Wednesday, 20 March 2019

 Mr McCURDY (Ovens Valley) (19:05): (389) My adjournment matter is to the Minister for Child Protection, and the action I seek is that he make the time to join me on a visit to Yarrawonga or Wangaratta during the next couple of months and meet with kinship carers in our region to discuss their views. I was delighted to hear the minister speaking in his address-in-reply contribution today about kinship carers and how he highly respects them, so I am certainly satisfied he is right across the issue and will have empathy with kinship carers in my region.

Kinship carers are an extraordinary group of people who find themselves, for one reason or another, looking after family members due to circumstances beyond their control. Often it is a grandparent looking after grandchildren, or an aunty or an uncle supporting children without parents.

There is a massive need for support workers to assist kinship carers to access services and help them to understand what they can and cannot get help with. A support worker with eight to 10 clients appears to be the at threshold to ensure a fair level of support, and the number of kinship carers far exceeds the availability of support workers in my region.

There is a fundamental difference between kinship carer support and foster care support. Logically it would make far more sense, both mentally and financially, for a relative to support a child or children, but when a child is not well supported by a relative they then fall into the foster care system or into residential care. That is not an ideal result for the child or the state.

In most cases a family member is the best person to support the child, but often the carer does not own a car large enough to transport the children to school or a house large enough to house them. In line with the old saying about putting an ambulance at the top of the cliff rather than at the bottom of the cliff, this is a perfect example of where early intervention and early support can make so much difference to the child and to the carer who supports the child or children. If the minister cannot come to Yarrawonga or Wangaratta to meet these families, I would respectfully request that a time be made for these carers to come to Melbourne and spend some time speaking with him.