Speaker 1: Katherine, Aboriginal Entirestradia Lander children are overrepresented at all stages
Speaker 1: of the child protection system in all states and territories.
Speaker 1: To start, can you just lay out the scale of
Speaker 1: the problem.
Speaker 2: Sorry for the pause, but it's just I need to
Speaker 2: take a breath before I say it, because the numbers
Speaker 2: are obscene.
Speaker 1: Catherine Little is the CEO of SNAKE, the national body
Speaker 1: that represents Aboriginal and Entirestrata Lander children and their families.
Speaker 1: Every year, Catherine and her team document how First Nation's
Speaker 1: children are faring and how they're treated, and yet again
Speaker 1: the picture is devastating.
Speaker 2: Aboriginal and Torres straight Islander children are nine point six
Speaker 2: times more likely to be an out of home care
Speaker 2: and on third party parental responsibility orders, which is a
Speaker 2: zero point five percent increase from twenty twenty two to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. Now that might not sound like a
Speaker 2: big jump, but it is massive effectively. What it means
Speaker 2: is in just the last six months alone, an estimated
Speaker 2: two thousand Aboriginal and tourist Right Islander children have been
Speaker 2: put into out of home care two thousand in about
Speaker 2: six months.
Speaker 1: Catherine's report shows that Aboriginal and tirest rate Islander children
Speaker 1: more likely to be reported to authorities, They're more likely
Speaker 1: to be taken away from their families, and they spend
Speaker 1: more time institutionalized. For every dollar the government spends on this,
Speaker 1: only sixteen cents goes to helping families. The rest is
Speaker 1: on taking children away.
Speaker 2: Those child removals create an enormous amount of self harm.
Speaker 2: We know that they're less likely to be able to
Speaker 2: enter the workforce. We know they're more likely to have
Speaker 2: mental health issues, aboriginal torrestrate Islander children are more likely
Speaker 2: to be abused in out of home care settings and
Speaker 2: in residential care settings and any institutional setting in Australia.
Speaker 2: That is where the highest rate of assaults against our
Speaker 2: children happen. And it's not like it's something governments aren't
Speaker 2: aware of.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM today
Speaker 1: Snake CEO Catherine Little on the damage the child protection
Speaker 1: system is doing the First Nation's children. What needs to
Speaker 1: be done to break the cycle. It's Monday, December fifteenth. Catherine.
Speaker 1: Let's start at the beginning of the chain with notifications.
Speaker 1: Tell me how they work.
Speaker 2: So notifications basically mean that someone's expressing in a concern
Speaker 2: about a child. Now, this is good and fair enough.
Speaker 2: So a notification, though, could be something like you're a
Speaker 2: school teacher and you've noticed that a child hasn't brought
Speaker 2: lunch to school. In the Northern territory where you see
Speaker 2: massive numbers of notifications, that is usually things like lice
Speaker 2: or scabies, and these are communicable health issues, they're not
Speaker 2: actually child protection issues. These things it shows that there
Speaker 2: are fundamental failings in systems and the ability to get
Speaker 2: help to children. So when you look at the numbers
Speaker 2: and then you look at what happens as a response
Speaker 2: to those numbers, as opposed to getting immediate help to
Speaker 2: families instead, what we're doing is removing children for life,
Speaker 2: many cases for life.
Speaker 1: In many cases, cash through women are being reported to
Speaker 1: authorities while they are still pregnant. When that happens, how
Speaker 1: does that change the outlook for the baby once it's born.
Speaker 2: Oh, look, it's absolutely horrific. There is an example of
Speaker 2: a hospital that every single Aboriginal mother presenting had a
Speaker 2: notification to child Protection before that child was born. The
Speaker 2: highest number of removals are children between zero and two.
Speaker 2: Horrific times to be removing children, but also the most
Speaker 2: critical times to be able to jump in and support families.
Speaker 2: When you look at say South Australia where the Aboriginal
Speaker 2: Children's Commissioner did massive review on what was happening to
Speaker 2: children there and she found homelessness was actually the biggest
Speaker 2: common denominator in those removals. So instead of notifications going
Speaker 2: to a housing accommodation option, it was a notification to
Speaker 2: child protection. What we know across the board, it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter if your Aboriginal law, any other socioeconomic group or
Speaker 2: racial group. The biggest common denominator in child removals is
Speaker 2: access to early education and care. And those children haven't
Speaker 2: had access to those services, they haven't had access to
Speaker 2: the supports that come in early and say hey do
Speaker 2: you need a little bit of help? And that comes
Speaker 2: down to the way the child protection system is built,
Speaker 2: and that is it is built to remove children from
Speaker 2: families in crisis as opposed to supporting children and families
Speaker 2: to thrive.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned the role of schools and teach but
Speaker 1: who is making these notifications. Which organizations are most responsible
Speaker 1: for throwing Aboriginal entire strata onto families into the child
Speaker 1: protection system.
