Family and Community Services and Centrelink:
2007-08 Budget initiatives
Helping separated parents and their children
This Budget provides an additional $55.6 million over four years from 2007-08 to benefit separated families. This will include two new programmes in regional Australia. The first will help children in regional areas deal with issues arising from family separation and enable them to participate in decisions that impact on them. The second is an educational programme in 28 regional locations to assist separated parents experiencing high conflict that is affecting contact between parents and children.
In the 2005-06 Budget, the Australian Government committed an additional $397 million over four years from 2005-06 for a package of reforms to the family law system. The reforms aim to enhance family relationships and to help separated families. Many of the new services are or will be accessible to rural and regional communities. These include:
- Family Relationship Centres, which are the first point of contact for people wanting information, advice and assistance with strengthening family relationships, overcoming relationship difficulties or dealing with separation. There will be 40 Centres in place by July 2007, with the final 25 to be rolled out by July 2008.
- The Family Relationship Advice Line is a national telephone service designed to strengthen family relationships, help families stay together and assist families through separation.
- Family Relationships Online, which is a service designed to provide all families, whether together or separated, with easy online access to information about family relationship issues.
- Early Intervention relationship services, which aim to help people build stronger, healthy relationships. A total of 60 new and expanded Early Intervention services will be operational from July 2007, followed by a further 22 to commence in 2008. These include additional counselling, family therapy, services for men and their families, education and skills training and services to address family violence. Many of these services are in regional areas and available to men and their families.
- Additional Family Dispute Resolution services, Children's Contact Services and Parenting Orders Programme services, which are being implemented between July 2006 and mid 2008. These services are designed to help separated parents resolve disagreements related to the separation and divorce, make parenting agreements, allow them to spend time with their children when there are high levels of conflict, and better focus on the needs of their children after separation.
Boarding hostel places for Indigenous students
The Australian Government will provide $58.3 million over four years from 2007-08 to offer student boarding hostel places for up to 170 Indigenous students from remote areas. The hostels will allow students from nearby communities and homeland centres to access secondary education while remaining reasonably close to their families.
This measure will also provide additional support services for these students through existing programmes Reconnect and Youthlinx.
Integrated child care quality assurance
The Australian Government will provide $10.7 million over five years from 2006-07 to integrate quality assurance long day care, family day care and outside school hours care into a streamlined single system. This measure also introduces spot checks to provide assurance that ongoing performance of child care services is consistent with quality assurance requirements and Indigenous-specific child care.
The implementation of these changes will assist in ensuring high quality child care.
Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth
The Australian Government will provide funding of $4.2 million over two years from 2007-08 to the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY), an organisation that brings together researchers, policy makers and practitioners who focus on children and young people's health and wellbeing.
This measure will support ARACY in its work of encouraging collaboration between researchers, policy makers and practitioners to enhance outcomes for children and youth.
Additional support for child care in regional and remote Australia
The Australian Government will provide $43.8 million over four years from 2007-08 to provide financial support to child care services in outer regional and remote areas to ensure parents have access to quality child care. The additional funding recognises a higher cost of providing care in outer regional and remote communities.
Assurance of Support
The Australian Government will provide an additional $13.1 million over four years to simplify the Assurance of Support (AoS) scheme and to assist in the administration of the Scheme by Centrelink. This includes funding for Centrelink of $5.2 million in 2007-08, $2.1 million in 2008-09, $2 million in 2009-10 and $2.1 million in 2010-11.
The simplification of the scheme involves abolishing Assurance of Support requirements for Skilled Migrant, Carer and Emergency Visa categories and reducing the time taken to review initial applications.
A Better Future for Indigenous Australians
Accommodation support for education and health
The Australian Government is providing $29 million over four years from 2007-08 to build and operate a number of accommodation facilities for Indigenous people. These facilities include a 40-bed secondary student accommodation hostel in Kununurra, Western Australia and a 45-bed aged care nursing home in Kenwick, Western Australia.
Improving access to child care and early childhood services
The Australian Government is providing $23.5 million over four years from 2007-08 to expand the number and quality of child care and early childhood services in regional and remote areas. The new Child Care Hubs will provide access to child care for 7,000 additional children in regional and remote communities. Support for existing services will improve the quality of care provided to approximately 840 children and enable their families to claim the Child Care Benefit.
Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children
The Australian Government will provide $12 million over four years from 2007-08 to conduct a longitudinal survey from 2008 to 2011 that will collect data about Indigenous babies under 12 months, and Indigenous children between four and five years. The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC) will provide information on early childhood experiences that can be used to design programmes and policy that lead to better outcomes for Indigenous children.
Continuation of the Cape York Digital Network
The Australian Government is providing $2.2 million over four years from 2007-08 to continue the operation of six community online access centres in remote communities in Cape York. These online centres, which are in located in Hopevale, Napranum, Umagico, Coen, Injinoo and Lockhart River and are provided by the Cape York Digital Network, increase access to online commercial and government services, and help improve IT skills in these communities.
Indigenous housing and infrastructure reforms
The Australian Remote Indigenous Accommodation (ARIA) programme will commence in 2008-09, and involve an overall commitment by the Australian Government over four years of $1.6 billion from 2007-08. Under the new ARIA programme, Indigenous people will pay normal public housing rents for decent housing, and fulfil normal community obligations around caring for their homes. They will also have real prospects for buying their own home.