<< back to archive index Speeches Regarding Bills Date: 27th September 2006. Subject: Speech by The Hon. Dr ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS, on the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Amendment (Parent Responsibility Contracts) Bill From Hansard The Hon. Dr ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS: "This bill amends the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 and enables the Director General of the Department of Community Services to enter into a formal agreement with the primary care-giver of a child or young persons to improve the parenting skills of primary care-givers and encourage them to accept greater responsibility for the child. The bill should be considered from a number of perspectives. The Hon. Kayee Griffin spoke about the Ombudsman's comment that the Department of Community Services [DOCS] was not clear about what it was demanding parents to do and that the bill will force parents to enter into a clear contract as to what they are prepared to do. We need to look at DOCS in a broader context. The fundamental problem with DOCS is that it was gutted by the Greiner Government, particularly at the middle-management level. Of course, at that level there are people who have experience to set the priorities of service delivery. At the bottom of the totem pole are the Indians, who deliver the service, but all the experience for prioritisation resides in the middle ranks of management. The department has not recovered from that gutting. It has been built up to some extent. At a recent estimates hearing the director general said, in answer to a question about how the department was going, that he was doing a lot of recruiting. Honourable members may be aware that I made the original call for an inquiry into DOCS. Well, 20 months later the Liberals were brave enough to support my call for an inquiry, and an inquiry was conducted. As a result, DOCS was allocated $1 billion over 10 years basically to rebuild the department and to put it higher up the priority level for resource allocation within the State budget. That is now happening. The director general, Neil Shepherd, spoke positively and proudly at the estimates hearing about getting more recruits to carry out the necessary functions. DOCS is climbing back, but its performance is still suboptimal. Interestingly, a controversial aspect for DOCS a few years ago was the mandatory reporting of child abuse, particularly by teachers, doctors and so on. As a result the department had to deal with a huge number of reports. DOCS workers that I have spoken to satirically called the Helpline the "No Helpline" because it was so overloaded that people could not get through it to talk to anyone. The department introduced fax reporting, which meant that one sent off one's fax but did not know what, if anything, happened with it. That was fine if one was reporting a situation that was merely a bit odd about a child, because someone somewhere would marry up that report with any subsequent reports about the same child and come to the conclusion that the child was at risk, although the initial report was not of huge moment. However, if the initial report concerned a serious matter, and something needed to be done, the delays were often quite frightening. Indeed there was some controversy over the training of telephone operators and so on who could promise action but who then had to hand on the reports to someone else because they did not have the resources to deliver on their promise. There was the further problem because a centralised reporting system was involved in that the person asked to deliver action could ask, "Yes, and where are you ringing from?" and be told, "I am in a call centre in Woop Woop and something has been happening on the North Coast." Obviously, what a person in a call centre in Woop Woop can promise to do, and what a person on the North Coast can deliver, may be two quite different things. The point about mandatory reporting is that one assumes that the power of the central office to make decisions and to prioritise is far better than someone reporting. Mandatory reporting sounds okay; any possibility of a child being harmed must be notified to the responsible people. In a sense if the power to make a judgment is taken from the people at the bottom of the totem, those who enthusiastically report relatively trivial incidents may take resources from others who are trying to identify very serious problems. Indeed, mandatory reporting has its own political momentum, and that may not be the best way of handling things. That has been amply demonstrated by the huge workload that comes with mandatory reporting brings; the prioritisation task is huge and that detracts from the quality of service delivery. For every task there is an opportunity cost, meaning that one cannot do something else. There is another perspective. An election if forthcoming and the Government wants to be seen to be doing something to ensure that parents are given a contract and have time to raise their game, as it were-suggesting that parents are being pushed into line. In her second reading speech the Minister said that parental responsibility contracts will occur: … in those instances where the department is of the view that the lack of parenting skills or poor behaviour of one or more of the primary caregivers of the child or young persons can be modified within a period of six months so as to adequately reduce the risk of harm to the child or young persons. She said further: A parent responsibility contract is an agreement between the primary caregivers and the Department of Community Services aimed at targeting specific problems, where there is a specific and tangible response. Once agreed to and signed, the contract will be registered in the Children's Court. Amendments will be made to part 2 of chapter 5 of the Act to clarify the circumstances in which the Children's Court may make orders to activate a care plan without the need for a care application. Under the bill the Children's Court can accept undertakings from certain persons even if they are not the parents of the child or young person. The court will have the power to make orders for the parents of a child or young person to attend a therapeutic or health treatment program on parenting skills, addiction, anger management and violence prevention and behavioural issues for no more than six months and no more than twice within a 12-month period. The bill is the product of a discussion about what occurs in other jurisdictions. The excellent library research paper No. 7/06 by Lenny Roth compares the jurisdictions. I take issue with the Hon. Greg Donnelly, who asked