Vulnerable Children and Youth

Greens spokesperson for Chid Protection Hon Alison Xamon MLC has called on the Government to urgently top-up funding for Kids Helpline, since she revealed more than half of phone calls to and attempted web-chats with the essential counselling service went unanswered.

Ms Xamon said she was very concerned to learn through questions in Parliament that 58% of phone contacts and 58% of attempted web-chats were not answered in 2019-20 – with the phone call no-answer rate up 2% on the previous financial year.

Greens spokesperson for Child Protection Hon Alison Xamon MLC has called on the WA Government to ensure Western Australian survivors of institutional child sexual abuse are not further traumatised by long delays in obtaining compensation.   

Hon Xamon said the National Redress Scheme had received 6,077 applications as at 31 January 2020, but only 1,112 payments and 255 offers had been made. 543 applications are on hold across Australia, because the institution in which abuse occurred has not yet joined the scheme.