In each State and Territory children's care and protection legislation authorises welfare departments to investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect and to respond with preventive measures and intervention. The grounds for intervention and removal in each jurisdiction are similar and cover categories of neglect and abuse and irretrievable breakdown in parental relationships with the child.
In all jurisdictions the policy is to work with the family in such a way that the child will not have to be removed or, if removed, can be rapidly returned. Bringing a care application is a last resort. Preventive strategies include provision of intensive home-based care, respite care and attempts at consensual arrangements where a problem is detected. Parents may make voluntary undertakings and these may be reached in the context of a family conference. The family conference has now become an established part of welfare practice. The format, formality and range of parties involved in these conferences vary considerably. Family conferences are usually mediated by a social worker from the welfare department. They may include the child, parents, extended family, an Indigenous child care agency and other professionals such as health workers and the police.
Where removal of the child cannot be avoided, family reunion is the primary objective in all jurisdictions. Where this is totally unfeasible, family contact at least should be maintained.
In all jurisdictions it is necessary to obtain a court order if a child is to be removed from the family under child welfare legislation, although temporary removal without a court order is lawful in emergencies. Care and protection applications are usually brought by the welfare department or the police. The proceedings take place in the Children's Court where the order made must be in the `best interests of the child'. If the court finds allegations of neglect or abuse substantiated, a range of orders is available including parental undertakings, alternative care and supervision orders. Before placing a child in substitute care the court obtains an assessment report. At this point, in the case of an Indigenous child, the court may receive formal advice from an Aboriginal and Islander child care agency. Making the child a ward of the State is the last resort option.
Welfare departments fund family based services such as intensive home-based care and respite care. They provide and fund placement services for children found to be at risk. In all jurisdictions departmental policy is to deinstitutionalise out-of-home care, look for foster care options and, where institutions are used, support small home-like environments. Several out-of-home care options are commonly used including foster care, family groups homes, hostels and kinship care.
Many children suffer abuse or neglect. The State or Territory has an obligation to ensure their well-being and protection. The nature of the official response, however, has varied over time according to prevailing philosophies and ideologies.
In Western terms, welfare as a form of child saving has its origins in late 19th century middle-class concerns about the `dangerous' classes, single mothers and working-class families in industrialised regions of England.
Many child-savers saw poverty, destitution and the illegal activities of the lower classes as signs of biologically determined character defects. Under the influence of Lombroso, Galtin, Spencer and Darwin, the child saving movement became a moral crusade, seeking to correct and control the poor ... The system [child welfare system] has been predicated on the view that children needed to be rescued from those parents who did not have the innate qualities, right values, correct attitudes and appropriate behaviours considered to be necessary for parents to act in a `socially acceptable' way (Jamrozic and Sweeney 1996 pages 26 and 90).
In the 1970s the expectation that governments provide greater social equality and the recognition that inequalities underlie social problems gained currency. These understandings provoked a shift within welfare departments from protection to prevention and assistance. In the 1980s the re-emergence of a focus on abuse, particularly sexual abuse, in welfare work facilitated an ideological slip back into the notion of welfare workers as saviours of children from morally deficient individuals and families (Jamrozic and Sweeney 1996 page 98).
We have seen that Indigenous families were historically characterised by their Aboriginality as morally deficient. There is evidence that this attitude persists. A focus on child-saving facilitates blaming the family and viewing `the problem' as a product of `pathology' or `dysfunction' among members rather than a product of structural circumstances which are part of a wider historical and social context (Gilbert, Thomas, Dingwall et al 1983). Indigenous families face both race and class prejudice among many welfare officers.
Indigenous communities have fought consistently to keep control over their children. Resistance to separations has taken various forms.
There are no studies solely devoted to opposition by Aboriginal people to the removal of their children. It is a history that demands to be written, one that would provide a fascinating and tragic account of a struggle that has been at the core of the battle for survival of Aboriginal people. It is a subject that would highlight the role of Aboriginal women - and men in the protection of the only guarantee for their survival when they had little or no material possessions and negligible civil rights. Resistance moreover, did not occur in confrontational ways alone; more often than not it was through evasive means, given the absolute lack of power of Aboriginal People ( SNAICC submission 309 page 4).
The formation of national Aboriginal organisations in the 1960s and 1970s followed localised struggles for Indigenous peoples' rights, including the rights of families and children. The effects of Aboriginal separations and placement with non-Aboriginal adoptive and foster carers were brought to general public attention at the first, second and third Australian Adoption Conferences in 1976, 1978 and 1982 and at the First Aboriginal Child Survival Conference in 1979.
During the 1970s the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Care Agencies (AICCAs) were established. In NSW the Aboriginal Children's Services was formed in 1975. Delegates at the First Australian Adoption Conference in 1976 encouraged the formation of the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency.
