the bill to the House.
Mrs STUCKEY (Currumbin—Lib) (9.15 pm): I rise in the House tonight to foreshadow the Liberal
Party’s support for the third stage of the legislative reform program of the Child Safety Legislation
Amendment Bill for the implementation of the Crime and Misconduct Commission’s report Protecting
children: an inquiry into abuse of children in foster care.
From the outset I state that the second stage of these reforms, which were passed in the House in
October 2004, are yet to be fully implemented. It is to be hoped that this third stage of reforms is
employed more swiftly. I request the minister to provide the House with a time frame for the
implementation of the third stage of these reforms.
This bill is aimed at closing gaps in the Child Protection Act 1999 and includes regulating
voluntary placements, the assessment and approval of all carers, consultation with recognised
Indigenous entities and refining Indigenous child placement principles. Realistically, though, from the
countless media articles concerning the Department of Child Safety it would appear that there are still a
number of cracks that the state government needs to glue together as a matter of urgency. While I do
appreciate that the new Department of Child Safety was born a mere 18 months ago and, like any
toddler, will no doubt experience teething problems, it is imperative that we remember that the Premier
stated his reason for calling the 2004 election was the promise of putting children first. This promise has
not been fulfilled according to some industry stakeholders.
In fact, over the past several months it has been widely reported that many community
organisations working in the area of child protection feel that the children of Queensland are no better
off than before the 2003 CMC inquiry into foster care. In March of this year, the Courier-Mail reported
that Queensland admitted more children to care than any other state but spent less than the national
average on their management. There is no dispute that the state government has injected a
large amount of money into this area, but most of that money went into establishing the new Department
of Child Safety and did not filter through to the grassroots level of helping children in need.
This scarcity of help at the grassroots level could not be more evident than in figures from the
Toowoomba and Ipswich offices, as reported by the Courier-Mail in April 2005. The Toowoomba Child
Safety Service Centre had 432 unallocated initial assessments awaiting action. That is nearly double
the number of 220 reported as outstanding in November 2004. Down the range, the Ipswich office was
struggling to investigate 100 new notifications a month. In March the team had a backlog of 376 cases,
with 157 not even having a case officer allocated. If service centres are only getting an estimated one
and a half extra employees, a large number of vulnerable children will still be left in undesirable if not
unsafe situations.
Other concerns draw attention to the failure to deal with priority 1 cases within the 24 hour
requirement. Those cases are generally related to a child being at high risk of sexual abuse, violent
abuse, torture or suicide. In the December 2003 quarter, the department received 3,668 notifications
involving 6,822 children, compared to the December 2004 quarter in which there were 589 notifications
involving 9,791 children. This is a staggering 39 per cent increase in notifications and an even greater
43 per cent increase in the number of children coming into contact with the department. Recently, 140
community organisations involved in child protection said that the system was geared up to be punitive
rather than preventive. Notifications were increasing and record numbers of children were being taken
into care.
These are serious allegations being raised, and the state government needs to listen to this and
respond accordingly, not simply use the mantra that organisations are being unfair in their criticisms and
that the department is on track with its three-year reforms. This whole system failed children miserably
in the past, and we owe it to children to protect them with active and effective legislation.
I do commend the amendment of clause 4 in part 2 of the act to provide for kinship carers.
Kinship carers include not only relatives of significance to the child but also persons of significance to
that child. This definition departs from the narrow concept of relative and is much more culturally
inclusive and in sync with today’s changing family structures and should be the preferred option in terms
of the child’s emotional stability.