Azra Beach doesn't feel forgotten. She feels ignored.
Ms Beach was sexually abused as a child in foster care. She gave evidence to the Tasmanian child sexual abuse commission of inquiry, but says the "silence" from the government since has been devastating.
"We [people who have been in the out of home care system] are the majority of abuse survivors, yet we are the quietest and we are the most ignored," she said.
"Society writes us off as no-hopers and that we're no good, but what I want to say is that we weren't born like that, we were made like that because we were neglected … we were put in places that weren't safe, where we weren't loved."
Ms Beach said it was only in the past two years that she had started to address her childhood trauma.
"The older that I've gotten the worse the memories are, and I'm worried that I haven't even really uncovered the full depths of my abuse," she said.
She is passionate about speaking out so that her story, and the experiences of all children abused in out-of-home care are not forgotten, but that advocacy has taken a toll.
"I haven't worked since I started speaking out … there's no encouragement, there's no help, there's nothing; it's just like you're a piece of shit, basically — that's how they [the government] make me feel."
Ms Beach is also struggling to rekindle her passion for photography, finding it difficult to see beauty in a state where she has been let down so badly.
'I would like to see them acknowledge it properly'
The Tasmanian parliament apologised in November to victim-survivors of child sexual abuse while in the state's care.
"There are a few politicians that completely forgot out-of-home care, they didn't even mention us at all," Ms Beach said.
Out-of-home care was a focus of the commission, along with state schools, the Launceston General Hospital and the Ashley Youth Detention Centre, and Tasmania has a long history of abuse in out-of-home care in its various iterations.
"I would like to see [the government] acknowledge it properly, like they did for the LGH and like they did for the education victims. At the end of the commission of inquiry hearings we didn't get a damn word, we just got silence," Ms Beach said.
"I would like to see them actively looking into how they can prevent this happening again to other children."
An 'opaque' service
A former child safety consultant in Tasmania, Jack Davenport, said the out-of-home care system — and child safety in general — was not getting the attention it deserved.
"It's always, in my experience, been an agency or a form of work that has sort of resided almost in secrecy, behind closed doors, it's been an opaque service to children and families and also to the public at large," Mr Davenport said.
Ms Beach told the commission of inquiry in June that she went to a foster home at a young age and was physically abused by a member of the family. She told the commission she was sexually abused by another member of the family and by a friend of the family.
"[Ms Beach] described most poignantly ... how she was made vulnerable to sexual abuse because of the lack of warmth and love in her home," counsel assisting the commission Rachel Ellyard said when she summed up the evidence relating to out-of-home care.
Ms Beach told the commission the department responsible for out-of-home care — which became the Communities Department and is now part of Education, Children and Young People — "did nothing" and dismissed concerns when she raised them.
When he appeared before the commission in June, then Communities Department head Michael Pervan apologised to Ms Beach and the other witnesses who gave evidence about abuse in out-of-home care.
"The fact that people in our systems did not feel loved and safe, I think, is a tremendous tragedy, and especially to Azra who was calling for it, I would sincerely and genuinely want to say that we're sorry that the system let her down so badly," Mr Pervan said.
During the public hearings, the commission heard evidence about underfunding in the out-of-home care and broader child safety system, and concerns about it being a system in crisis.
In her summing up, Ms Ellyard said to the commissioners:
"You may find on your consideration of the evidence that there's a complete lack of sufficient systems to keep children safe, that there are cultural issues in the department charged with the responsibility for keeping children safe, that there are continuing issues about where decision-making power should reside for children in care … and you've heard that there seems to be a lot of reform going on, but it's very unclear whether the frontline experience of a child or the frontline experience of a worker would have changed at all as a result of any of those reforms."
New accreditation and monitoring processes
The Tasmanian government last month gave the parliament an update on its interim response to the commission of inquiry.
In it, the government said work to establish an out-of-home care accreditation framework, an independent statutory body for accrediting and monitoring out-of-home care services and a carers register was "underway".
"The out of home care accreditation framework and carer's register will be developed in stages to give care providers time to prepare for an adjust to new ways of working and reporting," the document reads.
Premier Jeremy Rockliff said the apology given was for all victim-survivors of child sexual abuse who were abused while in state care "over many decades".
"No victim and survivor will ever be ignored or forgotten by any member across the parliament, let alone the government," Mr Rockliff said.
"Clearly there'll need to be significant change right across [state institutions] and that's we're committed to — our number one priority is to keep our children and our young people safe."
Mr Davenport said much more needed to be done.
"The biggest problems we're facing with the out-of-home care system in Tasmania relates mainly to the lack of resources and the provision of workers to do the job that they need to be doing," he said.
"At the same time, services just aren't catered to deal with the range of issues that children in out-of-home care are facing, we need to increase and improve the specialism of these services."
Mr Davenport said he would like to see a degree-level qualification required of all child safety workers — the people who oversee Tasmania's foster care system — "to make sure that everyone is at least a social worker or has something like a psychology degree".
"We definitely need a working code of practice that enforces ethical standards, monitored by an independent board and registering every child safety worker in Tasmania so that we can make sure that the very highest standard is being met by the state government and the services that are meant to support some of the most vulnerable children in our state."
Ms Beach said no child should grow up carrying the weight of abuse.
"It breaks people apart, it's broken me apart," she said.