The Agency is geared to service delivery and community development. It aims at ultimately providing an autonomous community centred service for children, based on the notion that there already exists within the Aboriginal community, multiple and diverse resources which can be integrated into the Aboriginal Child Care Agency Program ... Because it is an Aboriginal community organisation, the Aboriginal Child Care Agency can be easily sensitised to and reflective of the needs of Aboriginal families and children. This is vital as a breakdown between State welfare delivery and the participation of Aboriginal people, suspicious of programs stigmatised by child removal, has paralysed welfare operations. The Aboriginal Child Care Agency then, bridges this gap and operates outside the fear of `Welfare' (Jackson 1979 page 3).
Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Agencies and Multi-functional Aboriginal Children's Services (MACS) are the two main Indigenous, community based, child care service providers in Australia. There are now approximately 100 such services across Australia. AICCAs fulfil a number of roles including provision of preventive services, involvement with children and youth under care and protection orders and provision of foster care and adoption services. MACSs provide services for 0 to 5 year olds including health services, child care, respite care, nutritional meals and play groups in one location. `MACS offers a vital opportunity for early intervention and preventative assistance to take place' (SA Aboriginal Child Care Agency submission 347 page 27).
State and Territory welfare departments have recognised that a very high proportion of their clients are Indigenous families and children. The historical and socio-economic context of Indigenous families and children and the nature of welfare practice leave Indigenous children at greater risk than any others of removal from their families and communities. In evidence to the Inquiry State and Territory governments stressed the need for Indigenous communities to exercise greater control over their children's welfare.
The essence of self-determination in this context is an understanding that only Aboriginal people can find solutions to the problems which confront them, and that Aboriginal people have the right to make decisions concerning their own lives and their own communities and the right to retain their culture and develop it. Collaborative decision making, co-operation and consultation between the Department of Families, Youth and Community and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander agencies are key themes guiding current protection policy and practice. (Queensland Government final submission page 18).
The NSW Government stated that its policy on Aboriginal Affairs `is based on a philosophy of Aboriginal self-determination and will promote Aboriginal esteem in both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities' (NSW Government interim submission page 111).
It is considered necessary that an Aboriginal program have the power to name its own components ... For example the concept of Foster Carer is not readily translated from mainstream to Aboriginal society. Aboriginal people do not think of themselves as foster carers for children of their own kinship or other Aboriginal children. There are also some distasteful associations with terms such as foster care, foster parents etc ... (WA Government submission Attachment 4 page 12).
Similar statements are found in each State and Territory Government submission (SA Government interim submission page 32, Victorian Government interim submission page 32, Tasmanian Government final submission page D-38, NT Government interim submission pages 58-9; see also ACT Government submission page 4).
The rhetoric of self-management, however, has not been matched by practical measures. The administrative, executive and judicial decision making about Indigenous children's welfare are controlled by child welfare authorities. Although Indigenous organisations in some jurisdictions have a right to be consulted, this typically occurs only at the final stages of decision making about a child, when recommendations are being made for a placement in substitute care.
In general, my impression is that the welfare authorities are most willing to encourage Aboriginal people to participate in ways that do not involve a major shift of power and responsibility (Chisholm 1985 page 8).
Decision making about Indigenous children's well-being falls well short of accepted notions of self-determination. Moreover, it continues to fall short of government claims of `partnership' and `collaboration'.
Welfare departments have made changes to their practices in an effort to reduce cultural biases leading to Indigenous over-representation. One common strategy has been to establish an Aboriginal section of the department. This strategy has been criticised on the ground that the section is ` tacked on to the system, without altering its philosophy, structures, practices or processes' (Thomas 1994 page 40).
Accompanying the establishment of Aboriginal sections have been increased employment of Indigenous staff and an attempt to enhance the cultural sensitivity of existing staff and procedures. Each of these strategies also has its critics.
Indigenous organisations criticise the incorporation of Indigenous staff into welfare departments on the ground that these talented people cannot simultaneously be community resources. Public service employment inhibits the capacity of Indigenous staff to represent and advocate for their communities. Funding to employ a community member as a community development worker would frequently be preferred. Ideally both should be ensured as State and Territory administrations have a responsibility to provide appropriate and accessible services to all clients.
During the 1980s and 1990s there has been growing awareness of the problems of cross-cultural service delivery and of the need for cross-cultural training. However, the goal of culturally appropriate service delivery remains elusive. Policy statements from head office do not translate into practice in the field. Popular cross-cultural training models have limitations.
Reliance on a view of culture as fixed rather than dynamic, and the tendency to stereotype whole groups by virtue of their ethnicity are the drawbacks of the simple pluralist model. Its promotion in the late 1970s and through the 80s - a highly successful enterprise - was largely achieved via a decade of so called `cultural awareness' training, achieved through a `cultural differences' approach. This is a process whereby you come to understand different ethnic groups by learning how they behave, eat, celebrate, raise their children and bury their dead. All these practices are quaint, interesting or even unbelievable: ultimately however, they serve to underline distinctness. This approach encouraged, even depended for its success, on the kind of generalisation that also leads to stereotyping of a negative kind (Kalowski 1992 page 4).
The single most significant change affecting welfare practice since the 1970s has been the acceptance of the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle.
| In the hard copy version of this report there is a reproduction
of the following item:
Kevin Portamini, Nguiu, NT
Courtesy Heide Smith.
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