Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens also support Senator Bartlett’s motion. Unfortunately, not all Australian children are raised in safe living environments. As citizens in a supposedly First World country with many privileges and advantages, we find that the current rate of childhood abuse and neglect is unacceptable. Healthy, positive and supportive environments in early childhood, from birth, are essential for the move into successful adolescence and adulthood.

As Senator Evans pointed out, the child protection report released in January this year notes that the number of child protection notifications in Australia has more than doubled, from around 107,000 in 1999-2000 to over a quarter of a million in 2004-05. As has been pointed out, some of these notifications would have been the result of changes in child protection policies and practices in jurisdictions across Australia and reflect increased public awareness of child abuse. However, that cannot be used as an excuse to say that the situation is okay.

The figures for those children placed in protection or removed from home and put in out of home care indicate a very worrying trend. The number of children in care and under protection orders is increasing. Nationally, the number of children in out-of-home care rose each year from 1996 to 2005, increasing by 70 per cent, from nearly 14,000 in 1996 to nearly 24,000 in 2005. Of these children, four per cent were in residential care, 54 per cent in foster care and 40 per cent in kinship care. The rates of children in out-of-home care in Australia increased from three per cent per thousand in 1997 to 4.9 per cent per thousand in 2005. This is clearly an unacceptable situation. As has also been highlighted by previous speakers, the number of Indigenous children in out-of-home care was six times that of non-Indigenous children.

In Western Australia the Gordon report of 2002 is well known. I think it is useful to look at the barriers to change that were highlighted then. I do not think many of them have changed. They include: ongoing paternalism in government policy; Aboriginal communities must be involved as architects of the solutions; the lack of services to adequately address violence; inappropriate models; inadequate funding; the lack of coordination between Commonwealth and state bodies; mistrust and uncertainty; historical loss of confidence in the justice systems; the need for restorative and reparative processes to counteract historical wrongs; fear of the police; concern that nothing will be done anyway; concern offenders will be imprisoned and die in jail; lack of knowledge about the law and access to legal systems; and an inability to protect women and children. There is a need to focus on actual service development on the ground rather than reassessing the problem. It is also important to look at the child protection workers and the trauma that they are facing in situations of severe overwork. They are suffering from burnout, are unable to cope with the levels of stress, and face a lack of support and training. Things have not changed very much since that report, and most of those issues would also relate to non-Indigenous communities.

The solutions have also been fairly strongly articulated a number of times. They include: promoting a safe family environment, taking the stresses off family related situations; looking at prevention and a whole-of-community response involving community members in child protection and antiviolence policies; involving community members in program design, implementation and assessment; looking at risk and resilience; looking at early childhood programs; and looking at alternative models that better involve communities in decision making and that are culturally relevant support services—services that respect cultural and familial obligations and ties and actually address the fundamental causes. (Time expired)