Family Relationship Services Australia

Inaugural National Conference 2008

Shangri-La Hotel, The Marina,
Cairns, Queensland

Wednesday 5 November 2008, 12:00pm

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Acknowledgements

  • First, may I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we meet on – and pay my respects to their elders, both past and present.

Other Acknowledgements

  • The Honourable Justice John Faulks, Deputy Chief Justice, Family Court of Australia (also speaking)
  • Federal Magistrate Norah Harnett (also speaking)
  • Associate Professor Helen Rhoades, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne (also speaking)
  • Mr Ian Kennedy AM, Chair, Family Law Section, Law Council of Australia (also speaking)
  • Distinguished guests
  • Ladies and gentlemen

Introduction

  1. It’s a great pleasure to be here today for Family Relationship Services Australia’s inaugural conference.
  2. A lot’s happened since FRSA was created last year.
    We have a new Government, more new services have been rolled out and the Departments and the sector are working together in new ways.
  3. I can assure you of the Rudd Government’s strong support for the Family Relationship Services Program and the work you do for Australian families.
  4. Picking up on the conference theme, “Together we are Better”, I want to take the opportunity today to talk about the importance of service providers and other family law practitioners working together as a seamless family law system.
  5. Whether you are helping families avoid relationship breakdown or helping them deal with family separation, you are all helping achieve the objectives of the framework – better outcomes for families and especially for children.
  6. The guiding principle must be the best interests of the child.
    The Government intends to push forward with an integrated family law system:
    • where family disputes are resolved outside courts, leaving them to deal with only the cases requiring a court process to resolve;
    • where cases of family violence and child abuse are managed safely and effectively.
  7. How do we achieve this?
  8. A significant part of the answer is for organisations to work collaboratively together.
  9. But it also requires you to work collaboratively with other parts of the family law system – the courts and legal services – with whom some of you may have not had a close relationship in the past.

Changes to the Family Law System

  1. The family law system has undergone significant change in recent years.
  2. As well as changes to the law and changes to the courts, there has been a significantly greater emphasis on resolving disputes outside the courts.
  3. New and expanded services – and new requirements to attempt to resolve disputes before going to court – are all aimed at reducing conflict in families and helping parents agree on arrangements for their children.

Family Relationship Programs

  1. Family relationship services play a key role in enabling families to achieve better outcomes for their children.
  2. This can occur through preventing the original separation or enabling parents to reach an agreement after it occurs.
  3. A parental agreement reached through mediation is a product of both parents. This creates a greater degree of ownership. The evidence is showing that parents are more willing to implement solutions agreed in this way.
  4. In order to enable access to mediation, the Government has substantially upgraded the family mediation infrastructure across Australia.
  5. This year we have opened 25 Family Relationship Centres, 14 Children’s Contact Services and 22 Early Intervention Services.
  6. To assist high conflict families, 14 Post Separation Cooperative Parenting services in regional areas have been established.
    And my Department is currently undertaking a selection process for 14 more.
  7. There will also be 18 new services, opening later this month, to support children dealing with issues arising from the breakdown of their parents’ relationships.
  8. While the implementation of the reforms is in its early days, good progress has been made.
  9. For example, in the 12 months since July last year, there has been a drop of approximately 18 percent in the number of family law cases filed in the courts.
  10. And it seems the public has embraced family dispute resolution.
    In the twelve months to June 2008, the first 40 of the Family Relationship Centres held almost 14,000 family dispute resolution sessions.
  11. The signs are promising, and to further enhance the quality of services we have introduced a number of initiatives.
    Let me mention a couple of these.

