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NSW and the ACT - Towards self-management

From the mid-1970s the NSW Department of Youth and Community Services began involving Aboriginal workers in the process of placing Indigenous children.

It is the deep and natural desire of Aboriginal people, particularly the young adolescents, to be housed and cohabit with those of their own race and foster placement within the Aboriginal community would help to resolve this situation (Annual Report 1977, quoted by NSW Government submission on page 64).

In 1978 12 Aboriginal caseworkers started working with the department on the placement of Indigenous children. However, Aboriginal submissions for separate legal consideration of Indigenous children in the Community Welfare Bill 1981 were rejected by the department (Milne 1982 page 31). Indigenous organisations such as the Aboriginal Children’s Service and Link-Up (NSW) pressured the department to change its stance in relation to making specific provision for Indigenous children.

In 1980, the department’s Aboriginal Children’s Research Project reported that ‘17.2% of children in corrective institutions are Aboriginal’. Of these children, ‘81% … are not in their home regions [and] 34% had no contact with either parents or relatives’. In addition, ‘10.2% of children in non-government children’s homes are Aboriginal [and] 15.5% of children in foster care are Aboriginal’ (quoted by Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly upon Aborigines 1981 on page 293). The Aboriginal population of NSW at the time was about 1% of the total.

A conference of Aboriginal Community Workers in 1983 proposed changes to the adoption process to ensure that Aboriginal mothers were advised of alternatives. Departmental policy changed in 1985-86 with the development of policies for adoption and fostering that recognised that Aboriginal children who have been removed should be placed with Aboriginal families whenever possible. Following this policy change there was a 12% reduction in the number of Aboriginal wards from the previous year (NSW Government submission page 65).

The Aboriginal Child Placement Principle, under which an Aboriginal family must be the preferred option for an Aboriginal child needing out-of-home care, was incorporated into the Children (Care and Protection) Act 1987. In that year a survey of government and non-government foster parents found that only 51% of the families with Aboriginal foster children were also Aboriginal and that Aboriginal children tended to be over-represented among children in very long-term foster care (Link Up (NSW) submission 186 page 89).

There is no similar principle in the Children’s Services Act 1986 (ACT) although there is in the Adoption Act 1993 (ACT). The ACT Government informed the Inquiry that it intends to review the 1986 Act and ‘is committed to the inclusion of this principle’ (ACT Government interim submission page 5).

Until 1968 the placement of ACT children was undertaken by the NSW Board. It was then transferred to the Commonwealth Department of the Interior. Following self-government in 1989 responsibility for the placement of Indigenous children from the ACT passed to the ACT Department of Family Services.

Source
Bringing them Home
Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
April 1997

Full report available on the web.