Health and Human Services Legislation Amendment Bill
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Second Reading I am very pleased to speak on the Health and
Human Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2010, which the coalition will not be
opposing. Its purposes are to amend several consequential acts to ensure the
continued operation and provision of services under the newly created Department
of Health and the existing Department of Human Services.
It essentially puts into operation the departmental split that was announced by
the Premier in August 2009 and follows a review of what machinery changes are
needed to be made to ensure legal and administrative continuity.
However, everyone knows why this has come about: this is a bureaucratic response
by a government that had a crisis in its Department of Human Services -- a
crisis in health care, a crisis particularly in child protection, and a series
of failures. As a result the government had to be seen to be doing something, so
the very bureaucratic response has been to split the departments. In my
contribution to the debate I want to focus on the areas and responsibilities in
my shadow portfolio -- that is, mental health, drugs and alcohol, and community
services.
The member for Preston spent much time talking about the importance of mental
health.
It is worth noting at the outset that the creation of a dedicated Minister for
Mental Health was announced with much government fanfare prior to the last
election. At the time the minister was appointed she had responsibility for
mental health and senior Victorians, a portfolio involving responsibility for
about $1 billion. Nine months later she had added community services to her
portfolio, adding an extra $2.5 billion worth of responsibility and a lot of
extra focus areas such as disability, child protection, youth justice and
emergency response.
As a result, child protection has taken up a lot of her time, without much
result. Now there will be a new structure, with a mental health and drugs
division in the Department of Health, community services in the
Department of Human Services and responsibility for senior Victorians coming
under the Department of Planning and Community Development. Therefore just three
and a half years after the government, with much fanfare, announced the creation
of a Minister for Mental Health, it now has mental health as a very small part
of a broader portfolio that is clearly consumed with other activities. Mental
health is not receiving the time and focus that was promised by the Labor
government before the last election.
Members should know that workers in the mental health and alcohol and drugs are
very disappointed with what they see as a lack of focus and a lack of delivery
on promises that should have flowed from the government having a dedicated
mental health minister. This response, in terms of splitting the departments,
adds a significant amount of complexity, with a minister having portfolio
responsibilities split across three different government departments.
It was an admission of failure. What we have seen as a result of the splitting
of the two departments is an unfortunate bureaucratic rejig that has required
more paperwork, more administration, more administrators on the ground and more
senior bureaucrats, and unfortunately we are not seeing the translation of that
to significant outcomes for the people who should be the focus of this response.
As I said earlier, it was a response that was more about the spin than the
substance, trying to manage public perception of whether action was being taken
rather than about significant progress in support of people who are very much in
need. Part of the justification for the split was that the integrated department
was not providing adequate protection for at-risk, abused and neglected
children, and if there is one thing that the current Minister for Community
Services has done well it is prove that the problem is not the departmental
structure; the problem is her ability to lead that department, to effect change,
to have a vision and to drive what needs to be done.
It is the incompetence of the minister and the lack of accountability of the
government in terms of delivering services rather than necessarily the
bureaucratic structure which was driving the crises that we continued to see
across the Department of Human Services at the time.
The proposal and the announcement by the Premier did not deliver one extra
mental health bed nor another supported accommodation position. The announcement
about this bureaucratic splitting of the departments was about providing another
structure with sliding doors where we no longer have the ability to compare
departments over time and split them, so we do not have the accountability and
transparency we need to hold this government to account.
What have we seen since this announcement was made? Have we seen the impact that
was meant to be delivered in relation to people who needed care and protection?
In fact the number of unallocated child protection cases, which was a major
focus at the time and a major part of why this response happened, has gone up.
At a hearing of the upper house committee in March we heard that there are
nearly 2300 unallocated cases -- an increase in the time since this announcement
was made to put a focus on supporting and helping at-risk and abused children.
What we have also seen in terms of the lack of accountability is the Secretary
of the Department of Human Services, who presented at the hearing of the upper
house inquiry into child protection, who consistently said, 'I was not in the
department at that time. I can't answer that. I don't know the details'. We
create a lack of continuity, a lack of ability to be held accountable in
relation to the actions of the department for children who are at risk, who are
abused and who are neglected; we see this ability to sidestep that
responsibility.
We have had an incredible experience with freedom of information. We are now
providing duplicate freedom of information requests to both the Department of
Human Services and the Department of Health, so this splitting of the department
is creating a double bureaucratic process, and I can tell members that the
freedom of information officers are very frustrated with their own processes and
with the additional bureaucracy that have come about as a result of the
splitting of the departments.
What have we seen in terms of retention of the workers? One of the no. 1 reasons
for splitting the departments was to put the focus back on attracting and
retaining child protection workers. The government has not delivered on its
commitment in terms of new staff, and we are seeing retention problems
continuing.
It has been reported in the newspaper recently and through information I got
through freedom of information that nearly 20 per cent of UK and New Zealand
child protection workers, recruited specifically to work in the Department of
Human Services, have already gone home. The same retention issues remain, and
nothing has changed.
It is important to spend a moment looking at the organisational chart, because
back in January I tried to
Find the organisational chart of the new Department of Human Services. Because
it had been established for five months I thought it was time we knew what the
new structure might represent, and of course it was not able to be found. It was
not up on the website until March, but I managed to get hold of one as of 12
January, so five months after the announcement by the Premier of the splitting
of the department to focus on the workforce issues and to help at-risk and
abused children, what do we see? The position of executive director, children,
youth and families -- vacant, someone acting in the position. We see the
positions of principal child practitioners -- vacant. We see the position of
executive director, industry, workforce and strategy -- vacant, someone acting
in the position. We see the position of director of industry and workforce
development -- vacant. We see the position of director, policy and client
outcomes -- vacant.
Again and again we are seeing evidence of the fact that five months after the
announcement of the splitting of the department, key roles to deliver key
services to at-risk and abused young people are still vacant and people are
acting in those roles, so what we have created is a bureaucratic process that
was not delivering to the very people it was meant to deliver to.
I know a number of those positions have subsequently been filled and that is a
relief, because seven or eight or nine months on you would expect that the
department would have established the structure it needs and the staff it needs
to try to deliver to it, but unfortunately the outcomes for at-risk, neglected
and abused young people continue to be very poor.
We need to make sure that we are focusing not on a bureaucratic response, not on
administrative shuffling, but on delivering services for the very people who we
must make sure are protected and who deserve the protection of the government
and the Parliament, and that is at-risk and neglected children across this
state.
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