500+ carers, workers and young people engaged, Act passed by Parliament 10 months later.

On 5 August 2016, South Australia’s Child Protection Systems Royal Commission delivered its report, The Life They Deserve, with 260 recommendations. The government released its response, A Fresh Start, in November 2016.

Foster and kinship carers, frontline workers, Aboriginal organisations and young people in care would live with the changes. Many had experience of the system letting them down. The government needed their views on how the recommendations should be put into practice.

September 2016: six themed workshops for the Royal Commission Response Unit with 142 key partners, including carers, NGOs and two youth representatives, testing the recommendations six weeks after the report was released.

February to March 2017: nine focus groups for the Child Protection Reform Implementation Team with 306 participants, in Mount Gambier, Port Augusta, Murray Bridge, Mount Barker and across Adelaide.

March to April 2017: three focus groups for foster and kinship carers only, with around 60 carers in northern Adelaide, Mount Gambier and central Adelaide. Sessions included a Saturday and an evening so working carers could attend.

June 2017: two Out of Home Care Strategy workshops with key partners. Partners critiqued the draft five-year strategy, then mapped its proposed outcomes by impact and effort to agree priorities.

Every comment was typed up verbatim, so decision makers read carers’ and workers’ own words. Two themes came through repeatedly.

Carers wanted to be part of the team around a child. That meant receiving the information they need and being included in decisions. In 2016, foster parents identified the Royal Commission’s recommendations on carers’ rights to information and to participate in decisions as the ones that mattered most to them.

“...if carers have no rights there then we have no rights at all.”

Foster parent, Key Partners Workshops, 2016

“Respect us as parents to these children. Trust us with information.”

Carer, Child Protection Reform Implementation focus group, 2017

Children’s views had to be acted on. In 2016, young people asked to be given information about proposed carers before a placement, so they could have a say.

“Ask the children. Listen. Believe.”

Carer, Child Protection Reform Implementation focus group, 2017

Reporting criticism of the process. The 2016 report also recorded participants’ concerns about the engagement itself: that this might be their only chance to comment, that there was no ongoing strategy for engaging the sector, and that no decision makers were in the room. Becky had agreed to pass those concerns on, and did. In 2017 the government ran further statewide rounds, including carer-only sessions, with a senior member of the reform team opening every session. The 2017 strategy workshops asked partners directly whether the draft was different enough, or “same old same old”.

On 6 July 2017, Parliament passed the Children and Young People (Safety) Act 2017. The Department for Child Protection describes it as supporting the reforms in A Fresh Start, with “a greater emphasis on carer involvement in decision-making”. The Act provides that:

approved carers are given certain information before a placement, and on an ongoing basis (ss. 79 and 81);

children and young people are given certain information before a placement (s. 80);

approved carers are entitled to participate in the decision-making process (s. 82); and

carers aggrieved by a Department decision can seek internal review and external review by SACAT (Chapter 12, added by amendments that took effect in October 2018).

For carers: a legal right to information before and during a placement, a right to participate in decisions, and review rights when they disagree.

For children and young people: a legal right to information about their carers before a placement, which young people asked for in 2016.

For government: the views of more than 500 people on the reforms, in their own words, before legislation and strategy were finalised, and a documented record of what the sector thought of the process.

These provisions came from the Royal Commission’s recommendations and the government’s legislation. The engagement tested them with the people who would live with them and reported their views to government verbatim. The rights foster parents ranked highest in September 2016 were in the Act Parliament passed ten months later.

After the Royal Commission, the government engaged the people who would live with the reforms before the legislation and strategy were final, across four rounds and both metropolitan and regional South Australia. Their views, including criticism of the process, went to government verbatim. The carer and child information rights participants ranked highest are now in legislation, and the engagement itself changed between 2016 and 2017 in the ways participants asked for.