Men's eyes were made to look,
and let them gaze…
Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, scene
1
This week the AIHW released the report Child Protection
Australia 2019-20 (link
here). Attached are a series of selective quotes
from the report reporting extraordinary rates of over-representation of
Indigenous children within the system. I have omitted the relevant graphs which
accompany these quotes.
The
number of children in out-of-home care rose by 7% between 30 June 2017 and 30
June 2020 (from 43,100 to 46,000). During this time the rate of children in
out-of-home was relatively steady at 8 per 1,000 children.
Indigenous
children continue to be over-represented among children receiving child
protection services, including for substantiated child abuse and neglect,
children on care and protection orders and children in out-of-home care.
…14,300
Indigenous children were the subject of a substantiation in 2019–20. The most common
type of substantiated abuse for Indigenous children was emotional abuse (47%)
followed by neglect (32%)…
1
in 18 Indigenous children (around 18,900) were in out-of-home care at 30 June
2020, almost two-thirds (63%) of whom were living with relatives, kin or other
Indigenous caregivers. [page vi].
Of
the children in long-term out-of-home care, 2 in 5 (42%) were Indigenous [page vi].
In
2019–20, 55,300 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children received child
protection services, a rate of 166 per 1,000 Indigenous children. This was
almost 8 times the rate for non-Indigenous children (21 per 1,000
non-Indigenous children) [page 14].
The
number of Indigenous children receiving child protection services rose between
2016–17 and 2019–20, from 49,200 to 55,300. This was reflected in the rate,
which rose from 151 to 166 per 1,000 Indigenous children in the same period.
For non-Indigenous children the rates declined slightly from 22 to 21 per 1,000
children, with minor fluctuations during the period [page 16].
Children
from geographically remote areas had the highest rates of
substantiations—children from Very remote areas (24 per 1,000 children) were
more than 3 times as likely as those from Major cities (7 per 1,000) to be the
subject of a substantiation... Of the children who were the subject of a
substantiation from Remote and Very Remote areas, 88% were Indigenous. In Major
cities 20% of children subject to substantiations were Indigenous [page 26].
In
2019–20, 14,300 Indigenous children were the subject of a substantiation. This
is a rate of 43 per 1,000— almost 7 times the rate of non-Indigenous children
(6 per 1,000)... This is consistent with findings for previous years... The
reasons for the over-representation of Indigenous children in child protection
substantiations are complex. Underlying causes include:
•
the legacy of past policies of forced removal; • intergenerational effects of
previous separations from family and culture; • a higher likelihood of living
in the lowest socioeconomic areas; • perceptions arising from cultural
differences in child-rearing practices.
Indigenous
children are also over-represented in other areas related to child safety,
including:
•
hospital admissions for injuries and assault; • experiences of homelessness; •
involvement in the youth justice system [page
27].
At
30 June 2020, about 18,900 Indigenous children were in out-of-home care—a rate
of 56 per 1,000 Indigenous children, which was 11 times the rate for
non-Indigenous children ... This difference between Indigenous and
non-Indigenous children was evident across all age groups...
Rates
for Indigenous children in out-of-home care varied by age groups. Indigenous
children aged 10–14 had the highest rate of out-of-home care (63 per 1,000
Indigenous children), while those aged under 1 had the lowest rate (28 per
1,000) [page 54].
For
Indigenous children in out-of-home care, rates rose between 2017 and 2020, from
51 per 1,000 children to 56 per 1,000 Indigenous children [page 58].
There is a risk of over-simplification selectively quoting
from a report such as this. I recommend readers take some time to have a look
at the report itself. Nevertheless, it is astounding to comprehend that 42
percent of the 46,000 children in out of home care across the nation are
Indigenous. In 2019, Neil Westbury and I assessed the state of out of home care
in NSW in our Policy Insights paper Overcoming
Indigenous Exclusion (link
here),
and we noted then that there were 31,000 children in out of home care and
11,900 or 38 percent were Indigenous. While the AIHW notes that data
adjustments mean that prior comparisons are not appropriate (see page vi), it
is clear that the national situation is much worse than national policymakers
realised just two years ago. Moreover, these data points are not point in time
issues, but are indicators of ongoing reductions in children’s life opportunities,
with ongoing human costs to the families concerned and social and financial
costs to the broader community.