Speaker 2: It'll vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In Victoria it is schools.
Speaker 2: Often in other states and territories it might be police.
Speaker 2: And again that comes down to things like mandatory reporting,
Speaker 2: so you don't necessarily know where that notification is coming from.
Speaker 2: And look, we need this system. Children need to be protected.
Speaker 2: No one is ever going to argue that there shouldn't
Speaker 2: be a need for mandatory reporting, or that there should
Speaker 2: be a need for something that is able to pick
Speaker 2: up where a child might be at true risk of
Speaker 2: danger or true risk of neglect. But one of the
Speaker 2: common things that we're starting to hear, particularly for children
Speaker 2: who are coming out of the out of home care system,
Speaker 2: and they've reported it to commissioners right across the country,
Speaker 2: they say, you know this mandatory reporting that you're all
Speaker 2: talking about, when are you going to change that dialogue
Speaker 2: to mandatory support? When will that become what you're actually
Speaker 2: investing in in that is, you've seen a family in need,
Speaker 2: how do you support them as opposed to report them.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about police and their ability to properly assess
Speaker 1: what is happening within a First nation's family. We've seen
Speaker 1: on a number of occasions in Queensland and the Northern
Speaker 1: Territory in Wa and in Victoria allegations or evidence of
Speaker 1: racial profiling or systemic racism within the force. So what
Speaker 1: happens when that culture is tasked with making assessments about
Speaker 1: a family's capacity to care for their children.
Speaker 2: It is genuinely not their remit. Being able to genuinely
Speaker 2: make those assessments takes an understanding of what the stresses
Speaker 2: of that family might be. It takes the ability to
Speaker 2: be able to understand that just because you're poor does
Speaker 2: not mean that your children are not loved. It takes
Speaker 2: the ability to understand that different people live differently. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but you know it took
Speaker 2: me ages to get my kids to stop sharing a
Speaker 2: bit because that's how they like to sleep, and in
Speaker 2: Aboriginal families it's quite normal. If you're not familiar with
Speaker 2: those types of lifestyles and ways of understanding what families
Speaker 2: are and how they function, then it can look very
Speaker 2: very different. Now again, when we look at the child
Speaker 2: protection numbers. Vakka here in Victoria had done a lot
Speaker 2: of done a lot of testing of things, and they'd
Speaker 2: heard that in the United States. Once they stopped identifying
Speaker 2: that a child was Aboriginal, the number of notifications and
Speaker 2: the number of substantiations and the number of child removals
Speaker 2: flatlined and became less than what was being experienced in
Speaker 2: the non Aboriginal communities in the US. So they did
Speaker 2: a little mini trial of that through Vakka and found
Speaker 2: exactly the same thing. The moment they deidentified children as
Speaker 2: being Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander, then the numbers balanced.
Speaker 1: Coming up. Now, changing the child protection system is the
Speaker 1: real test for Treaty Catherine. Before we deal further into
Speaker 1: what happens after a child is removed, I want to
Speaker 1: know how the process should look. So say a teacher
Speaker 1: or a healthcare worker notices that a family member may
Speaker 1: be having trouble and a child may be in danger,
Speaker 1: what should happen?
Speaker 2: There should be a process within the school that has
Speaker 2: a relationship with the Aboriginal community controlled services that sit
Speaker 2: around those families. We know that where schools have fantastic
Speaker 2: relationships with those services, where you've got the Aboriginal workers
Speaker 2: in the school and you've got a really trusting environment,
Speaker 2: you don't even need to make a notification because it's
Speaker 2: already been picked up, and they've already identified ways to
Speaker 2: get children to say, jeez up, babies had a cold
Speaker 2: for a long time, maybe they need an antibiotic. In
Speaker 2: the early childhood space we get a much better, better result,
Speaker 2: and that's because we have more Aboriginal community controlled earlier services.
Speaker 1: We know that what should happen is largely not what
Speaker 1: is happening. So tell me about the reality. What happens
Speaker 1: once a child is removed, Where do they go?
Speaker 2: Look? It really depends on where they are and what
Speaker 2: is available. So usually it goes into a short term
Speaker 2: placement while it's worked out what will happen to a child.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that we experienced as a family,
Speaker 2: one of our family members was removed and no one
Speaker 2: knew where that child was, and trying to find that
Speaker 2: child world was incredibly difficult. You finally find out that
Speaker 2: there have been no foster care as available in Alice Springs,
Speaker 2: so baby has been sent to Darwin to stay with
Speaker 2: a family in Darwin. This is a child from a
Speaker 2: first language family, so there is no one in the
Speaker 2: home that they have been sent to that can speak
Speaker 2: the language of what is a very very distressed child.
Speaker 2: We tried really really hard to find this little one.
Speaker 2: It took about three months to find where he was.
