Ms ANDERSON - 2008-06-11
Can you please update the House on what the Territory government is doing to improve responses to allegations of child abuse and neglect in remote communities?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Macdonnell for her question. I am pleased to report that my department has been working very closely with the Australian government to develop innovative responses to the investigation of allegations of child abuse and neglect in our remote communities. As I have said, we have to deliver safer families for all Territorians and, in particular, we have to deliver out bush. We are doing this through our own Closing the Gap package and in partnership with the Australian government.
The first initiative I want to mention now is the mobile child protection team. The mobile team commenced on 28 April 2008. The team will conduct child protection investigations right across our remote communities, in partnership with the existing Family and Community Services’ officers. It is not just our remote communities, these teams will also be working with a lot of town camps around our urban centres.
Training was accelerated. With the urgency for that two staff in the first two weeks, it meant team members commenced their first investigations in May 2008. The mobile team consists of 12 staff - a manager and an administration officer, and 10 additional child protection workers - which was a promise under Closing the Gap. The difficulties recruiting staff to work in this challenging area are well known, so it has been fantastic to be able to get the calibre of staff that we have into our mobile child protection teams that work with the police to go into a lot of our remote communities.
I applaud the efforts of the Department of Family and Community Services because, if you look everywhere else on the eastern seaboard, this is the one area where those other state governments have a lot of problems in trying to recruit experienced staff in this area. Now that we have the staff, we need to keep them here, because they have a very important job to do. We have only just started the next stage of the work that came out of the intervention. It is very important that we maintain the work that needs to be done so that we can do more than just the health checks where the teams went in, did the immediate checks, and then withdrew.
Part of this challenge with the task force is to ensure that they go in very proactively and work through the other side of this initiative, which is to establish the child safety units - which were started off by my predecessor - replicating the success that we have had in Maningrida with the Aboriginal community workers. I am pleased to say that Daly River, Numbulwar, Galiwinku, Beswick, Ti Tree, Mutitjulu, Hermannsburg, Yuendumu and, in the member for Macdonnell’s electorate, Papunya, have had coordinators appointed. All coordinators have been appointed for both Top End and Central Australia, and workers are expected to commence in the next couple of months.
Whilst we are getting the forensic child protection workers in, we are also balancing that with the Aboriginal community workers that have also been trained in the forensic side and the whole issue of child safety. That is fantastic, Madam Speaker. It has been a great initiative which came out of Closing the Gap. Our government is on target and on track. It just goes to show, if you have a comprehensive policy such as Closing the Gap, and you back that up with the resources and the financial resourcing as well, we can deliver. It has certainly been well received in a lot of the communities. I will be talking to all of those local members where these remote Aboriginal community workers will go in, so that we establish these child safety units in all of these areas.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Macdonnell for her question. I am pleased to report that my department has been working very closely with the Australian government to develop innovative responses to the investigation of allegations of child abuse and neglect in our remote communities. As I have said, we have to deliver safer families for all Territorians and, in particular, we have to deliver out bush. We are doing this through our own Closing the Gap package and in partnership with the Australian government.
The first initiative I want to mention now is the mobile child protection team. The mobile team commenced on 28 April 2008. The team will conduct child protection investigations right across our remote communities, in partnership with the existing Family and Community Services’ officers. It is not just our remote communities, these teams will also be working with a lot of town camps around our urban centres.
Training was accelerated. With the urgency for that two staff in the first two weeks, it meant team members commenced their first investigations in May 2008. The mobile team consists of 12 staff - a manager and an administration officer, and 10 additional child protection workers - which was a promise under Closing the Gap. The difficulties recruiting staff to work in this challenging area are well known, so it has been fantastic to be able to get the calibre of staff that we have into our mobile child protection teams that work with the police to go into a lot of our remote communities.
I applaud the efforts of the Department of Family and Community Services because, if you look everywhere else on the eastern seaboard, this is the one area where those other state governments have a lot of problems in trying to recruit experienced staff in this area. Now that we have the staff, we need to keep them here, because they have a very important job to do. We have only just started the next stage of the work that came out of the intervention. It is very important that we maintain the work that needs to be done so that we can do more than just the health checks where the teams went in, did the immediate checks, and then withdrew.
Part of this challenge with the task force is to ensure that they go in very proactively and work through the other side of this initiative, which is to establish the child safety units - which were started off by my predecessor - replicating the success that we have had in Maningrida with the Aboriginal community workers. I am pleased to say that Daly River, Numbulwar, Galiwinku, Beswick, Ti Tree, Mutitjulu, Hermannsburg, Yuendumu and, in the member for Macdonnell’s electorate, Papunya, have had coordinators appointed. All coordinators have been appointed for both Top End and Central Australia, and workers are expected to commence in the next couple of months.
Whilst we are getting the forensic child protection workers in, we are also balancing that with the Aboriginal community workers that have also been trained in the forensic side and the whole issue of child safety. That is fantastic, Madam Speaker. It has been a great initiative which came out of Closing the Gap. Our government is on target and on track. It just goes to show, if you have a comprehensive policy such as Closing the Gap, and you back that up with the resources and the financial resourcing as well, we can deliver. It has certainly been well received in a lot of the communities. I will be talking to all of those local members where these remote Aboriginal community workers will go in, so that we establish these child safety units in all of these areas.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016