Commission for Children and Young People Amendment Bill 2007
OBJECTIVES:
The Commission for Children and Young People Amendment Bill 2007 will make several minor amendments to the Commission for Children and Young People Act 1998 and one to the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act 1912. The amendments are not substantive in nature but rather help to clarify existing provisions and streamline the Act’s provisions. Consequently, they will allow the Commission to do its work more effectively.
The objects of this Bill are:
(a) To amend the Commission for Children and Young People Act 1998:
(i) To clarify when relevant employment proceeding are taken to have been completed, and thus when they are required to be notified to the Commission for Children and Young People, and
(ii) To require full details of such employment proceedings to be notified, and not just the name and identifying particulars of the employee, and
(iii) To make it compulsory for background checks to be conducted on any preferred applicant for employment in primary child-related employment, even if that person is related to the children he or she will work with, and
(iv) To establish the Child Death review team as a committee of the Commission, rather than a statutory corporation, and to empower the Team to register, classify, analyse and research not only child deaths that occur in NSW, but also the deaths of children who ordinarily reside in NSW but who die elsewhere, and
(v) To empower the Commission to charge fees for the issue of certain certificates, and
(vi) To make minor amendments, and
(b) To amend the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act 1912 to require the Commissioner of Police, the Registrar of Courts and certain other persons to provide the Commission for Children and Young People with access to information that the Commission requires for the purposes of the conduct of audits of the child-related conduct declarations of candidates for election who are subsequently elected to Parliament.
COMMENTS:
How we nurture our children and young people is universally regarded as fundamental to our humanity.
In 1990, Australia ratified the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child (Farrell 2004: 234). This Convention provides the wider policy context and a guideline for all signatories to develop and undertake policy in the light of the best interests of the child (Kenney and Tait 2005: 5). This implies that every child has the right to be safe from harm and that organisations entrusted with the care of the children or that regularly come into contact with children are required to create and provide safe environments for them. Ensuring that individuals who work with children are appropriate is encompassed with this statement.
In 1998, the Government established an independent Commission to represent the interests of children and young people. The Commission for Children and Young People has been set up and employment screening, known as the Working with Children Check, commenced on 3 July 2000. The Commission has since provided invaluable services to promote the safety, welfare and well-being of children and young people in NSW.
In order to safeguard the welfare of children, paid employees in child-related employment must have a background check under the Working with Children Check before they start work. The requirement is defined in the Working with Children Check Guidelines as “staff in the listed work settings, who must have direct unsupervised contact with children in their jobs must have a background check. The Check is only available for paid child-related employees”.
The Commission for Children and Young People Amendment Bill will mean that working with children background check will apply regardless of whether people are employed to work only with children who are related to them. This Bill requires that all people in primarily-child related employment be subject to the background check. The question of whether they are related will not arise.
Over the last 5 years the number of child protection notifications and substantiations within Australia has increased (Kovac & Richardson 2004: 2). This increase has many potential contributors including changes to legislation, definitions and reporting requirements. However, the actual extent of child sexual abuse is uncertain as it is understood that many cases are not reported and remain undetected (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2005: 1).
Abuse occurring within care organisations is even harder to estimate due to a lack of available research (Department of Families, Youth and Community Care 1999: 6). The extent to which people with a history of abusing children seek employment or voluntary work with children is unknown. However, there is anecdotal evidence that suggests some perpetrators of child abuse target agencies that work with children (Barter 2003: 3). Statistics from Victoria’s Child Exploitation Squad from 1988 to 1996 reveal that 43.5% of offenders investigated gained access to the child victims through children’s organisations (Employers, Workers and Volunteers: Creating Child Safe Environments 2004: 11).
Moreover, the Australian Institute of Criminology (2004: 22) reports that most sexual abuse is committed by a person known to the victim. Consequently, organisations that work with children need to specifically ensure that their employees and volunteers are appropriate candidates, as the direct contact with children increases the potential for abuse.
Furthermore, strong responses from the media about the release of child sex offenders in the community have pressured governments to introduce measures to ensure offenders whereabouts and activities are monitored.
