‘I can’t do it myself’: Chloe’s grieving gran issues plea
The grandmother of a four-year-old who died tragically in 2012 has cancelled a meeting with a key minister and is seeking an explanation from the Premier over why a key recommendation was shelved.
Belinda Valentine has cancelled a meeting with Child Protection Minister Alice Rolls, who this month revealed the government would not proceed with a long-awaited registration scheme for SA social workers.
The registration scheme was a Coroner’s recommendation from the 2015 inquest into the death of Valentine’s granddaughter Chloe, who died from horrific injuries after repeatedly crashing a motorbike she was forced to ride in January 2012.
Rolls announced on June 19 that the government was “not prepared to impose an additional financial burden by way of a new registration fee upon more than 4000 hard-working professionals”.
Valentine said after seeing Rolls’ responses about the scheme in the news, she cancelled an upcoming meeting with the new minister.
“I don’t need any more information at all, I’m not going to her office, I don’t need to sit in a cafe and listen to pandering,” Valentine told InDaily.
“If they were looking into the eyes of the child, would they be willing to say, ‘sorry, but we’re not going to standardise care and make this profession recognised and really strong because a couple of hundred dollars is just too much’.
“I call on the community to be outraged because it’s only through that outrage that the change is going to happen and I can’t do it myself.”
Valentine found out the scheme – which the Malinauskas government in 2021 committed $4.7 million to establish – was scrapped through media reporting.
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“The Premier needs to explain himself; this wasn’t a decision made by a newly-minted minister, it was a cabinet decision and he is in charge of the cabinet,” she said.
“I haven’t had any meetings with Peter (Malinauskas), and he needs to explain this to us; he needs to explain it to the community.”
A government spokesperson told InDaily, “the Minister [Rolls] remains keen to meet with Belinda Valentine and hear her views directly”.
“In reaching its decision, the Government appropriately considered both the potential benefits of registration as well as concerns raised about the cost to social workers, workforce pressures, and impacts on recruitment and retention,” the spokesperson said.
“There has been a divergence of views from right across the social services sector, with a number of organisations publicly opposing a state-based registration scheme.
“The State Government continues to advocate for a nationally consistent approach on this matter.”
A number of community services supported the government’s decision not to proceed with the registered social work scheme, including Child and Family Focus SA and Australian Services Union SA & NT branch.
The backtrack comes more than a decade after Coroner Mark Johns found the state’s child protection system was “broken and fundamentally flawed” when handing down 21 recommendations after Chloe’s death.
Chloe’s mother, Ashlee Polkinghorne, and Polkinghorne’s partner at the time, Benjamin McPartland, were jailed for manslaughter by criminal neglect at the time.
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The inquest found a university student on placement in 2009 was made the primary worker on Chloe’s case.
The student told the court at the time about staffing pressures that led to her speaking with Chloe’s mother – who was a drug addict who used methamphetamine and cannabis – alone.
Recalling that time, Valentine said she and Chloe’s family “had no clue that she wasn’t actually a social worker”.
Valentine wanted to take Chloe into her care, but said she was not supported by Families SA, which received more than 20 notifications before Chloe’s death from concerned family and friends.
After the recommendations were handed down, Valentine was relieved: “We thought finally, it’s out in the open, lessons can be learned; it wasn’t about blame”.
Social work students were no longer allocated as primary case workers and supervision procedures were developed after the coroner’s report, according to a Child Protection document from October 2016.
Fourteen years on, Valentine – a face painter by trade – wants to see Chloe’s legacy fought for, last week joining Liberal leader Ashton Hurn and Shadow Child Protection Minister Laura Henderson to address the media.
Valentine – who herself ran for SA parliament’s legislative council as an independent candidate in 2022 – said she chose to join Hurn and Henderson not because she aligns with the Liberal Party, but because “I stood up with two mothers who were also passionate about this; I felt genuinely supported and cared for, which hasn’t always happened”.
“Every day we think about this, every day we talk about this, I have phone calls, meetings, we’ve been to symposiums, we’ve been to everything, it’s all-consuming,” Valentine said.
“Because we don’t want another child to suffer like Chloe did and we don’t want another family to have to live the rest of their life with this trauma.”
“They have forgotten that there was a little girl who died tragically because of this; that’s why the recommendations were made.”
On Thursday, the Health Services Union and Public Service Association will strike outside Rolls’ office at 12:30 pm in opposition to the scheme being axed.
“Social workers were consulted for years about how to build this scheme, but they were not consulted before the government decided to axe it,” Health Services Union Branch Secretary Billy Elrick said.
Rolls said the work done for the scheme would still be used to “uplift standards of conduct and competency, while also embedding robust approaches to continuing professional development and supervision”.
“Imposing registration fees here in South Australia alone has the potential to detrimentally impact our ability to recruit and retain more social workers at a time when skilled labour is in demand,” Rolls said.
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