At 30 June 2011, 2,410 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 56 were on Investigation and Assessment Orders.
They had the following characteristics:
Type of guardianship (of those on 18 year and 12 month orders)
- Order to 18 years – 87.6%
- 12 month Order – 12.4%
Ages (of those on 18 year and 12 month orders)
- 0 to 1 – 5.7%
- 2 to 4 – 15.8%
- 5 to 9 – 31.0%
- 10 to 14 – 28.4%
- 15 to 17 – 19.2%
Gender (of those on 18 year and 12 month orders)
- Male – 53.0%
- Female – 45.2%
- Undetermined – 1.8%
Aboriginality (of those on 18 year and 12 month orders)
- Indigenous – 24.6%
- Non-Indigenous – 73.4%
- Undetermined – 2.0%
Disability
At Term 3 2010, of the 1338 children in care located in the DECS enrolment system, 33.7 per cent were classified as having a disability. Their primary disabilities were
- Autism/ Asperger’s Disorder – 1.3%
- Language and Communication – 22.2%
- Sensory Disability Hearing or Vision – 0.5%
- Intellectual Disability – 8.9%
- Physical Disability – 0.7%
(Department for Education and Children’s Services)
As of June 2011 there were 236 young people receiving a service from Disability SA.
Accommodation arrangements
Of the 2,318 children and young people* in alternative care at 30 June 2011, the accommodation arrangements were:
- Foster care – 44.1%
- Relative and kinship care – 42.0%
- Financially assisted adoption – 0.2%
- Families SA residential care – 4.7%
- NGO residential care – 1.7%
- Emergency and short term accommodation – 7.4%
Placement stability
In their passage through the care system, children will generally change placement a number of times. Of the 2,318 children and young people in alternative care at 30 June 2011, their experiences were:
- First placement – 4.0%
- One – 17.0%
- Two to five – 44.2%
- Six to ten – 20.4%
- 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 2,410 at 30 June 2011.
Secure detention
Children and young people in secure detention in South Australia are housed in either the Magill or Cavan Youth Training Centres.
In the period June 2010 to June 2011 there were 1044 admissions to secure care and the average daily occupancy of the two secure training centres was 69.4.
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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