A third of Indigenous children leave care with adequate support

ABC NEWS (Australia)

There are concerns a large number of Indigenous young people are leaving out-of-home care without the support they need and often end up homeless or in detention.

Transcript

00:00This new report out today is called Strong, Loved and Full of Potential and it paints

00:07a pretty dire picture of what's happening in the child protection space at the moment.

00:12Now, as you mentioned, this report is published every year by the peak body for Aboriginal

00:18children called SNAKE and what they do is analyse laws, funding and policies related

00:24to children in out-of-home care and what they found this year is that only 15% of

00:29government funding went into the prevention of children being removed from their families

00:36and that means that the rest of the funding is used to remove kids from their mums and

00:41dads and what they also did in this report is delve into the jurisdictions and looked at

00:48how they spend their funding and when they looked at how each jurisdiction or looked at

00:56the jurisdiction breakdown they found that Western Australia was the state that spent

01:01the lowest amount on prevention and family support services at only 4.4%.

01:06Now there was also another concerning trend which you mentioned which was how children are exiting

01:11the child protection system.

01:13When we look at reunification rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children with their

01:19families, only 7% were reunited with their families compared to 10% of non-Indigenous children.

01:26And the statistic you mentioned there around one third of First Nations children exiting the

01:32system in this category they call other circumstances was a concern because advocates say children are

01:40choosing things like homelessness, they're going into juvenile detention or they're going into independent

01:46living and that sounds, might sound positive but what they're saying is that kids are effectively

01:52disappearing so they don't actually know where they're going.

01:55When we zoom out and we look at the statistics we know that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

02:01children are nine times more likely to be removed from their parents than non-Indigenous children

02:06and when we look at the latest Closing the Gap data by the Productivity Commission which is a commitment

02:14that all levels of government have signed up to improving the lives of Aboriginal people it tells

02:18us that the rate of which Aboriginal children are being put into the child protection system is worsening

02:26and so when we look at the child protection system almost 50% of the kids in that system are Aboriginal.

02:33I spoke to Catherine Little who's the CEO of SNAKE about the report and the child protection system more broadly.

02:43Let's take a quick listen to what she had to say.

02:46It needs urgent attention, it needs urgent reform, it means governments really need to be going.

02:51If we have built a system whose whole purpose is to tear children apart, tear children from their families,

02:58to put children into a pathway that we know is going to result into things like juvenile justice settings,

03:07homelessness, self-harm, then we urgently need to flip the investment, we urgently need to be shining a light

03:14on those incredible reforms that are happening in places like Broken Hill and Marimar

03:20and their care for children from pre-birth through to the age of 25.

03:24You could hear Catherine there speaking to one of the solutions that were highlighted in the report

03:29which was Marimar, an Aboriginal community-controlled health organisation in Broken Hill

03:37which they say are testing a new approach to prevention and that's really combining health with early education

03:44and so one of the ways they do that is through structured play groups

03:49and by holding these play groups they can test the communication skills of babies and also their motor skills

03:58so you can see if there's any developmental issues with babies

04:04but also it helps teach parents about those really important milestones.

04:09Now the other thing about these play groups is it's not only just beneficial for babies

04:13but it's also beneficial for mothers especially those who might be suffering with postnatal depression

04:19it's sort of a network where they can come together and get support and feel sort of

04:24they have a sort of trusted relationship with the staff there so they can open up and feel comfortable

04:30so that if they are struggling they can ask for help.

04:34And so that's one of the really I guess best practice models that the report has put forward

04:40but there's still a lot of work to do and advocates are saying it starts with prevention.

04:45So let's do this again.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended