00:00 What I found through the early processes of the inquiry were stories from families, from
00:07 children and young people themselves, from those who work in the sector, from those who
00:16 are working in non-government agencies, that there needs to be a disruption to what is
00:25 happening to Aboriginal children and young people in this alarming rate of removal and
00:31 that if we don't prevent what is happening, we are going to be faced with a scenario that
00:38 in 2031, 14 out of every 100 Aboriginal child will be a child in care. We can't have that
00:48 happening. We have a system in place that I have been investigating and what we know
00:55 so far with early observations is that the way in which the system is implementing the
01:06 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child placement principle is not effective and that
01:14 results in South Australia not achieving the objectives of reducing out of home care rates
01:21 for Aboriginal children and young people and in times when removal needs to occur, that
01:30 we need to ensure that our Aboriginal children and young people are placed with family, placed
01:36 with members of the Aboriginal community and with culture and grow up safely in that regard.
01:42 And so what is not happening that should be in the assessment of whether Indigenous children
01:49 should be removed from their families or not and how they are placed afterwards?
01:55 I think one of the important things to highlight is the fact that we have the Aboriginal and
02:02 Torres Strait Islander child placement principle. There are five elements to that principle
02:07 and if the concerns or the issues about risks for children, before we even think about going
02:14 to the more formal part of a court order for removal, that we need to be thinking about
02:25 how we afford support services for our most vulnerable children and their families. We
02:34 have the experience of many families that tell of a system that consults them when it's
02:41 too late, that we need to have the compulsion of family led decision making through family
02:51 group conferencing much earlier in processes. We know that when family and community are
02:59 involved we get better outcomes. We also know from the early observations for our Aboriginal
03:06 children and families is that we need to have every opportunity to apply the Aboriginal
03:14 and Torres Strait Islander child placement principle in its fullest form at every, at
03:19 much earlier in the process to the standard of active efforts.
03:24 And so you found that only 61% of children were placed with the priority of being with
03:29 family or other kinship members. So in those other 39% of cases, were assessments made
03:36 of kinship possibilities and the decisions made that no appropriate ones could be found
03:41 or was there no assessment done at all of kinship possibilities?
03:47 All that detail will be revealed in my full report early next year. But what I can tell
03:53 you now with the data and with the literature review and with the submissions and with what
04:00 we have heard from Aboriginal community members of these experiences that are supported by
04:08 the data that we have right now this significant over representation of Aboriginal children
04:18 being removed, entering into out of home care and by large entering into out of home care
04:25 into the care of people that aren't family, that aren't community, that aren't part of
04:29 their culture. And so that needs to be reversed and we need to apply active efforts.
04:36 So the preliminary report signals 17 recommendations to the South Australian Government at a time
04:47 when they are producing amendments to the Child Safety Act. I am hopeful that this Government
04:54 will consider those 17 recommendations to bring about systemic change in the way in
05:04 which the system responds to Aboriginal children and their families. We need every effort applied
05:11 in the way in which the system responds to reverse those trends for Aboriginal children
05:18 and young people. And we are at a significant point in time to ensure that those recommendations
05:25 need to be, you know, the state to take heed of those recommendations.
05:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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