About 60% of child protection notifications for Victorian First Nations families are unsubstantiated, with the state’s department of families acknowledging racism is a contributing factor in some reports.
While the rate is comparable to non-Indigenous children, a senior department official told the state’s Indigenous truth inquiry that discrimination against Indigenous families contributed to notifications that did not meet the threshold for investigation.
The department’s figures showed there were over 11,000 reports of First Nations children to the department in the 2021-22 financial year. In the same time period 404 reports were made about unborn First Nations children.
The acting associate secretary at the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, Argiri Alisandratos, told the Yoorrook justice commission that about 40% of child protection reports about First Nations people in the 2021-22 financial year required action.
Pressed by commissioner, Kevin Bell, on whether discrimination and stigma were contributing to the unsubstantiated reports, Alisandratos said: “I would accept that.”
“While there are families with needs, they may not be needs that constitute a child being in need of protection and we’ve got to make that distinction,” he said.
Figures provided by the department showed that about 20% of all First Nations children who are subject to one or more unborn child reports were removed from their families within three months of their birth.
Alisandratos said notifications about unborn children were primarily made by professionals like healthcare workers or child protection workers already in contact with a family. These workers are legally mandated to report suspected child sexual or physical abuse.
He said discrimination was not the sole driver of child protection notifications, but added there was a need for professionals to differentiate between families in need of child protection and families in need of additional support.
For non-Indigenous children, 71% of notifications do not meet the threshold for investigation.
Alisandratos also said each child protection worker in the department was juggling between 16 and 18 cases – a number he conceded was too high.
The Yoorrook justice commission is holding public hearings focusing on Indigenous people’s interactions with the child protection and criminal justice systems.
On Monday, the state’s chief police commissioner, Shane Patton, made a historic apology for past and present actions of the force that inflicted trauma on First Nations people.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has previously said the state’s over-representation of First Nations people in the child protection and criminal justice systems was a “source of great shame” for the government.
Victoria’s child protection minister, Lizzie Blandthorn, is scheduled to appear at the inquiry on Friday.
Yoorrook is Australia’s first Indigenous truth-telling body and has the same powers as a royal commission.
Its mandate is to investigate historical and current systemic injustices against First Nations people and it will produce a final report by mid-2025.
