Tuesday, 1 August 2023

Child protection

Matthew BACH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (20:24): (344) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Minister for Child Protection and Family Services, and the action I seek is an explanation from the minister: does it remain the government’s position that residential care should be phased out? If not, why not? And if not, what levels of abuse would precipitate a change of policy?

At the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee the minister was very forthcoming regarding the appalling levels of abuse of our most vulnerable children in residential care. Residential care units are group homes out in the suburbs that house children in the child protection system who cannot be placed in foster care. Liberal and National members of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee asked for some information on notice, and Minister Blandthorn was good enough to provide that information. Through the provision of that information we learned even more about the huge levels of abuse of children in care. Our independent children’s commissioner has previously said that many children in residential care are preyed upon by what she termed paedophile prostitution rings, and it is now abundantly clear that abuse of children in care, including the most egregious forms of sexual abuse, has become completely normalised.

In this place, on a number of occasions, I have congratulated Minister Blandthorn for the good budget outcome that she was able to achieve when it came to increased funding for residential care. But my worry is that the situation is now so bad that it is not possible to reform residential care to a state that is acceptable to us in this place and to the broader community. When we are seeing such huge proportions of children abused in care, we need to seriously consider the viability of the entire model.

There are alternatives. So many Victorians with the right incentives would love to be foster carers, and yet we know through information provided by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare that far more foster carers leave the system in Victoria every year than in any other Australian jurisdiction. We need what the Liberals and Nationals advocated for at the election, and that is a very significant expansion of the foster care allowance so that basic expenses can at least be covered. Adoption should be available to Victorians who need it, especially members of the LGBT community. We learned last year that fewer than five members of the LGBT community in Victoria – a state of 7 million people – have been able to adopt children since adoption reform was put in place. This government’s policy is to stop foster carers fostering kids and stop adoption and yet funnel more children into residential care. I think this entire model now, given the level of abuse, needs to be rethought.