Moreover, what is not addressed in a report focussed on
measuring children’s engagement with the child protection system are the
multiple upstream issues for parents and families that have led to children
being placed into care. Issues such as drug and alcohol abuse, domestic
violence, incarceration, and so on. These too have huge personal, family and wider
social impacts which are both ongoing and negatively synergistic.
On the positive side of the ledger, the new National
Agreement on Closing the Gap (link here) provides for new child protection
target (link
here)
aimed at reducing the rate of over-representation by 45 percent over the decade
to 2031.
Yet as the report notes, the rate of Indigenous over-representation
has increased in the last four years. Further, this is not a new problem; in
our Policy Insights paper referred to above, we considered the experience of
NSW, and in particular, the reviews conducted by the NSW Ombudsman in 2011,
2014, and the excellent review by David Tune. Megan Davis conducted a
subsequent review focussed on Indigenous child protection issues in 2019 (link
here).
What is common to all of these NSW reports is that the previous responses by
the NSW Governments have been inadequate and that the calls for structural
reforms have been dismissed (either implicitly or explicitly). The NSW
experience has been largely replicated in the other jurisdictions.
While child protection is a state and territory
responsibility, the broad uniformity of the challenges particularly for
Indigenous children and families across the nation, and the inability of state
and territory governments so far to successfully address those challenges,
suggests that there are deeper structural issues at play. These are issues that
span both Commonwealth and state / territory responsibilities, and demand a
combined approach led by the Commonwealth.
To date, however, there is very little evidence that the
Commonwealth recognises that it has a responsibility to lead in this policy
space, nor that without its leadership, the prospects of success are limited.
There has been no response from the Minister for Indigenous Australians to the
release of the AIHW report.
We await the publication in July of the first
implementation plans arising from the new National Agreement, and the
associated Commonwealth investment. My prediction however is that in relation
to this particular target, the Commonwealth will stay with its longstanding
script, and seek to place the entirety of the responsibility on the states and territories.
For their part the states and territories will either put their heads in the
sand and ignore the issue, or implicitly deny that a problem exists. They have
form on this… On 16 September 2020, the nation’s Community Services Ministers
met and were briefed by Minister Wyatt on the new Closing the Gap targets for
children in out of home care. The communique of the meeting (link here) has a
self-congratulatory tone overall, and mentions that child protection reforms
were paused across the nation in March 2020 because of the pandemic, and had
not then been resumed. Extraordinarily, the Communique stated (inter alia):
Minister
Wyatt acknowledged the importance of governments working together to keep
children safe and healthy by identifying and replicating best practice, in
partnership with Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations. Ministers noted
that a number of states and territories had developed very strong practice in
this area which was seeing clear gains
in reducing the intake of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children
into out of home care and increases in family restoration (emphasis added).
Given the data outlined in the AIHW report, the impression
left by the statement in bold is clearly just wrong, and it is extraordinary
that neither Ministers Ruston nor Wyatt, who were both present at the meeting,
sought to correct the record.
When rhetoric trumps reality, policy development becomes an
exercise in doing the minimum required to avoid sustained criticism. When the
life opportunities of children are involved, this is plainly not good enough.
What
is required is a comprehensive and well-resourced plan to
address the structural underpinnings of child safety in the broadest sense.
This would require the development of a structural reform agenda plus targeted
program initiatives; robust but simple coordination arrangements across
jurisdictions; long term financial commitments; engagement with the relevant
community controlled agencies; and the creation of a sophisticated and policy
specific research and evaluation capability aimed at identifying the key
leverage points to turn current trends around and monitoring progress in live
time. See my previous March 2020 post on an earlier AIHW report (link
here)
for other similar policy reform suggestions.
Such an agenda appears ambitious, because it is ambitious.
It also happens to accord with the principles laid out in the new National
Partnership. Anything less is unlikely
to have the necessary policy heft and firepower to make a difference. It is
time the nation got serious about addressing Indigenous disadvantage. This will
require Commonwealth leadership and commitment.
A core proof of the existence of structural exclusion is
the inability of those who are not excluded to recognise and actually ‘see’ an
issue. As a nation, we are conscious that there is an issue with Indigenous child
protection; we know it is there somewhere, we allow statisticians to write
reports, and prepare graphs, yet we are incapable of keeping it in focus, of
identifying with the real and tangible impacts on children and their families.
In short, we are incapable of maintaining our gaze. To maintain our gaze is too
difficult because it would reveal a truth about Australian society, and
ourselves, that we cannot bear to acknowledge.
