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Davis, Alfred --- "Who's Minding the Kids? Child Protection in Queensland" [2006] IndigLawB 64; (2006) 6(23) Indigenous Law Bulletin 25

Who’s Minding the Kids? Child Protection in Queensland

by Alfred Davis

An Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child is six times more likely to be in the child protection system than a non-Aboriginal child but four times less likely to have access to a Commonwealth, State or Territory funded childcare or preschool service.’^[1]

It is pertinent to remind ourselves of this fact, particularly in the current political environment where politicians freely place the blame for child abuse onto our communities and suggest that we ‘passively’ accept child abuse. They do this instead of analysing the systems which are supposed to assist those within and those trying to access the child protection system.

In the three years before I started lecturing in the Human Services Faculty of Griffith University, I was working for the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council (‘QAIHC’). QAIHC is the peak body for approximately 20 Aboriginal and Islander Medical Services throughout Queensland. Since 2004 QAIHC has developed a strategic partnership with the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Agency (‘AICCA’) sector (approximately 10 services) to formulate a peak body for the sector and to also work with the Queensland Government on the implementation of funding and reform as recommended by the Crime and Misconduct Commission (‘CMC’). AICCAs play a key role in the statutory system and in family support, prevention and intervention programs.

The Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission Inquiry

In 2003, the CMC held what many close observers of the system believed was an overdue inquiry into the abuse of children in foster care, and of the child protection system itself. The report of the Inquiry – Protecting Children: An Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Foster Care (‘the Inquiry’) – was delivered in January 2004.^[2] The Inquiry was initiated after a series of media stories about children being abused in the state-run foster care system. The abused children at the centre of the media storm were Indigenous.^[3]

One Inquiry case study provided a damning indicator of the statutory child abuse system of the time. Three girls (one of whom was then aged five) had complained at school of having ‘sore rude parts’ and a doctor informed the Department of Families subsequent to medical investigations that the children had contracted gonorrhoea.^[4] This would usually clearly indicate abuse within the home and, given their ages and previous abuse notifications regarding the foster carers, would warrant immediate removal.

The response of the foster carers to the diagnosis of gonorrhoea was that the girls must have contracted the disease from a face washer used by a visitor to the house.^[5] The government officer believed that this story was credible and, on the grounds that there was no evidence for removal, left the children within the home.^[6] Despite very clear legislation, lack of skill and sometimes just plain incompetence endangers lives. It must also be added that despite this officer showing such incompetence, the Queensland Government still paid for a medical investigation to test the likelihood of contracting gonorrhoea from face washers!

These children were eventually removed and the Inquiry rightly made many pertinent recommendations, often focusing on the systemic issues that needed to be addressed. A danger when working with systems such as child safety however, is that they are highly reactive and, when mistakes arise, another more elaborate and costly mistake is often made to cover it. The Inquiry was a watershed for the Indigenous child protection sector and the AICCAs. The Inquiry noted that AICCAs had a firm base in legislation but their ability to fully function was always affected by issues such as:

^[*] Staff employed on constant short term contracts

^[*] Extremely limited resources in comparison to other programs in the department

^[*] A lack of meaningful leadership or direction from within the department

^[*] Unstable work environment for workers

^[*] FSOs [Family Services Officers] giving insufficient attention to recommendations of the Indigenous Alternative Care Workers in the department, regarding placements of Indigenous children in care.^[7]

Any person who comes in contact with the policy arm or political machinery of the Queensland Department of Child Safety will see, hear or read the Department’s ‘overrepresentation’ mantra, and that new responsive and child focused services are being developed in consultation with community. However I have observed that the overall Government response to Indigenous children and child safety is extremely disjointed and unplanned; sometimes done with good intentions but at other times with nothing but contempt and a patronising fervour not far removed from the old Department of Native Affairs era.

Despite the Inquiry and its pertinent recommendations, there was never any coordinated planning for recognised entities or Indigenous children. While there was a blueprint,^[8] there was never any plan developed by Government to ensure that services were developed to respond to the legislation and to provide holistic services. While the blueprint outlined strategic changes and a substantial and welcome increase in funding, the stark reality for services is that the funding allocated for the Indigenous sector was released in an extremely haphazard fashion marked by substantial Government underspend, an inability to roll-over unallocated monies and a funding process which didn’t recognise the need for an holistic approach to child protection.

Given that Indigenous children represent one out of every four children in the system, funding and resourcing should be proportionate. The Indigenous recognised entity sector does not receive a quarter of the Department of Child Safety budget and funding is not sufficient to allow services to even remotely fulfil their legislative duties.

The best interests of the child are always paramount, and the intent of the Indigenous child placement principle^[9] is to ensure that Indigenous children can maintain contact with family and culture and that independent agencies with child protection expertise assist with and ‘add value’ to the decision making process. Recognised entities (as AICCAs are referred to since recent legislative changes),^[10] due to their non-government status, are ideally placed to find out information that government officers cannot. That is, information such as appropriate family to take a placement or provide support, or the circumstances contributing to neglect or abuse through family disruption such as domestic violence or grief and loss. After this information is gathered, this is provided to the statutory authority who is then theoretically placed to make a decision with all the pertinent and crucial information.

Section 83(4) of the Child Protection Act 1999 (Qld) (‘the Act’) explicitly states that Indigenous children should ideally be placed within their own families (when this is safe to do). However, Indigenous children and families are subject to inequitable services due to government funding incompetence and, some might say, systemic racism.

