At 31 December 2010, 2,370 children and young people were in the custody and guardianship of the Minister for Families and Communities under 12 month or guardianship to 18 years orders. An additional 41 were on Investigaton and Assessment Orders.
They had the following characteristics:
Type of guardianship (of those on 18 year and 12 month orders)
- Order to 18 years – 85.6%
- 12 month Order – 14.4%
Ages (of those on 18 year and 12 month orders)
- 0 to 1 – 6.0%
- 2 to 4 – 16.7%
- 5 to 9 – 30.1%
- 10 to 14 – 27.6%
- 15 to 17 – 19.6%
Gender (of those on 18 year and 12 month orders)
- Male – 53.2%
- Female – 45.9%
- Undetermined – 0.8%
Aboriginality (of those on 18 year and 12 month orders)
- Indigenous – 24.5%
- Non-Indigenous – 73.4%
- Undetermined – 1.3 %
Disability
At Term 3 2009, of the 1310 children in care located in the DECS enrolment system, 34 per cent were classified as having a disability. Their primary disabilities were
- Autism/ Asperger’s Disorder – 1.8%
- Language Communication – 46.4%
- Global Developmental Delay – 5.9%
- Sensory Disability Hearing – 1.1%
- Intellectual Disability – 24.3%
- Physical Disability – 2.0%
- Speech and/or Language – 17.8%
- Sensory Disability (Vision) – 0%
(Department for Education and Children’s Services)
As of May 2010 there are 184 young people receiving a service from Disability SA which is an increase of 7 per cent from February 2009.
Accommodation arrangements
Of the 2,281 children and young people* in alternative care at 31 December 2010, the care arrangements were as follows:
- Foster care – 44.7%
- Relative and kinship care – 40.0%
- Financially assisted adoption – 0.2%
- Families SA residential care – 5.1%
- NGO residential care – 2.0%
- Emergency and short term accommodation – 8.0%
Placement stability
In their passage through the care system, children will generally change placement a number of times. Of the 2,286 children and young people in alternative care at 31 December 2010, their experiences were:
- First placement – 4.2%
- One – 16.0%
- Two to five – 45.3%
- Six to ten – 20.1%
- More than ten – 14.4%
The number of children and young people in the care of the Minister has grown steadily from 1,441 in June 2005 to 2,306 at 30 June 2010.
Secure detention
Children and young people in secure detention in South Australia are housed in either the Magill or Cavan Youth Training Centres.
In 2009-10 there were 1,013 admissions to secure care and the average daily occupancy of the two secure training centres was 69.2.
From July 2010 to December 2010 there were 529 admissions to the two secure training centres.
For more information contact us at gcyp@gcyp.sa.gov.au or 08 8226 8570.
*The statistics on this page are mainly drawn from Families SA figures on children and young people under the guardianship of the Minister and Australian Insitute of Health and Welfare data on children and young people in alternative care. Those under guardianship and those under alternative care are overlapping populations; that is most, but not all, children in alternative care are on a custody or guardianship order, and similarly, most, but not all, children under the guardianship of the Minister are in alternative care. However, the numbers of these two populations are different, and exact comparisons should not be made.
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