We risk an Indigenous lost generation

The number of Indigenous children removed from their parents has risen from 4,146 children in 2000-01 to almost 14,000 children in 2012-13. The proportion of the Indigenous child population in state care has tripled from 2% to 6%.

Indigenous-specific child protection policies are intended to prevent past mistakes associated with the Stolen Generations. The Aboriginal Child Placement Principle (ACPP) means the preferred option is to place Indigenous children into ‘kinship care’ with relatives or local community members.

First embedded in legislation in the 1980s, the ACPP was also a product of the Indigenous policies of the 1970s that sought self-determination — the idea that Indigenous advancement required separate development to retain traditional culture and maintain Indigenous identity.

However, placing Indigenous children in accordance with the ACPP threatens to compromise child wellbeing and keep open the gaps in Indigenous social outcomes.

The well-meaning intention is to overcome the often devastating impacts of loss, confusion, and isolation that separation from their family had on the cultural identity of the Stolen Generations.  Prior to the 1980s, Indigenous child removal policies aimed to assimilate Indigenous children and prevent them from maintaining connections with traditional culture and identity.

Ideally, every Indigenous child removed into care would be placed in kinship care to preserve contact with language, ceremonies, and traditional lands. But complying with the ACPP cannot always be reconciled with child welfare.

It has become harder to find kinship carers. The overall proportions in ‘kinship’ compared to ‘foster’ and ‘residential’ placements have remained stable since the early 2000s, with around half of Indigenous children in care placed in kinship care.

High birth rates, high adult mortality, and high adult-to-child ratios have created a shortage of safe and suitable families able to care for children. This shortage has been exacerbated by the social problems in some communities that rule out many people from acting as kinship carers.

This does not mean that the kinship placements that do occur are all safe and suitable. Recent state and territory inquiries have shown that culture and identity considerations can outweigh child welfare concerns. Indigenous children can end up receiving a “lesser standard of care” when placed into kinship placements that do not meet basic standards, and into which non-Indigenous children would not be placed.

The ACPP risks creating another lost generation of Indigenous children, trapped in disadvantaged circumstances.

Indigenous child protection therefore requires the same scrutiny and revaluation that has occurred in other Indigenous policy areas.

Since the early 2000s, self-determination has been recognised to have failed to improve outcomes for many Indigenous people, and has been superseded by the mainstreaming of Indigenous health, education, and other policies. However, Indigenous child protection remains stuck in the 1970s. The ACPP has also become outdated compared to contemporary understandings and definitions of Indigenous identity that have superseded the idea that continuous contact with culture is the source of that identity.

The 21% growth in the Indigenous population since 2006 recorded by the 2011 census appears to have been driven by changes in identification. Most of the new identifiers belong to the large majority of Indigenous Australians who are urban-based, have high rates of intermarriage, and whose social welfare indicators are largely the same as non-Indigenous peers. Many also have little contact with traditional customs and lands, and yet this is no barrier to their status and acceptance as Indigenous.

This suggests that Indigenous identity is no longer essentially based on either race or culture, and is increasingly an ethnic identity based on self-identification, contemporary recognition, and family history and descent. 

It also suggests that the ACPP’s underpinning rationale — concerns about loss of identity and creating a new Stolen Generation — no longer need to rule out alternative approaches that would mainstream Indigenous child protection.

Mainstreaming would require revisiting the 2013 NSW adoption reforms and the 2014 Victorian permanent guardianship reforms, which at present are both restricted to non-Indigenous children only. Instead of excluding Indigenous children and persisting with the ACPP, the use of adoption and permanent guardianship to give abused and neglected children safe and stable homes should be extended to all children on a non-discriminatory basis.

Efforts to develop children's cultural awareness and promote their Indigenous identity should remain an important objective, but could be better reconciled with child welfare through the provision of cultural support and education programs run by Indigenous organisations for Indigenous children who are adopted or in permanent care.

Ending the discrimination against Indigenous children has vital national implications central to what should be the aim of Indigenous policy in a Reconciled Australia — ending intergenerational Indigenous disadvantage and giving all Australians the same opportunities, regardless of race.

Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. His report, The Kinship Conundrum: The Impact of Aboriginal Self-Determination on Indigenous Child Protection, was released on Monday 8 December.