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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I made the reference to the community affairs committee, which I also chaired. I introduced the motion to refer this matter because we have a very poor situation with out-of-home care in Australia. In fact, one of the key issues that we looked at in this inquiry was the poor life outcomes of people leaving out-of-home care. Unfortunately, we haven't made much progress in that respect. One of the other key areas that we looked at, besides looking in general across the board at out-of-home care, was the fact that there's such a high number of Aboriginal children going into out-of-home care. In fact, the latest report from SNAICC, the national voice for Aboriginal children, shows that about ten times more Aboriginal children are going into out-of-home care than non-Aboriginal children. That figure is appallingly high and compares unfavourably with the number of children that were going into out-of-home care when the children were being taken when the stolen generations were occurring. The report also points out that a number of recommendations from the Bringing them home report from 20 years ago this year have not been implemented. I will come back to that issue shortly.

I'm glad the government finally has responded to the community affairs committee report. I'm pleased with some of the response, but most, unfortunately, I'm not, because they're simply not being proactive enough in dealing with this issue of out-of-home care. The government disagrees with our recommendation to provide a separate Medicare item for children in out-of-home care to improve their access to health assessments and treatments. The government say they disagreed with that because they're concerned that it would be ad hoc. In their response, they largely dealt with the health assessment side of it rather than the treatment side and said that there are case managers and that would be better. That simply does not work, because the states don't have case managers to the degree to which this comment by the government implies. With the extraordinarily high number of children going into out-of-home care, they simply aren't getting individual attention. This was recommended by organisations and also, importantly, foster carers, who are looking after these children and who have problems accessing health services. In particular, this doesn't just talk about health assessments; it talks about treatments, including mental health treatments. I'm extremely disappointed that the government has squibbed on this and disagrees with it.

The government notes a number of our recommendations, particularly those around the Third Action Plan of the National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children 2009–2020. The government puts a lot of emphasis on the Third Action Plan, and I wish I had as much confidence as it does that it'll be implemented. The Third Action Plan runs out in 2018, so it has not got that long to go. When we were carrying out this inquiry, we found many of the approaches that were recommended in the Second Action Plan hadn't been carried out. I think the government needs to be more proactive. One of the issues they note, for example, is increasing the allowance for young people transitioning out of care. I do acknowledge they've increased it slightly since we had the inquiry, but it needs to be increased more. One of the huge issues that came up is young people receiving post-care support to 21 years of age. At the moment, young people have to move out of care at the age of 18, and a lot of the very clear evidence we got showed that this is not long enough. Most young people these days do not leave care at 18.

I clearly remember somebody coming into my office, subsequent to us tabling this report, from CREATE, which does excellent work and presented excellent information to the inquiry. This person was a young care leaver trying to find work, but she couldn't find accommodation. She was under the age of 21. She said, 'Rachel, the key thing you spend your whole time on is trying to work out where you're going to sleep. Where will I be safe? Where will I have a roof over my head?' She said, 'I can't think about trying to find work, because I'm so worried about where I'm going to sleep tonight. I spend my energy doing that.' She was under the age of 21 and she had to leave the care system. That is simply not good enough. We need to lift our game and increase the resources to family services and therapeutic models of care, and evidence based evaluations and reunification. The government talks about that in its response and notes it. We simply aren't providing enough resources, enough family supports or enough early intervention supports. When the budget is cut, guess what the first thing is to be cut: early intervention services. We put lots of effort into the court system and the child-protection system, and into supporting kids in foster care, but not into their families in the first place. This is particularly important for the number of Aboriginal kids being put in the out-of-home-care system and the lack of effort being put into reunification.

I thoroughly support SNAICC's recommendation that we need a new approach. They talk about that in their program Family Matters—a program I highly recommend and strongly support. It's a shame the government is not paying more attention to SNAICC's recommendations, in terms of Family Matters, where they talk about the need for better strategies to reduce Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander poverty and homelessness, dealing with some of the underlying causes. Very importantly, it is about making sure there are Aboriginal peak organisations that are making the decisions—that are community controlled organisations making the decisions. That is absolutely critical. You would think, 20 years down the track from the Bringing them home report, that we would know that and that we would not have to be begging for that to occur. You would think it would be common sense.

The other issue the government agrees with, which I was pleased to see but I have a note of caution about, is supporting the recommendation around the National Disability Insurance Agency making funding available for children with disability, because there are a large number of children with a disability going into out-of-home care. They are relying, unfortunately, on the Early Childhood Early Intervention approach. The NDIS joint standing committee is currently looking at that. There are some very significant issues there. They shouldn't just be relying on NDIA picking up these issues, because there are very serious issues here.

The government needs to be doing more about out-of-home care. They particularly need to be taking the lead in terms of the appalling number of Aboriginal children who are still going into out-of-home care. I urge the government to relook at this matter, to put effort into addressing this issue, or we will keep having the same issues. I seek leave to continue my remarks.