Achieving Stable and Culturally Strong Out of Home Care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children

INTRODUCTION

This is an approach to out of home care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children that:

1. Is culturally strong and provides security and stability without adoptions and without the need for strict ‘permanency planning’ rules and time limits;
2. Includes a central role for foster carers in supporting children in out of home care to maintain and strengthen their connections with their Aboriginal or
   Torres Strait Islander family and community and their cultural and spiritual heritage;
3. Recognises the strengths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family and kinship systems.

The recommendations made here are primarily directed to state and territory governments but should also inform the policies of the Australian Government.

SNAICC will pursue opportunities to work with state and territory governments, and the Australian Government where appropriate, to incorporate this approach into child protection, out of home care and family support legislation, policies and practices. SNAICC also wants non-government organisations providing out of home care and other child and family welfare services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to seriously consider these recommendations and to adapt their policies and actions where relevant.

OVERVIEW

This paper presents an approach to out of home care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Australia. Out of home care is defined as alternative accommodation and care for children who need to be removed from their homes due to child protection concerns. The papers focuses on foster care but also covers the whole out of home care ‘journey’, which includes:

• time when pressures are building within a family that may lead to abuse or neglect;
• time during which child protection concerns have been notified to the statutory authorities and removal is being considered;
• time spent in foster care, kinship care or other out of home care.

The individual circumstances of the child and his or her family should govern the duration of time spent in out of home care placements, not pre-imposed time frames or strict permanency planning rules.

The paper’s underlying premise is that, for cultural and spiritual reasons, maintaining contact or involvement with family or returning to family will always be in the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child’s best interests if safety issues can be addressed. Therefore, as well as focusing on the needs of the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child in foster care, the paper also focuses on the need to strengthen and support the child’s family of origin after the child has been removed so that the child can maintain connection to their family and hopefully be reunited with them. Family and community are the source of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child’s culture – remove them from family and you deny them their culture.

In summary, the SNAICC approach to achieving stable and culturally strong out of home care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children includes the following elements:

1. Moving towards total Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander control of child and family welfare services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people including child protection services and out of home care service delivery and case management.
2. Properly implementing the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle and more effectively recruiting, training and supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait
   Islander foster carers and kinship carers.
3. Developing national out of home care standards for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children that reflect cultural and spiritual needs.
4. Enabling Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out of home care to maintain and build family connections.
5. Developing healing and family support services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families to prevent child abuse, neglect and removal and to bring removed children home.

Each of these elements is discussed within this paper.