Drug test results on parents with at-risk children could be made public

THE number of parents with at-risk children that test positive to drugs could be revealed in a bid to reveal the true extent of the problem.

CHILD Protection Minister Rachel Sanderson has ordered her department to report on the number of parents of at-risk children who test positive to drugs, in a bid to reveal the true extent of the problem.

In Opposition, Ms Sanderson was heavily critical of the Labor government for failing to publicly report the results of drug tests, the type of drugs involved or what consequences parents faced if they tested positive.

Now in government, Ms Sanderson has conceded that the Child Protection Department’s IT system is “so difficult to get information out of” and she cannot immediately release any more detail than her predecessor.

Child Protection Minister Rachel Sanderson

“At the moment we’re going to have to make do with what we have,” she said.

However, Ms Sanderson has asked child protection staff to extract data on the results of tests and the conditions of orders placed on parents.

“What are they testing positive for? We need to know ... if you get that information, how are you supporting a family?,” she said. “There’s no point in drug testing people and then not doing anything about it.”

It comes after Ms Sanderson confirmed to The Advertiser this week that child protection authorities will fail to deliver on a pledge to slash the number of at-risk children living in costly emergency housing by next month.

Efforts to detect drug abuse or alcohol dependence among parents of at-risk children have increased significantly since 2013-14, when fewer than 190 tests were conducted by the then Families SA agency.

Following requests from The Advertiser, the current Child Protection Department revealed earlier this year that there were 1479 tests of parents ordered in 2016-17 and 563 done between July and December last year.

However, the department could not say how many tests returned a positive result or what drugs were involved, nor how many parents skipped tests, faced penalties or had their children removed.

Child Protection Department chief executive Cathy Taylor has previously argued that individual case managers are aware of parents’ test results but the information would be “extremely time-consuming” to collate centrally.

In the 2016 royal commission into the state’s child protection system, former judge Margaret Nyland highlighted the inadequacy of the department’s IT system to track data such as drug tests and urged a review, which has begun.

Ms Sanderson said the Victorian Government was “spending millions” on a new IT system and she would monitor its operation over the next six to 12 months “to see if that is a worthwhile system”.