Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 7:24:03 to 7:27:40
An update on the phased rollout of the Thriving Kids program across states and territories, focusing on information and navigation supports for families.
Topics: Child safety, Social services
Speakers: Gabriela Pulczynski, Blair Comley, Chris Gatenby, Hon Anne Ruston
Thank you.
We've got the right people, so very good.
Thank you. Um again, um foreign kids commenced one October. Um what's been delivered thus far?
Uh so we actually had the same question asked earlier in the session.
Okay. So was that from Senator Woman Payne?
Yeah, it was, yeah.
Okay. And did she um sorry? Please.
Well, it's actually said apart from Queensland, there's rollout happening in all states and territories, plus some general information from the um uh from uh from the Commonwealth.
Yeah.
So it's starting on the 1st of October, they'll be ramping up so that by the 1st of January 2028, the intention is they're full they're fully delivered. I I could ask Ms. Pulczynski to um run through that again, or it's it is on the record.
I mean, I'm looking whether it was if that was just Queensland, but really um things like national.
It's everyone other than Queensland.
Everyone over in Queensland.
Yeah, Queensland haven't signed the bilateral. Did you put it on thriving?
Did you provide a number on how many children are accessing it already?
So um at the moment the supports that are nationally available. Oh apologies, Gabriella Putrinsky, First Assistant Secretary of Thriving Kids Task Force. Uh the phased rollout of Thriving Kids has started with um supports that are based around information advice and navigation for parents and families. And so at the moment there aren't children per se who are accessing them. I do have stats on the um number of um people who have called the relevant helplines and have accessed the relevant websites as well, if that would help.
Yeah, that would help.
So with the autism helpline. Information on the first um 18 days, so from the 1st of October, um, there were 96 inquiries for um related thriving kids, 91 calls and five other contacts through emails and a web form. And the average call time was 10 minutes and 42 seconds with an average wait time of 30 seconds. The Medicare Thriving Kids phone line, which is the national phone line. Again, similar time period from one to 18 October. Had 18 specific calls for thriving kids. We don't at that at this point have the wait times or the call times, but we're working through that with the provider. In relation to the information and resources hub for a slightly shorter period, so the first two weeks to um the 14th of October, there were 15,482 combined page views. And for thriving kids of any site that the department runs, there were 30,241 page views from 14,988 unique users with an um average session time of three minutes and 15 seconds.
Interactivity with a site that is on a subject that's had incredible amount of public interests. It seems sort of very low traffic and very low usage. I mean, how does how does that relate to experience on other similar tools that are used? I'm sure you must have other tools that are similar nature.
I don't have comparative data with me, and it is only for the first 14 or 18 days, both of those, um all those statistics, so we might have to come back on notice with that one.