New Standards for Dispute Resolution Practitioners

  1. With an increased emphasis on mediation services, it is critical to ensure that mediators are trained to consistent standards which maintain the highest levels of professionalism, and, of course, the ability to get outcomes.
  2. And so, in September, I announced new accreditation rules for family dispute resolution practitioners.
  3. These are based on new standards of competency.
    They have been developed for the family relationships sector by the Community Services and Health Industry Skills Council, and include new qualifications within the Vocational Education and Training System.
  4. One of these qualifications is a Vocational Graduate Diploma in Family Dispute Resolution.
  5. The new accreditation rules will recognise the skills and experience of existing practitioners.
  6. However, existing practitioners will need to be assessed to ensure they have demonstrated competency relating to three specific units of the six compulsory units making up the Graduate Diploma qualification.
  7. The three units of study are:
    • working with vulnerable parties in dispute resolution;
    • responding to family and domestic violence; and
    • operating in the family law environment.
  8. All three are important but the compulsory competency on responding to family violence is critical for the proper functioning of the family law system.
  9. It is important to understand that there are exceptions to the compulsory dispute resolution provisions in the 2006 amendments, and one of these is family violence. Practitioners should be able to identify this at an early stage and make sure that immediate action is taken.
  10. All registered practitioners and those who register under the current system by 28 February next year will be eligible to access subsidised assessments and training.

Entrenched Cases

  1. One of the Government’s aims is to help as many families as possible resolve their disputes out of the courts.
    However some will inevitably end up in protracted litigation.
  2. This has financial and emotional costs for the parents as well as economic costs for the community. It also has huge emotional costs for the children involved as the conflict is played out in the courts.
  3. We do have specific programs for high conflict families, particularly the Parenting Orders Program and the new Post Separation Cooperative Parenting services.
  4. But I also think Family Relationship Centres and other services can play an increased role in working with the courts to help reduce the number of entrenched cases.
  5. This requires a closer working relationship between your services and the courts to maximise opportunities to move people out of the court process into appropriate services.
  6. It also sometimes means taking a firm approach to pushing entrenched disputes towards a mediated resolution.
  7. I see family dispute resolution services, including Family Relationship Centres as a key part of the family law system, rather than a separate service. To perform this role they must be prepared to push for tough decisions and achieve outcomes in entrenched cases. It can be difficult where people are emotionally vulnerable but no one is well served by copious and traumatic litigation.
  8. Service Providers must also be alert to those cases that do need to be fast tracked to the court and ensure that irreconcilable disputes are resolved as expeditiously as possible.
  9. For any of this to work, the courts and family relationship services need to have a good understanding of each other’s processes and to develop appropriate ways of transitioning families from one to the other.

Integrated Approaches

  1. I can’t emphasise too strongly the need for greater integration of services right across the family law system.
  2. Each part of the system, whether it be family relationship services, legal aid commissions, community legal centres or the courts, needs to work seamlessly with the other parts of the system.
  3. For this reason, I held a Round Table in July this year with representatives from different parts of the family law system, including family relationship services.
  4. FRSA played an important part in that discussion.
  5. I asked the Round Table to identify issues, strategies, and concrete measures to further integrate and strengthen the family law system.
  6. A number of ideas came out of those discussions, including the need to use common terminology and promote a better understanding of the different roles and responsibilities across the family law system.
  7. The Round Table proposed the development of a national blueprint for managing the different types of family law cases and their pathways through the system.
  8. I propose to invite a wide range of representatives from across the family law system to an inaugural family law conference in February next year, to progress the ideas of the Round Table.
  9. While that is happening at the national level, I ask all of you to look at how you can even further improve collaboration at the local level.
  10. Collaboration needs to occur from the ground up taking into account local diversity, local culture and local issues.
  11. There are some great examples of this collaboration springing up across Australia in the form of family pathways networks and I commend everyone involved in such initiatives. For those who haven’t developed formal channels of collaboration I recommend that model to you.
  12. Developing local protocols and relationships is where the success of the national integration strategy will be determined, and the Government needs your support.
  13. The crucial task is for families to be connected at the right time to the right people and services.

Conclusion

  1. This conference, with its theme ‘Together we are better’, is a very timely opportunity to think about how to make that happen.
  2. FRSA has put together an impressive conference program and I congratulate the organisers and FRSA as a whole for reaching this milestone.
  3. It’s a great opportunity to network with colleagues and to learn from the insights and experiences of others.
  4. I wish you well for the rest of the week and for the future.

ENDS