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Education - Child and Family Learning Centre Specialist Staff

Dr Rosalie Woodruff MP

Dr Rosalie Woodruff MP  -  Tuesday, 7 September 2021

Tags: Education, Children and Young People, State Budget

Dr WOODRUFF - The Budget provides funding to replicate the support and wellbeing team model in the Child and Family Learning Centres. Approximately $1 million is provided each year for access to speech and language pathologists, psychologists and social workers.

Could you please outline the specifics of what that funding is for, as well as the structural arrangements that will be in place around the money?

Ms COURTNEY - I'll ask the secretary to talk to the operationalisation of that funding as it goes through. We are also in the process of building new CFLCs, so we have that as well. We've actually gone out to market on a range of those places, and the feedback from the department is that we've had a really positive uptake in people applying, which is really helpful.

This is much broader than the CFLCs, but we know we do have a lot of demand around professional support staff across government and in the community sector. So, we're really pleased to see we had a strong response, but I'll ask the secretary to comment on how that flows through in terms of staffing.

Mr BULLARD - The money pays for nine additional FTEs - one psych, one speech pathologist and one social worker in the north-west, the north and the south. They will be allocated to each CFLC, and rotate between a cluster of CFLCs in their region.

Dr WOODRUFF - So they won't be added to the general staff pool and teams?

Mr BULLARD - No, absolutely not.

Dr WOODRUFF - And they won't be added to the DoE teams who work in schools?

Mr BULLARD - No. They will work within that team, but they are a dedicated resource for the CFLCs. They won't be absorbed more broadly.

Dr WOODRUFF - Thank you.