3 December 2015 | General Interest
The Children’s Rights Report 2015, released by National Children’s Commissioner Megan Mitchell on Monday 30 November, highlights the impact of domestic and family violence on children, particularly vulnerable groups including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
SNAICC welcomes the recognition within the report of the need for early intervention action to prevent family violence, and to address the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children affected by family violence.
The report also emphasises the need for more accurate research and data on the impact of family violence on children, calling for data collection about children’s experiences of violence to be incorporated into Australian Bureau of Statistics data collection and reporting.
Of the 16 recommendations made in the report, two are specifically aimed at supporting research and enhanced data collection on the health and developmental outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. Recommendation 8 calls for funding for the Menzies School of Health Research’s work on data linkage to improve developmental outcomes in the Northern Territory to be extended beyond 2017, and Recommendation 14 specifically calls for the Australian Government to support the work being led by Professor Kerry Arabena at the University of Melbourne into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child development, The First 1000 Days.
Chapter 4 of the report, “All I want is a life free from violence”, is dedicated to the results of the Commissioner’s major project for this reporting year, an investigation into the impacts of domestic and family violence on children. The Commissioner calls for enhanced data collation on the direct impact of family violence on children, and noted that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are disproportionately affected by violence, noting that a recent WA study found 81 of 100 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in custody had experienced family violence, that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 34.2 times as likely to be hospitalised as a result of family violence than non-Indigenous women, and that domestic violence s the second most common reason for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to seek specialist homelessness support services. The Commissioner notes that there are issues in several jurisdictions over the quality of data recording Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status for child victims of physical or sexual assault, which makes accurately determining the extent of impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children impossible. The report also notes that during the Commissioner’s consultations, several respondents including Victorian Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People, Andrew Jackomos, lamented the lack of available data directly linking Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s experiences of family violence with other poor outcomes.
In general comment on the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, the Commissioner notes that in the three years since the United Nations review of Australia’s progress under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRoC), disappointingly little has been done to address the alarming over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the child protection system. The Commissioner stresses the need for meaningful and genuine engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to address this.
The report also notes the Commissioner’s ongoing work to support suicide prevention initiatives for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, following on from her 2014 report.
