Nova Peris (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on today's tabling of the report of the out-of-home-care inquiry. I am very glad to have had the opportunity to speak with so many professionals working in the out-of-home-care space during this inquiry. To them I want to say that I have the utmost respect for you. You have an extremely challenging and difficult job, huge responsibilities and increasing workloads with limited resources. You also face the daily pressures of having to get it right and not least because young children and their families are depending on it.

Our inquiry heard that young people in out-of-home care have poor outcomes across a range of indicators whilst in the care. Then, when they leave care they are much more likely than any other children to experience homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse and physical and sexual abuse. Our children are killing themselves because they are unable to reconcile trauma in their lives and they cannot see any hope in their future. They need our help, and it is our responsibility to make sure they get help.

There is a disproportionate amount of Aboriginal children that are removed from their parents and placed in out-of-home care in the Northern Territory, and this is where I will focus because I think I have real opportunities to improve this situation.

Overwhelmingly, experts in the field told the inquiry that what is really needed is a greater focus on the early intervention programs because, clearly, with an ever increasing number of children going into out-of-home care, the statutory arrangements are not improving the situation. We need more programs that support vulnerable families. The experts say these families must be self-referred or referred by the community and that these programs need to be rolled out in more sites. There is also a shortage of experienced, skilled and trained professionals, social workers and community workers, including Aboriginal professionals in these roles, employed in the Northern Territory.

We say as a nation and the Northern Territory government says that they want to get Aboriginal people working. Here is our chance to make a solid investment in the mentoring, selection and training of Aboriginal people to work in the department and across whole of government—to be employed by NGOs working in this area of child protection. The staff case loads are huge and their burnout rate is high. Staff require better support systems so that their work includes early intervention so they can spend more time and care with families who want to keep their children with them at home. This is the best result we can have.

As a priority for the Northern Territory, it must create an Aboriginal child care agency to work with all the sectors but particularly with children and their families. There is currently no Aboriginal entity to play that essential role in identification of kinship carers, advocacy and the provision of advice on decisions to do with placements in general. I am glad that our recommendations look at establishing those functions in an Aboriginal organisation across every jurisdiction. The fact that there is not currently an Aboriginal organisation fulfilling that role shows us that the Northern Territory government still does not get it.

My greatest fear is that we are witnessing across this nation another type of stolen generation, an out-of-home care generation, and we are all complicit in this if we do not make hard and fast changes to the current system. We cannot stand idle whilst another whole generation of children are removed from their kin and their culture. We know that there are many extended families in our communities that already provide support to others within their kin. But sometimes, for various reasons, this cannot be made to work in the interests of the child and something must be done to safeguard the child so they can receive the appropriate care that they need.

The Northern Territory has a small and diverse population that consists of some large towns and a few cities and hundreds of smaller communities and homelands. We must acknowledge the context of disadvantage in many of these communities—poverty and overcrowding, poor infrastructure and poor or no access to employment, education and health services. These social determinants and others conspire to ferment domestic violence and neglect and, unfortunately, in some cases abuse that leads to the need for child protection measures like out-of-home care.

Of the types of out-of-home care available in the Northern Territory, kinship care has many positives. With kinship care we automatically have people who can translate and interpret the directions of the department both to the child and their family, whilst keeping the child better connected to their culture. We need to recognise and utilise the strengths inherent within a community itself and enable carers to tap into the significant supports that are often already there in the community.

Out of 932 placements in a year, as a broad guide roughly 70 to 85 per cent of these children are Aboriginal in any given year. In the Northern Territory there are only 194 authorised kinship households. The Northern Territory has roughly one child placed in out-of-home care for every 250 Territorians, and the numbers are steadily increasing. It is an extraordinary figure when you think about it. There has been a steadily increasing demand for child protective services, and this increase is a major problem in and of itself. But the departmental budget was also cut by $9 million last year, which is staggering and is one of the reasons why the Northern Territory opposition, under Territory Labor Leader Michael Gunner, is putting children at the centre of its plans for government.

Some of the family support programs in the Territory are federally funded. The Intensive Family Support Services program, working in four locations in the Northern Territory, is funded through the Commonwealth Department of Social Services. The IFSS is doing fantastic prevention work with families and has been described by some stakeholders as the final chance to keep kids with their families. Often the families have entrenched problems that are complex and, when you are working at this level, the results are not always positive. Any achievements are hard won and do not come quickly, so there is a limit to what can be done at this end with the resources that are applied to the program.

Permanent care orders are a relatively new development in the Northern Territory and one with a number of question marks hanging over it. A permanent care order is made by the court that grants a person parental responsibility for a child until they turn 18 years of age. The permanent care order does not totally cut the legal ties of the child with their biological parents in the same way that adoption does. But it assigns the child with a carer who has the rights and full responsibilities of a parent. So under a permanent care order the carer is now the parent, in law, and can decide whether or not the child can have any contact with the real parents. To assist with this responsibility, the permanent carer receives a one-off payment of $5,000, but no other allowances, for the care of that child. The committee has recommended that there be a nationally consistent approach to permanent placement and that it is only considered when there is no chance whatsoever of the child returning to its family.

What concerned many of the witnesses is the perception that the Northern Territory department can tend to take into account the biological parent's past record without considering the current status and work done to improve that parent's situation in life. It would be tragic for a parent to undergo rehabilitation only to find that they are not allowed to have their biological child back in their lives because he or she is under a permanent care order.

Some children receive care—I know myself—up to the age of 25, and I think that is important as we want children to transition well from out-of-home care into society. Children in foster care, however, often leave that care at 15 or 16, and this is when kids can become most vulnerable. The National Disability Insurance Scheme will improve some of the supports for, for example, the 20 per cent of 16- to 18-year-olds in out-of-home care that have a disability, but this is still a very difficult area. Whilst it seems that the Territory's carers of disabled children do not seem to relinquish those children to the same extent as happens in other jurisdictions, it is still very difficult. Those carers need additional support, and this has been raised in other forums. Places of respite are seriously needed in the Northern Territory.

This is a snapshot of some of the issues in the Northern Territory. We have some serious issues to deal with in child protection, and I really appreciate all of those who have contributed to this fine report. I commend it to the Senate.