what New South Wales has in common with England because we are a State and it is a country. I think both community services systems are of sufficient magnitude to allow us to compare the way in which we handle our children at risk. There are certainly differences between the British system and what happens here. Parental responsibility laws exist in other jurisdictions, such as Western Australia and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom parenting orders were introduced along with antisocial behaviour orders [ASBOs] under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Magistrates in the United Kingdom impose parenting orders to accompany an ASBO on a juvenile offender. These orders are imposed on the parents of children who have refused to co-operate on a voluntary basis. Parenting orders are civil orders that encourage parents to address their child's offending or antisocial behaviour and to establish discipline for, and a relationship with, their child. This may help the conditions of the ASBO to be met, and thereby reduce the chances of the young person breaching the order. Emphasis is put on improving parenting skills through attending parenting programs. The orders may also impose other case-specific requirements. A breach of this type of order is a criminal offence, for which offending parents can face a fine of £1,000. I refer those who wish to read more about this system to "A Guide to Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and Acceptable Behaviour Contracts" issued by the United Kingdom Home Office. United Kingdom parenting orders differ from those proposed in the bill in that they are more punitive. Under this bill the parent responsibility contracts will operate within the framework of child protection and are intended to be therapeutic. The Australian Democrats have several concerns about the bill. Clause 38D (3), "Effect of parent responsibility contract", reads: Except to the extent that this Division or any other provision of this Act provides otherwise: (a) a parent responsibility contract does not create a legally enforceable agreement, and (b) any failure to comply with the terms of such a contract (or any thing done or omitted to be done in connection with the negotiation of, or entry into, the contract) does not give rise to civil liability of any kind. It has been brought to my attention that under this provision DOCS can use a contract only in the Children's Court, not in any other court. This means that a child cannot use a parental responsibility contract as admissible evidence in a court of another jurisdiction to support a case against DOCS if in the future that child seeks some form of legal remedy for the abuse that he or she may have endured during the period when the parent responsibility contract was in force. In other words, if DOCS tells a parent who is not doing a very good job, "Righto, you've got six months to get your act together and this is what you have to do," but the parent fails to comply and the situation worsens, DOCS cannot be held responsible for the problems created during the six months when the contract was supposedly in force. We are concerned that DOCS will waste time and enter into a contract instead of resolving the problem. For example, if a drug-addicted or violent parent cannot meet the terms of the contract and time is wasted to the detriment of the child, DOCS will not be held liable. The responsibility rests with the parent, and DOCS is specifically excluded from any liability for a poor contract outcome. Is the department trying to protect itself from future liability and responsibility for the welfare of a child who it was aware was at risk when the contract was entered into? I look forward to the Minister's clarification of clause 38D. We are also concerned about the resources allocated to support services for people on parent responsibility contracts. Can DOCS deliver the support services that are intended to make the people subject to these contracts better and more responsible parents? If a person has a problem with drug addiction-which is quite common in cases of child neglect-and DOCS writes into the contract that the person must address that addiction problem, will DOCS be able to refer that parent to a service that can provide credible assistance, or is the contract more or less set up for the person to fail in the absence of any support? The NSW State budget appears to allocate no additional money to providing therapeutic or health treatment programs and classes on parenting skills, addiction, anger management and violence prevention, and other behavioural issues. Is that the case and, if so, why has more money not been allocated to provide such programs? It will obviously cost money to heal or educate parents. Where will the money come from and what is the time frame for establishing such programs and meeting the demand? The contracts will direct people to undertake these courses so they will undoubtedly be in demand. The contracts presuppose that a service is available. Unfortunately, this is often not the case, especially in regional, country and remote areas. The consequences for parents who breach a contract can be quite severe. But is there an onus on DOCS to ensure that the necessary services are provided? Why does the department not provide those services already? What will change under this bill? Is this legislation simply an advertisement that offers clarification to people with disordered lives by clearly setting out their responsibilities but fails to provide any additional assistance that enables them to improve their parenting skills? There is a danger that the contracts will delay remedial action that is perhaps inevitable in some cases. Will contract compliance be monitored? Will the level of unmet need be identified, and where will that information be collated? DOCS has difficulty reporting now. The information system, which was promised for years and years, has finally arrived but it is difficult to access the wonderful information that it supposedly collates. I look forward to the Minister's response to my concerns about the bill. I am not sure whether to support it. I think it is a piece of advertising. I acknowledge that it is a response to the Ombudsman's comment that parents are unsure of their responsibilities. I am concerned that the contracts may delay action and will not change the way in which DOCS works. We hope that clear contractual stipulations about behaviour will make parents change, but changing human behaviour that is entrenched or drug affected is a fairly difficult assignment. We must put the interests of kids first."

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