Speaker 2: And when we were trying to get him back, what
Speaker 2: we were saying was, well, why did you not reach
Speaker 2: out to family members? We are a really highly functioning family.
Speaker 2: There is no way you couldn't have found someone. And
Speaker 2: in the end it took us two years, two years
Speaker 2: to be able to get that child back. And across
Speaker 2: the child protection system, that's pretty much the norm you've.
Speaker 1: Done and report the shows where First Nations kids end
Speaker 1: up when they exit the system, when they leave out
Speaker 1: of home care, where do they invariably end up.
Speaker 2: So the numbers in this report are showing a really
Speaker 2: big acceleration in the number of children who, once they
Speaker 2: leave care, enter the juvenile justice system. The earlier they
Speaker 2: hit those juvenile justice systems, the less likely they are
Speaker 2: to come out of them. We're also seeing a number
Speaker 2: of children choose homelessness as soon as they can, so
Speaker 2: as soon as you're able to place yourself independently, we're
Speaker 2: seeing children would rather be homeless than stay within the
Speaker 2: child protection system. This tells you something really horrific. And
Speaker 2: we're also seeing a lot of children choosing just to
Speaker 2: go CouchSurfing because again, that is safer for us, and
Speaker 2: we feel more secure in CouchSurfing than we would in
Speaker 2: a placement where we don't know what's going to happen
Speaker 2: to us, we don't know how long we're there for.
Speaker 2: We're unstable, we're unclear about what's happening. And again it
Speaker 2: shows a fundamental failing in not investing in families first
Speaker 2: and keeping childrens first. It is the biggest misnomer ever
Speaker 2: the child protection system.
Speaker 1: And finally, Catherine, last week, the Premier apologized to First
Speaker 1: Nations people in Victoria.
Speaker 3: If this apology is to carry more than words and
Speaker 3: the intention of members today, then we must certify through
Speaker 3: what we do next. The treaty is not merely a gesture.
Speaker 3: It is a pathway to healing and change.
Speaker 1: So what would that actually look like in the child
Speaker 1: protection system?
Speaker 2: Look, this year's report, our tenth year of the Family
Speaker 2: Matters Report, is a really clear roadmap. And while we've
Speaker 2: been talking about some really heavy stuff, it actually is
Speaker 2: a story of hope. It says, look, we can't shy
Speaker 2: away from the things that have happened to harm us
Speaker 2: and the things that continue to harm us, which is
Speaker 2: essentially why we have things like a treaty in apology,
Speaker 2: but it also says with self determination, the ability to
Speaker 2: make decisions about yourself, we get a very very different
Speaker 2: outcome when Aboriginal families are involved in the decisions about
Speaker 2: the things that affect them. When we're able to invest
Speaker 2: in families not crisis, we get a fundamentally different result.
Speaker 2: And Family Matters has some incredible stories about how Aboriginal
Speaker 2: community controlled organizations have said we're not going to play
Speaker 2: in this narrative around a broken system, We're going to
Speaker 2: build our own. They get significantly different results, and hopefully
Speaker 2: that is what we'll see through treaty. The ability to
Speaker 2: have some say in the decisions that affect us, the
Speaker 2: ability to invest more in the solutions that work, and
Speaker 2: that's good for everyone.
Speaker 1: Catherine Little, thank you so much for your time, pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: For the most part of this year, I've been working
Speaker 1: in the world of truth and treaty, working alongside the
Speaker 1: First People's Assembly of Victoria, the Yurok Justice Commission, and
Speaker 1: the government itself. With the numbers across the range of
Speaker 1: indicators showing that First Peoples continue to go backwards when
Speaker 1: it comes to being able to live happy and fulfilling lives.
Speaker 1: How we treat and care for our children will be
Speaker 1: the first and perhaps the major test as to whether
Speaker 1: the treaty would have made a difference at all. Also
Speaker 1: in the news, Michelle Rowland has been told to pay
Speaker 1: back expenses she claimed after she built taxpayers more than
Speaker 1: twenty one thousand dollars for a family trip to Perth
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. Last week, the Australian Financial Review
Speaker 1: reporter on the trip, which included a claim for more
Speaker 1: than sixteen thousand dollars in flights for her family. Roland
Speaker 1: then referred the expenses to the Independent Parliamentary Authority, which
Speaker 1: found that some of the spending was outside the guidelines.
Speaker 1: And Two members of the US military and an American
Speaker 1: civilian have been killed by a member of Islamic State
Speaker 1: in Syria. The government also wounded three other people before
Speaker 1: being killed himself following the attack. It's the first iLINK
Speaker 1: attack on US troops since the fall of President Michelle
Speaker 1: Alasad a year ago. A spokesperson for the Pentagon It's
Speaker 1: at the attack targeted soldiers working on canter terrorism operations.
Speaker 1: US President Donald Trump has promised to retaliate I'm Daniel James.
Speaker 1: This is seven am. We'll be back tomorrow