Is there enough care to go round?

The annual report by NT Children’s Commisioner  has highlighted the vexed question of how best to care for the Territory’s neglected children.

Just a few years after the national apology to the stolen generation by Kevin Rudd, the figures show that the percentage of abused or neglected Aboriginal children being placed with non-Aboriginal foster carers in the Northern Territory has doubled in the last five years, to a point where more than half of them are being placed with non-Aboriginal foster carers.

While no one has had the temerity to suggest that we have a new stolen generation among us, the spectre of past policies is clearly  weighing on government and its agencies, non-government care providers and politicians as they consider the statistics.

As the ABC reported last week, Territory Co-operation Council chairman Gerry Wood has asked Child Protection Department head Clare Gardiner-Barnes  why the percentage of Aboriginal children being placed with non-indigenous parents has jumped from 30 per cent to 60 per cent since 2007. This doubling comes despite the department’s long-established Aboriginal Child Placement Principal or ACPP, which puts an onus on the department to place children as close as possible to their families, with placement with a non-Aboriginal family seen as the last resort.

As described by the NT Council of Social Services:  The ACPP provides a clear process of assessment that should be followed to ensure that a child is removed from their immediate family and cultural life only as a last resort. The principle acknowledges that in some cases this may lead to a placement with a non-Aboriginal carer, and provides direction regarding the maintenance of cultural life. The principle is fundamental to protecting the best interests of the child. It is nationally and internationally recognised that children have the right to be raised in their own culture. This right is the basis of future well being, identity, place and belonging. 

The catch is that the increase in children being placed with non-Aboriginal families has been parallelled by a sharp rise in the number of actual cases of neglect and abuse being identified and undertaken by the deparment.

Child abuse and neglect statistics from the Federal Government’s National Child Protection Clearing Agency show that the number of notified cases of neglect or abuse that were substantiated in the NT increased from 327 in 2002/2003 to 1243 in 2009/2010, and jumped again in 2010/2011 (from the Department’s own annual report) to 1641 – an increase of 500 per cent in less than 10 years.

Last week, speaking with Tatjana Clancy on ABC Radio Alice Springs, NT Children’s Commisioner Howard Bath went out of his way to praise the record of the Department of Family and Children’s services in this area.

He said it had been “widely known that we have a very low proportion of indigenous kids who are receiving protection from child protection and family support services … compared with other parts of Australia.”

“We are finding from this latest data that the percentage of kids whose matters are being substantiated by Child Protection – that is it’s being confirmed that there’s an issue and that the families need support and intervention – has been rising quite markedly over the last couple of years.

“So whereas previously there was  concern there was under-servicing and under-response especially in response to children in remote areas we’re finding now that the date are getting much closer to the national averages, rather than lagging behind.”

Mr Bath also discussed “the number of aboriginal children in out-of-home care who need to be placed with non-Aboriginal carers. We would like to see that very clearly changed over the next few years.”

“Non-indigenous carers provide a very valuable service and are very very committed, so we’re not talking about phasing out non-Aboriginal carers.

“What we’re talking about is finding more carers from similar culture groups to those the children come from, so that we can provide more consistent care. And it’s less traumatising, of course, when a child need to be removed from a very remote area where English is not spoken for example.

“It would be much more desirable to be able to place that child with someone who speaks the language and is part of the same culture. We need to find more Aboriginal carers.”

It would be hard to argue with Mr Bath on this point. But clearly there are other areas where trauma can arise, and these highlight the dilemma that department workers and others face. Foster families are often taking care of young children who have been removed from difficult living conditions in which they and their communities live – conditions routinely decried as “third world”,  squalid or unacceptable.

When a more “culturally appropriate” home for these children is found, they may  face abrupt removal from the close care of foster families in comfortable “suburban” situations and a return to relative chaos.

As the ABC reported Ms Gardiner-Barnes: ”the number of Aboriginal children being taken into care is rising and it has been difficult to recruit Aboriginal foster carers because suitable people in remote communities already have overcrowded houses.

“She says she has asked the Housing Department to try to make more public houses available.”

But a lack of housing may not be the only issue facing children in communities. Perhaps the Northern Territory Government also needs to ensure there is adequate and appropriate education and childcare, especially on remote communities, to ensure they are not returning to situations some might define as neglect.

As discussed in a recent post at Alice Online, more than half of very young children living in very remote areas have been shown to ‘vulnerable’ in at least two areas of the Australian Early Development Index, which measures children’s physical, social, emotional, language/cognitive and communication development.

In the same article we looked at the NT Government’s commitment to introduce the Abecadarian program into selected Northern Territory communities, following intensive lobbying by groups like the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress. The program, which involves direct contact with young children in very poor families, has an established world-wide record in giving such children a much-needed head start in life that has proved remarkably sustainable in the long term.

The cost of introducing programs like Abecedarian across the board, however, highlights the dilemma facing governments as they (we hope) try to make a real difference to the lives and future lives of indigenous Territorians.

These same governments have come under pressure from NGOs like Amnesty International to fund all 350 homelands communities at the same level as Territory growth towns.  Amnesty, meanwhile, appears to have made  no attempt to estimate the cost of extending the same level of health, education and housing services in growth towns into the remote and often inaccessible corners of the Territory.

What would it cost to ensure that Aboriginal children have the same opportunities as other Australian kids through intensive programs that begin not at school but virtually from the cradle?  Are these to be considered “luxuries” – or are they in fact the essential proven way of breaking the cycles in which so many Aboriginal children and their parents are trapped?

The question serves to highlight the reality that taking a case by case approach to child neglect, while absolutely necessary, needs to be complemented by large-scale preventative actions, with raised expectations of what indigenous children are entitled to.

The success of reforms in Cape York suggests the need to engage communities themselves in embracing and taking responsibility for change.

Perhaps this could come through, as Stephanie Bell and John Boffa from the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress have suggested a Cape York-style “Central Australian Regional Family Responsibility Commission” to ensure that families “accept and act on their responsibilities towards their children.”  The onus is of course on Government to provide the support they need to do that, in whatever way is most efficient and effective.

This is unlikely to be feasible across the gamut of far-flung communities without a massive injection of funds.

Meanwhile, the needs of individual children can not be sacrificed to long-term goals. Despite the worthiness of Mr Bath’s expressed hopes, it may take a while to have both his wishes granted:  A continuing increase in recognised number of cases of neglect and abuse and a higher proportion of indigenous carers.

As it is, the current figures indicate the widespread perception that little children themselves are sacred, and culture, however important and however it might be defined, is secondary to their needs. – Dave Richards