The Issue

What is the issue?

When the ground-breaking Bringing Them Home report into the Stolen Generations was released in 1997, Australia was shocked to learn that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children represented one in every five children living in out-of-home care.

Today – over 25 years later – they are one in every three.

The causes of over-representation are complex, including the legacy of past policies of forced removal, intergenerational effects of separations from family and culture, poor socio‐economic status and perceptions arising from cultural differences in child‐rearing practices. The consequences of child removal are profound: devastating families; deepening intergenerational trauma; too often severing children’s cultural bonds and triggering poor life outcomes; and eroding culture and community.

Even with the principles of prevention and early intervention contained in Australian policy frameworks, we still see over 80% of funding going into the out-of-home care system instead of into solutions.

There is a clear and urgent need for change.

More information

The outcomes delivered by child protection systems across Australia are alarmingly poor for children and families and are achieved at significant and increasing financial and human cost.

Children in out-of-home care are much more likely to experience poorer health, depression, violence and suicide over their lives; be imprisoned; suffer from alcohol abuse and gambling addiction, and be less likely to have trusting relationships, healthy parenting models, and access to education and economic opportunities. Impacts also ricochet through families through our health, education, welfare and justice systems. Cost benefit analyses demonstrate that improving child safety and rectifying these increasing and unsustainable government costs are best achieved through redressing the causes of child removal, and investing early to better support at-risk families.

The evidence is clear that the strengths to address child wellbeing and safety concerns lie within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Extensive research demonstrates the unique value of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child-rearing practices, the importance of Indigenous-led solutions to improving outcomes and the importance of cultural identity continuity for Indigenous children’s wellbeing. Yet, these strengths continue to be undermined by an ever-deepening crisis of child removal that breaks families apart and disrupts the social fabric of communities.

There is overwhelming evidence of a series of government policy failures in the response to the escalating crisis of child removal. These include:

• failure to redress high levels of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander poverty
• failure to intervene early to support, strengthen and heal families and communities from intergenerational effects of colonisation, and separation from family and culture through the Stolen Generations
• failure to enable genuine self-determination – a platform in policy, legislation and resourcing that provides communities with opportunities for empowerment, to draw on their strengths and lead responses to the issues facing their children and families
• failure to redress discrimination and perceptions arising from cultural differences in child-rearing practices.

It is clear that extensive and urgent reform is required to enable better outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and to stop the perpetuation of inter-generational harm.