How best to care for Indigenous children who need to be removed from their families

A recent SBS Insight program examined the most contentious subject in Indigenous affairs – how best to care for Indigenous children who need to be removed from their families due to abuse and neglect. At the heart of the discussion was the most difficult question of all: how to reconcile the protection of the wellbeing and development of children with the promotion of Indigenous culture and identity to avoid a repeat of the Stolen Generations.

Compelling viewing was the story of Ruby, a young Indigenous woman from Cape York who, after being removed, was raised in Melbourne with a non-Indigenous carer. Ruby stayed connected with her Indigenous heritage and culture through the work of Victorian Indigenous organisations, whilst growing up in a loving and supporting home with her foster ‘mum’. Due to the thought and planning that went into meeting Ruby’s material and spiritual needs, she has now been able to return to her country in Cape York secure in her Indigenous identity. She is as free to participate in her people’s traditional ways as she is to enjoy all the educational, employment, and other advantages of mainstream Australia.

The program did not shy aware from the hard issues. Most participants – which included Indigenous leaders Josephine Cashman, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Anthony Dillon – recognised that the tragic levels of parental dysfunction in some Indigenous communities justified the removal of children from their families.  The statistics alone illustrate an Indigenous child welfare crisis. At the start of this century, 4,000 Indigenous children, or 2% of the total Indigenous child population, were in care across Australia; today there are 15,000 children and 6% of total children in care.

Ideally, every removed Indigenous child would be placed in ‘kinship’ care in accordance with the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle, so they could live with a relative, a member of their community, or another Indigenous person. If possible, children in rural and remote areas would be placed close to their traditional country so they could remain connected to their culture, and avoid the feelings of loss and isolation that had a devastating effect on the identity of members of the Stolen Generation.

However, in the communities with the worst child welfare problems it is not always appropriate to place children with kin. It’s a numbers game – high birth rates, high death rates, and high levels of social problems means there simply aren’t enough suitable adults to care for all the children who require a safe home.

Hence the level of kinship placements has stagnated nationally, and is the placement option employed for only around 50% of removed Indigenous children. But because child protection authorities place such an emphasis on addressing the legacy of the Stolen Generations, efforts are made to exhaust all potential kinship options. Due to the pendulum having swung too far, some Indigenous children can therefore be placed in kinship placements that do not meet basic standards, and can end up living in circumstances that are almost as bad as the homes they were removed from in the name of maintaining culture and identity.

So how do we resolve the conundrums surrounding Indigenous child protection? The Insight program offered guidance thanks to the stars of the show – Ruby and the 4 other young Indigenous Australians who bravely and honestly told us about their recent experiences in care.

Three of the five were cared for by non-Indigenous foster families, and two of the five in starkly different kinds of kinship care. All were frank about the violence and drug and alcohol abuse that necessitate the removal of Indigenous children from their parents and communities, and there was a general consensus that living with ‘white’ foster families, if kinship placements are not viable, can led to positive childhoods and create opportunities that children will ultimately be grateful for.

Yet also acknowledged was the distress caused by separation from parents incapable of getting their acts together to properly care from their children. Re-traversed was the trauma of the Stolen Generations, since separation from family and communities, no matter how necessary, will inevitably cause removed children to question their identity and ponder exactly who are they as Indigenous people living apart from their kin.

Ruby’s story was a genuine beam of light cutting through the otherwise dire story of ever-increasing ‘gaps’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. If other Indigenous children could be removed into safety and have their culture maintained, they too would be able to return to country whilst enjoying the full rights and opportunities of all Australians.

Implementing this model would constitute real and practical reconciliation. Insight let us glimpse how an Indigenous child protection system that reconciled child welfare with culture and identity would operate.

Jeremy Sammut is a Senior Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies and author of The Madness of Australian Children Protection, (Connor Court, 2015).