The 2025 Family Matters Report, released today by SNAICC – National Voice for our Children, warns that Australia’s child protection systems continue to prioritise late, punitive interventions over the early support families need to stay strong and together.
The 2025 report titled “Strong, Loved and Full of Potential” shows that while Aboriginal community-controlled early intervention, prevention and family support programs are keeping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children safe and connected to family, they remain critically underfunded.
SNAICC CEO Catherine Liddle said Family Matters exposes how far Australia has drifted from its commitment to reducing the unacceptable over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care (Target 12, Closing the Gap National Agreement).
“The solutions to keeping children safe are right in front of Governments,” Ms Liddle said.
“Every time a family reaches a crisis point without support is a situation where a child is removed when it could have been prevented – that’s a failure of government and the systems they control, not a failure of families.
“This year’s Family Matters report makes it clear that governments are closing their eyes to the revolutionary benefits and transformative opportunity of investing in culturally safe supports that strengthen families before they reach breaking point.
“When only 16 cents in every dollar Australian governments spend on child protection goes to family support, it is no surprise that more children end up in statutory systems. These removals are preventable, but prevention requires investment.”
The report shows that while Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 9.6% more likely to be in OOHC and make up 45% of those in out-of-home care, the organisations best placed to keep them safe receive less than six percent of the funding.
“If governments are serious about addressing over-representation, it would take one simple step – invest in ACCOs, not in systems that remove our children. The solutions exist, but they simply aren’t being resourced,” Ms Liddle said.
“The impact of this underinvestment is visible not just when children enter care, but when they leave it.”
In 2022–23, 34.4% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children exited out-of-home care into “other circumstances,” including independent living, homelessness and youth detention.
“When a third of our children leave care into homelessness or detention, that tells you that there is something fundamentally wrong with the system,” Ms Liddle said.
“Our children are being failed twice.
“First by a child protection system that intervenes too late, and then by justice systems that criminalise the trauma those interventions created with punitive approaches, deepening harm rather than making communities safer.
“Closing the Gap starts with our children and that starts with reforming crisis-driven systems to those that are solutions and child focused.”
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For all media queries, please contact Charlie Bowcock on 0417 042 308 or media@snaicc.org.au
Background: The Family Matters report is an annual report that highlights progress towards ensuring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people grow up safe and cared for in family, community and culture. The report describes data relating to children’s interactions with child protection on systems and provides a projection of how over-representation is likely to increase over the next 10 years if current conditions are maintained. It analyses and presents data relating to the structural drivers that contribute to children and families encountering the child protection system and identifies barriers and opportunities in responding to issues impacting children’s development, wellbeing and safety.
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