Under the Act, employers are required to report to the Commission if an employee has committed an act of violence against a child or has engaged in certain types of conduct. If an employer has investigated the employee’s behaviour and has found that the employee has, or may have, behaved in a prescribed way or used violence against a child they report it to the Commission, which takes it into account in background checking.
Over the past 10 years there has been a developing awareness of the need for organisations to look further at how best to ensure the well being of children and young people with whom they work. Attention has focused on how to more effectively ‘screen’ people who work with children and young people and as a result there has been a significant increase in the number of people who have been screened. For example, in NSW in 1993, just 269 people were assessed – with 95 assessed as being of some risk. In 2004, over 215,000 people in NSW had background checks over their suitability to work with children.
The issues for implementing an effective screening system revolve around questions of who should be screened (all people who work with children both in paid and in volunteer positions), what type and level of screening (criminal history, employment history, domestic violence history, psychological testing) and who should do the screening (e.g. police checks, screening by specialised police organisations, in house).
Background screening is a response that has been offered as a way of promoting child safety within organisations and can take several forms. Within Australia the most basic tool used is prohibited employment statutory declaration made by prospective employees declaring that they are ‘safe’ to work with children. The most common form of background check is a police record check that informs an employer of an employee’s past convictions. In the last few years, a number of States have enacted legislation that requires further background checks. These may include checking previous employment, contacting registration boards for detail on disciplinary hearings and checking previous charges and apprehended violence orders (AVOs) (Institute of Child Protection Studies 2005: 18).
In the 1990s a number of Inquiries highlighted shortcomings in the selection, screening and recruitment of staff in the community services sector. The 1996 Woods Royal Commission into paedophile activity found the screening of people working with children was limited. A recommendation was made to improve screening processes (Royal Commission 1996: 7). Also, strong responses from the media about the release of child sex offenders into the community have presented the NSW Government to introduce measures to ensure offenders’ whereabouts and activities are monitored.
This Bill will require employers who report relevant employment proceedings to provide sufficient details about the incident or incidents so they can usefully be considered in the background checking process.
Finally, in relation to the working with children check, the Bill update the Commission’s Act to reflect terminology changes in the Crimes Act. The working with children background check reviews relevant AVOs, which are defined to include interstate restraint orders. Domestic violence is important to take into account in the protection of children.
I will now turn to the main provision that concern the Child Death Review Team. This Bill will amend the Act to allow reciprocal arrangements between NSW and other Australian jurisdictions so that the team will be able to access information about the deaths of NSW children who die elsewhere in Australia. It will also allow the team to provide information for research undertaken by other teams aimed at preventing or reducing child deaths in their jurisdictions.
Finally, the Bill amends the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act 1912 conferring on the Commission wider powers to request the Police and a court to provide copies of documents necessary to audit child related conduct declarations.
CONCLUSION:
We must value the lives of our children, and the work of those who care for them. However, we must primarily ensure the protection of children by strengthening background-checking provisions. With the political will, NSW can create a warmer, stronger and more caring place for our youngest citizens.
I congratulate the Government for introducing this needed Bill to strengthen the protections for our children. I commend the Legislation to the House.
REFERENCE:
Farrell, A. (2004), Child Protection Policy Perspectives and Reform of Australian Legislation, Child Abuse Review, 13: 234-235
Tait, A. and Kenney, N. (2005), Commissions for Children and Young People: Comparing State and Territory Statutory Bodies for Protecting the Rights and Interests of Children, NCPC
Richardson, N. and Kovacs, K. (2004), Child Abuse Statistics, www.aifs.gov.au/nch/sheets/rs.1.html
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2004), Child Protection Australia 2002-2003
Barter, C. (2003) Abuse of Children in Residential Care, NSPCC, www.nspcc.org.uk
Royal Commission into the NSW Police (1997), Royal Commission into the NSW Police Service Final Report, Sydney
Institute of Child Protection Studies (2005), Screening of People Working with Children and Young People: Issues Paper, ACU