Thursday, 8 February 2024

Ministers statements: social services

Lizzie BLANDTHORN (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Children, Minister for Disability) (14:32): Vulnerable Victorians deserve to have their needs and concerns met, and in fact there is no more important matter for government than ensuring that their needs and concerns are met. It is important to note that from 1 July 2024 the Social Services Regulation Act 2021 establishes a new framework for social services in Victoria, and the initiatives that were in this act, to remind the house, include supporting the safe delivery of social services, ensuring social service providers understand their role in protecting the rights of social service users, defining roles and responsibilities of social service providers, giving a new regulator monitoring and enforcement powers so they can respond to risks of harm and improving information sharing across regulators so that they can identify and respond to any risks of harm to service users. This will mean that Victorians have streamlined registration and reporting requirements, a common set of social service standards and a single independent regulator.

I am very pleased to inform the house that this week I have announced that the new social services regulator will be Jonathan Kaplan. Mr Kaplan was previously the CEO of the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, which regulates education and training in schools and vocational education and training providers and of course enforces the child safe standards in schools. From 1 July Mr Kaplan will oversee the establishment of a single set of social service standards and a single registration process for the hundreds of community organisations that work tirelessly day in, day out to protect the needs and concerns of vulnerable Victorians. The regulator has the capacity to identify shortcomings in service delivery and work with providers to improve standards, issue fines to providers and initiate criminal proceedings for aggravated breaches of the standards where there has been wilful or serious noncompliance with those standards. Importantly, the new regulator will replace the human services regulator and provide decision-making separation between the responsibilities of the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing and the decisions that are being made by the regulator.

Importantly also, the disability services commissioner will merge with the new social services regulator this year, with similar reforms being planned for the Victorian disability worker commissioner and the Disability Worker Registration Board of Victoria within the next two years. It is so important that all of our social services users – (Time expired)