Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Pursuant to order I present the report of the Community Affairs References Committee on grandparents raising their grandchildren, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be adopted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I would like to quote Mrs De Young, Secretary of Grandparents Rearing Grandchildren in my home state of Western Australia, who said:

This road grandparents are on is long, hard, tough, bumpy, painful, soul-destroying and exhausting, but much love, determination and courage is given by grandparents to raise healthy and happy grandchildren. This caring role has been pushed upon them by the inability of their own children to care and take responsibility for their children. Grandparent carers need moral support, emotional support and financial support from everyone in the community to raise these grandchildren so they are not a burden on the taxpayer but become role models in society in their adult lives.

That sums up a vast amount of what we were told during this inquiry. I express, first off, my deep admiration for the amount of work done by grandparents. I am gobsmacked by what they go through while still remaining positive and supporting and loving of the grandchildren they are raising. I would also like to acknowledge the work of Senator Dean Smith, who proposed this reference in the first place. He has been doggedly pursuing this issue and has contributed hugely to the outcomes of this committee report. Because I always run out of time, I want to thank the secretariat now for the hard work they have put into the report.

The report makes 18 very detailed recommendations. One of the issues raised at the very beginning was the need for data and support. You would think that we were being boring, but we do not know how many grandparents raising their grandchildren there are in this country. There are some that do actively seek support, and we sort of know about them, but we do not know how many there are. Many grandparents might be ashamed of the circumstances in which they are having to look after their grandchildren, or they do not know about the supports or they do not want to seek support—they want to do it on their own.

The recommendations cover a wide range of issues, because so many issues affect grandparents. There are issues like financial support and where people access information from. There is support for legal aid, because grandparents often cannot get access to legal aid to represent themselves in the courts when they are trying to seek orders for their grandchildren. In health, we thought the issues around Medicare cards and things like that were sorted but we still received evidence about that. There is a need for mental health and counselling services. Often the children that have come into grandparents' care are traumatised, either through the loss of parents or through other traumatic circumstances they have had in the home environment. One of the big issues is accommodation. Sometimes when grandchildren come into the lives of their grandparents the grandparents have downsized. Sometimes they have downsized because they are grey nomads—they have bought a caravan or a big campervan and they are travelling around Australia, and all of a sudden they need to care for their grandchildren. Of course they do that gladly. They might be in a one-bedroom flat now. We heard of a number of cases where grandparents were raising sometimes two or three grandchildren in a one-bedroom flat. That situation cannot be allowed to continue. We make a number of recommendations and I am happy to report that we have a consensus report. The Community Affairs References Committee strives for consensus reports and, although we do not always achieve it, in this case we have.

There are some other recommendations that we think need to be considered. We have made a number of recommendations to the Australian government, to state and territory governments and to the COAG process. Some thing's the states and territories can do straight away instead of waiting for the COAG process. One issue we think is important is the number and placement of grandparent advisers in Centrelink. Almost overwhelmingly the evidence was positive in terms of the support for grandparent carers, but the issue there is being able to access advisers—they are overworked and sometimes they are not able to provide advice in a timely manner, so we are suggesting that a review be carried out with a view to maybe providing more of that support.

I will finish up because I do want to provide other committee members with the opportunity to speak to the report, in particular Senator Smith, but one big issue is that grandparents raising their grandchildren have found it difficult to access information. Sometimes they do not know where to start. There are many support groups throughout Australia, for example Grandparents Rearing Grandchildren WA, that provide invaluable support to grandparents. Sometimes it is just a matter of being there to listen and provide advice, and to provide a social environment. Grandparents find themselves isolated from their peers because they are raising their grandchildren. Most of their peers are not doing that, so they become isolated. Some people just want to be able to talk about their issues, to be with a group of people who understand what it is like to turn up as a grandparent with your grandchildren at school and be a generation separate from the other parents. Those are the sorts of issues that a lot of people do not realise exist. When they realise that they understand them, but they do not realise what goes on for grandparents raising their grandchildren. I commend the report to the Senate and I commend Senator Smith for doing so much work on it and bringing on this referral. I encourage people to read the report and I encourage governments around Australia to look at the recommendations and, please, look at implementing the recommendations with a sense of urgency.