Indigenous kidnapping scheme
BY BENEDICT BRUNKER
A review investigating cases of Aboriginal children taken into Out Of Home Care in 2016 has been announced by the NSW Government’s Department of Family and Community Services (DFCS).
A committee of Aboriginal leaders, led by Professor Megan Davis from UNSW, will look into 1,200 cases of Aboriginal children given removal orders.
Professor Davis, who is also the Chair and UN expert member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, welcomed the opportunity to chair the review.
“The rate of removal is alarming and this is an important opportunity to examine the implementation of the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle,” Professor Davis said.
The principle places preference on restoring children to their immediate or extended families, or to care within their tribes and nations, with placement into non-Aboriginal families being a last resort.
The department has faced criticism from Indigenous activist groups The Aboriginal Legal Service and Grandmothers Against Removals for systematically failing to uphold this principle.
Family and Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard said the creation of the committee will allow a look into the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in care.
“There was a 15 per cent increase in the number of Aboriginal children entering care from 2011 to 2016 compared to a 3 per cent increase of non-Aboriginal children. We need to understand why this is occurring to address this alarming trend,” he said.
Aboriginal children are currently being removed from their families at a faster rate than at any time during the period of the stolen generations.
The review’s announcement follows the Our Kids Our Way: Hearing the Voices of Aboriginal People ministerial forum held earlier this year, which strongly highlighted this over-representation of aboriginal children in out-of-home care.
The committee is part of a wider NSW Government reform designed to address the needs of vulnerable children, young people and families, with $90 million committed to new family preservation and restoration services, over the next four years.
Under the reform, 50 per cent of these new intensive family preservation places will be dedicated to Aboriginal children and families.
