How bad is bad enough? Why it's now or never for South Australia's politicians to show leadership on child protection

The numbers don’t lie.

And the Productivity Commission’s Annual Report of Government Services data paints a damning picture of South Australia’s child protection system.

Released in recent weeks, this year’s report has, unfortunately, shown a further deterioration in the headline indicators of South Australia’s child protection performance.

The parlous state of our state’s child protection system has been the product of many years of neglect and poor policy decisions.

In other states, the rates of children in care have largely plateaued in the last decade, however, in South Australia, our rates have risen by a whopping 62 per cent.

As a result, our expenditure on out of home care services has risen by an even more alarming rate of 264 per cent over the same period.

That’s an additional $448 million a year needing to be spent on our absurdly and unnecessarily high rates of children in care.

If South Australia were to perform at the national average, we would have 1,560 less children and young people stuck in our care systems.

South Australian taxpayers would save more than $214 million each year.

Imagine $214 million back in our pockets during a cost-of-living crisis or what other key initiatives those funds can be invested back into.

We simply cannot afford – both socially and economically – to continue down this path. Our system, as it stands today, is the product of decades of unimaginative policy solutions where more money has been the answer but provided no real solutions.

While the blame for the current states of affairs doesn’t sit wholly with Peter Malinauskas 's Government, they do have the power to turn it around.

Following last year’s data, Uniting Communities released our bold six point plan to turn around South Australia’s beleaguered child protection system.

The Plan included a range of reforms from a political compact – where MPs put aside partisan politics to work together on this issue - setting targets, legislative changes and a significant refocus of expenditure.

It provided a blueprint for how South Australia could turn around a seriously underperforming system. The Plan didn’t apportion blame or seek to political point score – instead, it provided real and achievable solutions.

In light of this year’s report, Uniting Communities is once again calling for change and the adoption of its Six Point Plan, which includes:

• A commitment to keep as many children and young people living safely and growing up healthily and happily in their own families, communities and culture
• A political compact that includes all parties committing to working collectively to establish a new policy, legislative and investment framework for change
• Legislative reforms, which include changing the threshold of risk underpinning our reporting obligations, and a statutory obligation to deliver prevention and early intervention services to families at risk.
• Shifting the investment focus in child protection from crisis to prevention by increasing our expenditure on family support and introducing family support services to a minimum of $275 million a year ?(currently, South Australia spends only $9.1 per cent of its child protection budget on these services, compared to Victoria which commits 26.7 per cent of its budget to family support – and which has seen a corresponding steady decline in their rates of children being removed and remaining in care).
• Setting a target to reduce our rates of children in care to the national average in the next three years
• Developing an all of government response (and responsibility) to bring about change in this space, enabling families to keep children living safely and thriving in their family, community and culture

After decades of poor decision-making, misaligned investment and doing what’s always been done, enough is enough.

If we do not embrace innovative change in this space, nor make child protection the political priority it warrants, this data will continue to deliver bad news for children, families and our State Budget.

The answer is not more of the same.

Uniting Communities and many across our sector stand willing and ready to help. We’re ready to help deliver a child protection system that works and that our state deserves.

These are six crucial first steps – we just need our politicians to have the will to change.

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