Five years after a damning report on the failings of the New South Wales child protection system recommended sweeping changes to prevent harm and trauma to vulnerable Indigenous children and families, an independent review has found that only 12 of its 126 recommendations have been fully implemented by the Minns government.
Aboriginal organisations across NSW are calling for urgent and meaningful reforms to the child protection system, urging that leadership of these vital changes be transferred from government control to the hands of Aboriginal communities.
The review, undertaken by the state’s Aboriginal child, family and community peak organisation AbSec, the Aboriginal Legal Service, UTS Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and the Justice and Equity Centre found that Aboriginal children are almost 12 times more likely to be placed in out-of-home care than their non-Aboriginal peers, an increase from 9.5 times in 2017-18.
The organisations are calling for NSW to appoint an independent child protection commission and a commissioner for Aboriginal children and young people to hold the government to account.
“We envision a future where our communities are empowered to keep our children safe and cared for – where they grow up connected to their cultures, on Country, and surrounded by love and support,” John Leha, the CEO of AbSec, said.
“This is our call to action for true self-determination, accountability, and meaningful partnership – because the wellbeing of our children is at stake,” Leha said.
Karly Warner, the CEO of the Aboriginal Legal Service (NSW/ACT), said the government had five years to take action but had failed to do so.
“Five years is an eternity in the life of a child. The past five years presented countless opportunities to take decisive action and protect Aboriginal children from the trauma and lifelong harm of being torn away from their families, but the NSW government has willingly let another generation fall victim to bureaucratic inertia,” Warner said.
Dr Paul Gray from UTS Jumbunna Institute said urgent action was needed.
“Business as usual, or small tweaks at the margins, will not deliver the transformative change that children and families need,” he said.
The NSW families minister, Kate Washington, was approached for comment.
The 2019 Family is Culture report was a three-year study of the case files of 1,144 Aboriginal children who entered the NSW out-of-home care system between 2015 and 2016.
The review found children who did not appear to be at risk of harm were removed from their families, the children’s court was misinformed about vitally important information, and in some cases “the location of young people under the care and protection of the minister was unknown”.
The review, led by the University of NSW law professor Megan Davis, said the system lacked transparency, had no effective regulator and its reforms were regularly devised and implemented with little or no genuine consultation with the Aboriginal community.
Davis found “widespread noncompliance” with law and policy by caseworkers and managers, many of whom routinely ignored the requirement to consult regularly with Aboriginal families and communities, and routinely chose removal over other, less intrusive, options.
Disturbingly, in almost a quarter of cases, Aboriginal babies were taken at birth or from the hospital soon after, and almost a fifth were in the system before they were six months old.
