12 September 2017
The Office of the Guardian’s analysis of the Productivity Commission Report on Government Services 2017 (ROGS) data has shown that, compared to the rest of Australia, our state spends significantly less per child on the services that prevent children coming into state care and more per child on out-of-home care once they are part of the system.
On four key expenditure areas ROGS shows:
- SA expenditure on child protection services per child in 2015-16 was 30.6 per cent of the average Australian rate
- SA expenditure on family support services per child in 2015-16 was 42.9 per cent of the average Australian rate
- SA expenditure on intensive family support services per child in 2015-16 was 36.8 per cent of the average Australian rate and lower than all jurisdictions other than Western Australia
- SA expenditure on out of home care per child in 2015-16 was above the average Australian rate (which was only 62.5 per cent of the SA rate) and greater than all jurisdictions other than the Northern Territory.
This shows that while SA spends more per child overall than most other states, our expenditure is highly concentrated in providing residential and emergency out-of-home care which is approximately 10 times more expensive per child than home based care such as foster and kinship care.
For the full analysis, please download the Guardian’s paper South Australian child protection expenditure from the Report on Government Services 2017.