To put this in context, this is how it often pans out in the field: imagine you are a recognised entity worker and you find out that child X must be removed. You are involved in gathering information for the development of a caseplan. Child X is from a large family, some of whom are very stable and also more than willing to care for the child. You find a suitable relative but find a wall of systemic issues which mean that the ‘only’ placement option is with a non-Indigenous foster carer. Systemic issues generally include:

• The government’s inability to consider your assessment for relative care;

• The turnover of frontline staff and management means there is no continuity to the case;

• No one is available to complete history checks or assessments;

• The relevant service centre is unable to transfer the case to where the suitable family member resides.

Once the child is placed with the non-Indigenous foster carer, the supporting foster care service is non-Indigenous – no Indigenous staff and little cultural competence. They believe they show cultural competence by displaying boomerangs and having a concrete Aboriginal in the foyer (yes, this placement service exists!). Yet your recognised entity is not funded to provide a placement because, by legislative definition, your role is only to ‘give information’ for the assessment. Furthermore, the placement funding ‘package’ associated with the Indigenous child goes to the ‘mainstream’ service. Confused? This was my little world every day; where no planning or adequate interpretation of the law leads to an archaic care system. This type of scenario is unfortunately the biting reality for our children and services in Queensland. Furthermore, the role of the recognised entity as defined by legislation is finished after the child is placed. There exists no scope for placement support – this is seen as ‘outside’ the role of the recognised entity.

Of the current recognised entities in Queensland providing a placement service; services are based purely on a ‘mainstream’ model which means that they are based in foster care; not relative or family care. This means that instead of looking to develop and support services based on keeping children within their families, the system is designed for Indigenous children to go into foster care. Yet to look at the placement hierarchy in section 83 of the Act, assessments should determine whether children can be placed with family and ensure that services are funded to provide support. In fact, non-government service providers in Queensland are funded only to recruit and support foster carers; people not known to the family. An appropriate relative care placement is always good for children, more so for Indigenous children given previous historical policies of enforced removals.

For the child protection system to ignore relative care results in placements and to fund an inequitable placement system is to, ultimately, damage children and families. But there are also racial undertones; ignoring relative care ignores our connection to family and culture. Our people will always look after our own family; hopefully in times of stress, we will always look out for our brothers’ or our sisters’ children. Foster care is valued and needed, however it is but one placement option and for many children and families it is still sometimes seen as ‘stranger care’. Our community still fears the welfare system; fear enhanced by a perception that departmental involvement will not lead to better support services but only increased scrutiny. The prevalence of children being abused in state-sponsored foster care only adds to this perception.

I firmly believe that if the Department of Child Safety properly consulted with recognised entities and properly applied its own legislation, relative care would be seen as a ‘win-win’ option. The number of Indigenous foster carers in Queensland is extremely small yet instead of exploring relative care for Indigenous people as per the section 83 placement hierarchy, the political and ensuing policy push remains on foster care.

The current funding and policy model in Queensland ignores legislation, research and international trends to better support relative care. The beauty of using a more enhanced level of relative care is that it is not only good practice but, to use a much used term, it is also ‘culturally appropriate’. As mentioned, many Indigenous people will often take on the care of relatives when the need arises; it is a great strength of our community and our people.

When politicians with agenda continue to marginalise our people by implying that we somehow condone child abuse and ‘protect’ offenders, the reality is that often due to systemic failure, our people are offered second-rate services by governments and, as the Inquiry highlighted, there are many examples of ‘mainstream’ professionals who have failed in their duties to protect Indigenous children within the systems designed to protect them.

Alfred Davis is a lecturer in Indigenous Practice in the Human Services Faculty of Griffith University, Queensland.

^[1] Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, ‘Development of a National Action Plan for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities to Prevent and Respond to Child Abuse and Neglect’, Briefing Paper to State and Territory Governments, (2006) 1.

^[2] Crime and Misconduct Commission Queensland, Protecting Children: An Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Foster Care (2004), <http://www.cmc.qld.gov.au/data/portal/00000005/content/55902001124751926466.pdf> at 20 November 2006.

^[3] Hedley Thomas, ‘Foster Children Left at Risk in House of Horrors’, Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 18 June 2003, 2; Michael Madigan, ‘Children in Foster Hell – Authorities Ignored 13 Years of Abuse’, Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 18 June 2003, 1; ‘Shameful Tolerance of Child Abuse’, Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 18 June 2003; Sean Parnell, Rosemary Odgers and Steven Wardill, ‘Collective Amnesia on Abuse’, Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 30 July 2003, 1; ‘Government’s Image Tainted by Mistakes’, Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 30 July 2003, 22.

^[4] Crime and Misconduct Commission Queensland, above n 2, 62.

^[5] Ibid 63.

^[6] Ibid 63.

^[7] Ibid 232.

^[8] Queensland Government, ‘A Blueprint for Implementing the Recommendations of the January 2004 Crime and Misconduct Commission Report “Protecting Children: An Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Foster Care”’ (2004).

^[9] Sections 6 and 83 of the Child Protection Act 1999 (Qld) embody what is commonly referred to as the Indigenous child placement principle.

^[10] Child Protection Act 1999 (Qld) Sch 3: ‘Recognised Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Agency, for an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child, means an entity that, under an agreement between the State and the entity, is the appropriate entity to be consulted about the child’s protection.’