South Australia is the nation's best at finding stable permanent homes for children leaving out of home care, a new report has revealed.
The 2023-24 Report on Government Services (RoGS) released today also shows that slowing the growth of children coming into out of home care, investigating more notifications and providing greater stability for children in out of home care are among the key improvements for South Australia's child protection and family support system.
The positive indicators highlighted in the report reflect the Malinauskas Labor Government's significant investment of $580 million into services and programs that support and empower children and young people and that work to transform the child protection and family support system is beginning to show results.
The RoGS report shows that during 2023-24, the overall net growth of children coming into care has dramatically slowed and now sits at 706 children, a 9.3% reduction on the previous year and the lowest number of children entering care since 2017-18.
The Department for Child Protection (DCP) investigated 12,238 notifications – a 17.5% increase on South Australia's 2022-23 number (10,418).
DCP completed 44.7% of investigations within 28 days or less of the investigation start date, the second highest result of all Australian jurisdictions and 15.1 percentage points higher than the national average.
South Australia leads the nation with 96.2% of children exiting out of home care to a permanent arrangement not returning for 12 months.
South Australia also achieved greater stability for children and young people living in care, with 88.5% of children in care for two years or more residing in one or two placements. This figure is two percentage points higher than the previous year and represents the state's best result in this area.
The data also highlights ongoing challenges for the child protection and family support system, including the over-representation of Aboriginal children in care.
New legislation before the Parliament supports expanding Family Group Conferencing for Aboriginal families to help them keep their children safe at home with family and kin and embeds the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle to the standard of active efforts.
As put by Katrine Hildyard
It is really pleasing to see that we are continuing to make progress and improvements for children, young people and their families across a range of child protection and family support indicators.
These improvements reflect the ongoing and deliberate reform happening across the child protection and family support system.
Every child and young person in South Australia deserves a stable, caring home where they feel loved, supported and cared for – it is so important that our efforts help to offer this feeling of stability to young people engaged with the child protection and family support system. This data shows that we are doing just this in South Australia.
Whilst we are so pleased that we are advancing positive change, we also acknowledge there is still more to be done with families facing ongoing and complex challenges which will take time and collective effort to address. These challenges highlight just how important our program of far-reaching reform for the child protection and family support system is in addressing the underlying drivers of contact with the system.
The landmark, transformative child protection and family support system legislation I introduced last year will help advance further positive outcomes for children and young people in South Australia.
As put by foster carer Rachel Smith
Instability is something that a child who comes into the foster care system has more than likely experienced.
Offering stability and structure can only help a child with their growth development and their feeling of safety and security.
Children were always going to play a part in my life but I never saw myself giving birth to a child. I always had a philosophy that there were so many children that came into this world in unsafe environments and that's what I've always looked at.
Being a carer is not only beneficial to the child but also for the foster care family.
I thought my heart couldn't get any bigger and then this child came into my life and my heart has grown even bigger.
