Twenty years ago, white Australia was shocked, even if only momentarily, to learn from the Bringing them home report on the stolen generations that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children represented, from a population base of just 3 per cent, 20 per cent of children living in out-of-home care.
In November last year, the annual Family Matters Report on the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care in Australia revealed that the 20 per cent of 20 twenty years ago is now 36 per cent. It also reported that the rate of removal of Indigenous children is 9.8 times greater than that of other children.
The ACT continues to have one of Australia's the highest rates of removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Its rate is 12.5 times higher than that of non-Aboriginal children.
Alarmingly, the report's authors used data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Productivity Commission to calculate that the number of Indigenous children in out-of-home care will triple in the next 20 years.
While not questioning the genuineness of the apology to the stolen generations delivered by prime minister Kevin Rudd in 2008, on behalf of all Australians, the fact that there are almost twice as many Aboriginal children living in out-of-home care today as there were when the Bringing them home report was written risks the regret expressed by Rudd being seen as fake, and the apology as insincere.
Family Matters' co-chairwoman, Natalie Lewis, noted in her foreword to the report the projected increase in the rate of removal of Aboriginal children and says: "The outlook is even worse than the data predicted last year. The rates of over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children continue to increase across jurisdictions. Not only are we not closing the gap, we are failing to arrest the widening of the gap."
It's fair to say that Lewis is stating the obvious in declaring that continuing current child-protection practices across Australia will ensure an escalation of the numbers of Aboriginal children taken into out-of-home care. What is less obvious is the reason for the states and territories' stubborn refusal to adopt best practice in child protection and to appropriately fund and work with Aboriginal communities to address the tragedy of child removals.
The Family Matters Report is particularly, though appropriately, critical of the ACT government, which it identifies as one of the worst performing in Australia for supporting Aboriginal families.
An individual report on each state and territory, based on an analysis of its child-protection system and its compliance with nationally accepted building blocks, namely the "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child placement principles", which were designed to ensure the safety and welfare of Aboriginal children, resulted in the ACT being found to have performed "particularly poorly against all measures".
In fact, the ACT's average score against all of the agreed indicators was "very poor". This is a brief summary of comments from the ACT report:
Targeted services: poor
- Second-lowest proportional investment in family support and intensive family support.
- Second-lowest early development vulnerability.
Participation and self-determination: very poor
- No investment in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community controlled organisations in child protection and family-support services.
- No apparent strategy for investment in these organisations.
Culturally safe and responsive systems: very poor
- Relatively low placement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander carers and other kin.
- No apparent strategy for investment in community-controlled organisations.
Accountability: very poor
- No independent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander system oversight body.
- No dedicated and monitored strategy to address over-representation.
- Provided limited new data to inform the report.
The ACT government's egregious disregard of best practice for Aboriginal children in touch with the care and protection system is highlighted in the report identifying the ACT as the only jurisdiction in Australia in which child-protection legislation does not align with any of the universally accepted elements of self-determination, consultation or participation in decisions on Aboriginal children.
It's concerning that there doesn't appear to be any recognition within the ACT government, nor indeed among the range of non-Aboriginal mainstream organisations that the government has engaged to manage the removal of Aboriginal children from their families, that the failures identified in the Family Matters Report are relevant to the explosion in child removals in Canberra.
It's axiomatic that change will never happen if those with responsibility for a particular policy refuse to accept responsibility for any shortcomings in its implementation.
The local Aboriginal community again urges the ACT government to accept that its current approach to the care and protection of Aboriginal children has failed, to aggressively pursue solutions that focus on prevention and early intervention, and to ensure that Indigenous organisations, communities and families are enabled to take part at every step in the involvement of an Aboriginal child or family with the child-protection system.
Julie Tongs is chief executive of the Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health and Community Service.