Children: protectionWednesday, August 12, 2009 Adjournment DebateI raise a matter for the urgent attention of the Minister for Community Services. The action I seek is for her to commission a comprehensive independent judicial inquiry into child protection. This should include examining reporting and investigation, retention of the workforce, the role of the courts and evaluating the outcomes for children who are victims of abuse and neglect in out-of-home care. In 1999 Labor inherited a child protection system which led the nation in investment in child protection and out-of-home care. After 10 years of Labor it is devastating to see how quickly we have plummeted right to the bottom. Thanks to this government Victoria now spends the least amount per child on child protection and out-of-home care of any other state or territory. We have seen the results of this.
Two thousand children who the government knows are at risk or who have been abused or neglected are missing out on any continuity of care because they do not have a caseworker. A third of all children who left out-of-home care last year had placement instability, which the child safety commissioner characterised as causing their 'retraumatisation'. Child protection staff are overworked, overwhelmed and undersupported, and as a result they leave the system in droves each year. Each time we lose a worker we lose valuable information, our vulnerable children lose a relationship and the system becomes even more fragmented. Children who have been innocent victims of abuse and neglect rely on the government for protection, because often there is nowhere else for them to go and no-one else to protect them. Our child protection system is broken. The Premier has admitted it, the minister has admitted it and the child safety commissioner has admitted it.
For almost a decade the Labor government has stood by and watched as our workforce has been eroded, as foster carers have left and as our most vulnerable children have slipped through the cracks. It is too late for bandaid solutions. The system needs to be comprehensively examined. To inform this process we need a full and independent judicial inquiry into the state of our child protection system. The Premier has rejected this suggestion already. He is clearly too arrogant to listen to the sector, to listen to families, to listen to foster carers and to listen to the opposition. But we will continue to call for a comprehensive review, and I challenge the minister and the Labor government to adopt our proposal. We also believe that the system needs an independent children's commissioner with the power to initiate investigations and make recommendations to protect vulnerable children without having to wait for direction from the minister. We continue to see a government which is not only bereft of new ideas but which will not even listen to those with ideas that could assist. I ask the minister to undertake the review, learn from others, hear the advice and make the necessary changes.
I ask him to do it because it may just mean that one less child is abused or neglected in the future; if that is the case, it will certainly be worth it.
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