The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) welcomed the flexibility the new program will provide schools in choosing the most appropriate form of support for students but has called on the government not to fund the secular workers out of funding specifically granted to chaplains.
ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace said Prime Minister Julia Gillard had given an election commitment that the National School Chaplaincy Program would not be secularised.
“There is no problem with the Federal Government offering schools the choice between a secular worker and a faith-based chaplain but the Government’s commitment before the election was that the chaplaincy program would retain its unique faith-based pastoral care emphasis,” Mr Wallace said.
The ACL has released a video of Prime Minister Gillard giving a commitment to not changing the funding arrangements for chaplains.
However, the Minister for Education, Peter Garrett, has indicated funding for the student welfare workers would be funded out of the same pool of funding as the chaplains.
“The Gillard Government is committed to extending this successful scheme to up to an extra 1000 schools from 2012, with priority given to schools serving disadvantaged areas or in regional or remote locations and an extra $222 million in funding,” Mr Garrett said.
“We know chaplains are already doing great work in our school communities and I expect that many more schools will apply for funding to employ a chaplain when applications for the new round open later this year.
“But we also want to give schools greater choice. This means schools won’t miss out on applying for the program if the school community would prefer to have a secular welfare worker instead of a chaplain.
“The chaplaincy program has proven very popular and we want to make sure schools and students are getting the full benefit, which is why we held a consultation earlier this year asking what was working and what could be improved,” Mr Garrett said.
In other changes to the program chaplain providers will now require chaplains and student welfare workers to have a minimum qualification of a certificate 4 in youth work or similar.
While most chaplain providers had this requirement it is now mandatory.
Other changes include
• Increasing the maximum grants for schools in remote areas from $20 000 to $24 000, and giving priority for new funding to schools in regional, remote and disadvantaged areas.
• Introducing new benchmark standards for service providers, including the provision of ongoing professional development and support, monitoring of service delivery, and appropriate risk management and compliance requirements.
• Strengthening the program’s complaints management processes so that each school will be required to keep a complaints log and have a designated complaints officer, and parents and students are fully informed about how they can raise any concerns they may have.
The government said the changes announced to the program were in direct response to a recent investigation and public consultation by the ombudsmen.
