Ms JODIE HARRISON (Charlestown): I speak in support of the recommendations of the Committee on Children and Young People in its report entitled 'Support for children of imprisoned parents in New South Wales'.

The committee was established on 14 November 2019, so this report has been a long time coming. I note that we had the COVID pandemic, which presented some challenges for us. We also had several changes of committee members—in particular, Government members—during that time.

It is pleasing to see the final report being tabled, with its 40 recommendations. I hope that the Government will adopt them in full, as they were unanimous recommendations, when it responds by 22 December this year. At the outset, I express my thanks for the immense work and patience exhibited by the committee secretariat, as well as the input of everybody who made a submission and the support provided to the committee by Corrective Services on our many site visits. SHINE for Kids, who provided us with support, is an organisation that provides support to children with incarcerated parents.

We know that when parents are imprisoned, the impacts on their children are profound. It affects their health, both mental and physical. It affects their prospects for educational attainment and their family relationships—in fact, for their entire life.

We need to consider the welfare of those children more effectively in the future, and we need to give greater consideration to their welfare during the sentencing process. The committee found that "parental incarceration has a profoundly negative effect on children" and should be avoided wherever possible. For primary caregivers who would be sentenced to no more than 12 months in prison, the committee recommended that every other alternative must be demonstrated to be exhausted before they are given a custodial sentence.

In those cases, it is their children who are serving a "hidden sentence", through no fault of their own. We need to do what we can in order to ensure that those children are not wearing the consequences of actions that are not their own—actions over which they have no control.

Many of the submissions made to the inquiry and evidence provided to the committee made it very clear that children whose parents are imprisoned are not provided with enough targeted and specialised support. Without their primary caregiver, many of those children are separated from family supports and placed in out-of-home care.

That cycle puts many of those children at risk of intergenerational offending, and they may become incarcerated themselves at some time in the future. A significantly higher percentage of First Nations children are affected, with more than 20 per cent of Indigenous children having had a parent in jail at some point in their life. The chances of a child ending up in out-of-home care is significantly increased when their parent is sent to prison, and out-of-home care has been demonstrated to produce poorer outcomes for those children.

It is important to note that the committee's recommendations are not only focused on exploring ways to prevent primary caregivers from being incarcerated. There will always be instances in which primary caregivers will need to serve lengthier sentences, based on the seriousness of their crime.

In those cases, it is important that the right support structures are in place to ensure that children with a parent in prison are not left at risk. The committee has recommended that a specific role be created in the Department of Communities and Justice [DCJ] to monitor and advocate for the children of imprisoned parents.

The aim of that recommendation is to fill a gap in the provision of services in that area. As the member for Camden indicated, we do not even know how many children in this State have incarcerated parents. A holistic approach to those children would see that new position operating in consultation with other departments, such as Health and Education, to ensure that the whole child is being cared for.

The report includes 40 recommendations in total, focusing on improving outcomes for young people affected by their parents' incarceration. There is a clear link between their experience as children and later contact with the criminal justice system. It is my hope that, by implementing those recommendations, we can keep families together and, ultimately, keep more people from falling into patterns of intergenerational incarceration.