Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (15:54): I rise also to support the bill and commend everybody who has had a hand in getting it to where it is at the moment. This type of concept was brought to me before I got into parliament, actually. I have had the pleasure of employing well over 30 social workers through the Independent Learning Centre and various other centres around South Australia. A lady called Kate Barnes, who is one of the most outstanding social workers that I have ever had the privilege of working with and learning from, probably first brought it to my attention back in 2007, so a fair while ago. Her reasoning is not only about recognition and having that standard but also, and most importantly, having the support and the professional development that goes along with that.

My own personal journey really started at Port Augusta, where I had my first teaching placement. Very quickly, I was a coordinator and then, quite quickly after that, I was the student counsellor. With zero experience, zero training in that field, you quickly realise the depth of issues, and breadth of issues as well, that a number of students are facing and confronting. Certainly, Maslow's hierarchy of needs is pretty quick learning. I felt completely underprepared for that role, there was almost no support, and for most of it I was winging it.

We had some very confronting issues back in middle nineties. Train surfing was a popular fad, particularly with a number of students at my site, which was Port Augusta Secondary School; that was until one of the students fell off the train and got run over by the train, and there were about nine other students there who witnessed pretty much full decapitation and severing of limbs and arms. To deal with that as the counsellor was pretty horrific not only for students and their learning but, before we could even address that, there was a whole heap of family trauma and student trauma.

That was really the steep learning curve that I went on in terms of investing my time and energy into social work. I always have this philosophy, and I would love to see it one day, that for every teaching degree, you also have to do a social work degree hand in hand with it. When I had the Independent Learning Centre, I always used to say that every teacher is a social worker, and every social worker is a teacher. The skills are very transferable. Good teachers are also very good social workers in terms of their approach and care for kids. In the same way, our very good social workers became very good teachers.

In fact, what was really pleasing to me was the number of social workers that we had. Frazer Scanlon came in as a social worker. We provided an environment where he could complete his teaching degree, because it was a one-year addition. He has progressed through Reidy Park Primary School and is now the principal of Glencoe Central Primary School. Christine Hart, who was my head social worker at that centre, has achieved her teaching degree and is now the senior school assistant principal in a Victorian high school.

Bevan White is a very good social worker. He is now running his own business, looking after the wellbeing of young people. Carla Doody is a fantastic social worker as well. She is involved in the education space. I think she has just done eight years at Allendale East Area School. She informed me the other week that she has now just won a job with a NDIS provider. So, they are fantastic outcomes for a number of social workers. As I said, I think we employed well over 30 over a period of time. You get to see the skills that very good social workers bring and the difference they make to kids' lives.

We also need to recognise the difficulty in achieving a social work degree. For somebody who is out of school age and working, to try to do those placements is a prohibitive factor, particularly the 10-week one, which is unpaid. Three months without income coming in is just unachievable for a lot of people. We would have systems set up where we would bank hours and do a whole range of very creative things, probably frowned upon by other institutions, but there was a real desire to have people complete that degree, and now the registration of that I think is a brilliant step forward.

One thing we need to ensure for our social workers is support and professional development, but less so in an educational setting. I have painted a couple of examples already, but certainly the social workers that I know who are with Families SA or the Corrections department are facing a lot of confronting issues and sometimes, in their mind, hopeless situations. Their wellbeing and mental health has to be a priority as well, and I see something like this contributing to that network and that support mechanism that we can put around our social workers.

One other thing I want to briefly touch on, and this is why I think professional development is so important, is really making sure that social workers create an independent or empowering model. It is very easy to fall into a dependence model, because that can make you feel good when young people need your services. We would challenge each other all the time at the various centres that we had: 'Is this intervention a dependence model or an empowering model?'

Whilst it is just one very small example, the lightbulb really came on for me when we were buying taxi fares for students to come into the Independent Learning Centre. Over a week per student it does add up to well over $100, even for Mount Gambier. We just thought, 'This is not sustainable; how can we do this better?' So as a group we sat down and talked about empowering models. It resulted in bikes being purchased for two students. Our person who did automotives helped the young people put them together, with maintenance and all that type of stuff, and gifted them a bike each, and they were able to turn up from there.

Another example of that was we had an ex-teacher who donated a small car. Our auto guys fixed it up. That person lived out of town with a young baby, and they were able to then get into the Independent Learning Centre. They are the types of empowering models that really stuck with me. The constant challenge from my social workers of 'How can we do this better?' I found very valuable, and the results are there. A number of young people have gone on to great lives and great careers. It is a testament to the social workers we had not just at Mount Gambier but at the Independent Learning Centres at Naracoorte and Millicent. They really did change kids' lives, and I am very grateful for the social workers that we had. Anything that I can do to support their professional development, their support mechanisms, I will do in this place. I commend the bill to the house.