The Beginning Together: South Australian Child Protection and Family Support Symposium 2023 is being held at the Adelaide Oval on Wednesday.

Input from symposium attendees will help shape a 20-year vision to improve outcomes for children through transforming South Australia’s child protection and family support system.

Attendees include young people, carers, families, those working in child and family-related health and community services across the state.

Attendees will hear from families, young people, carers, Aboriginal leaders about their aspirations for children and the child protection and family support system.

The system’s existing strengths, challenges and opportunities will be thrust into the spotlight during the symposium, which is expected to be held annually over the coming years.

Professor Leah Bromfield is Chair of the state’s Child Protection Expert Group, established following a recommendation in Ms Kate Alexander’s 2022 report which canvassed a range of recommendations for SA’s child protection and family support system.

The Expert Group is working alongside the Minister to develop a 20-year vision and design of a fit for purpose child protection and family support system that has children and improvements in their lives at its centre.

The vision will draw on a broad range of experiences and views and contemplate a transformed approach to child protection and family in SA.

This includes outcomes from the symposium, along with input from the No Capes for Change youth advisory group and the state’s recently announced Carer Council and Direct Experience Groups.

Minister for Child Protection Katrine Hildyard and Professor Leah Bromfield, of the University of South Australia’s Australian Centre for Child Protection, are co-hosting the event.

Quotes attributable to Katrine Hildyard

1 in 3 South Australian children have contact with the child protection and family support system.  I am sure that most South Australians would agree that this is a shocking fact that represents an urgent call to action to help ensure improved outcomes for vulnerable children, young people and their families.

To begin to improve children’s and young people’s lives, we need to bring together community, government and the sector to drive meaningful change to our child protection and family support system.

This symposium, the first of its kind in South Australia, does so.  It provides a crucial opportunity to listen to, and act on, the voices, the insights, the strength of people who have the knowledge and experience to help us build the system of our future.

Every child deserves to be loved, safe, nurtured and enabled to thrive.  It is time for us to closely examine how interactions with the child protection and family support system make things better for children, young people and their families.

There are incredible people right across the child protection and family support system undertaking outstanding work with and for children and their families.  As families face deeply complex and interconnected issues, need is growing. We need to begin together to contemplate how we can most effectively respond.

Together, we can progress meaningful and positive change that makes a real difference in the lives of children and young people.  I am determined that we use the opportunity the Symposium presents to help begin to do so.  I am encouraging every attendee to be bold, open and collaborative, to come with open hearts and minds, as we contemplate the need for change ahead.

Quotes attributable to Professor Leah Bromfield, Australian Centre for Child Protection Director

After 20 years of best efforts to improve and reform the current child protection system, the evidence is clear – our system is not fit for purpose and we need a transformation agenda.

What’s different about this approach is that Minister Hildyard and the Expert Group will be inviting the state to consider how best to redesign the state’s child protection system – starting with a blank page.

The strength of this approach is that we can ‘put on the page’ our strengths and build on those things that are working well, and leave behind those things that are not.

This is in line with growing international calls for radical transformation of the existing approach to child protection, and puts SA in a position to be a global leader in this important agenda.