Recording: More than 'Sorry'

Descriptive transcript

Hello, everyone. I'm just going to give people a bit more time to get into the Zoom room because we have quite a lot of people signed up to hear the seminar today, which is fantastic. I'll just wait an extra half minute and then we'll get started.

Well, welcome, everyone. I'm Larissa Behrendt. I'd first of all like to acknowledge that I'm on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, which are the ancestral lands where the UTS City Campus now stands. I think it's incredibly important that we start with this ceremony to acknowledge the generosity with which the Elders of this country, those traditional custodians, share their knowledge with us and are the keepers of that knowledge. As I said, I'm on the lands of the Gadigal people. I know we're going out to a lot of different Nations across the country, so I would ask that as we take this moment to reflect on that generosity, that spirit of sharing the country, which is so important to acknowledge on this Reconciliation Week, that wherever you are, you pay your respects to the traditional owners in your own way.

As I said, I'm Larissa Behrendt. I'm the Associate Dean of Indigenous Research and the Director of Research at the Jumbunna Institute here at UTS. It's my pleasure to be joined today by two of my very distinguished colleagues, Dr Paul Gray and James Beaufils, who I will have the chance to introduce to you properly shortly.

But as is usually the way, I have a couple of pieces of housekeeping. Importantly, today's event is live captioned. To view the captions, just click on the CC closed caption button at the bottom of your screen in the Zoom control panel. We're also posting a link in the chat now, which will open captions in a separate internet window if you prefer. If you have any questions during today's event, please type them into the Q&A box, which you can also find in your Zoom control panel. You can also upvote questions that others have asked, so please do try to keep them relevant to the topics we're discussing today.

I'd also like to acknowledge that today's discussion includes topics that are upsetting and can cause distress and can be triggering. If at any time you feel yourself becoming overwhelmed or distressed, please take a break from the webinar, speak to somebody you trust or contact one of the free 24-hour support services available. We're posting details on how to access those services in the chat box now. So please listen and enjoy the wisdom of our panellists but also make sure you look after yourself.

Today is the first day of National Reconciliation Week. Reconciliation Australia's theme for 2021, "More than a word, reconciliation takes action", reflects the need to move from words into brave and impactful action. After nearly three decades of Australia's formal reconciliation process, the time must surely be now. Our discussion today is focused on what action needs to be taken to end the removal of Indigenous children from their families, communities and culture.

The Bringing Them Home report was released in 1997, 24 years to the day yesterday. It was followed more than a decade later by a National Apology to the Stolen Generations on 13 February 2008, so a long time for that national official recognition. But the apology signified a new page for Australia's future and a commitment to not repeat the injustices and approaches of the past. Yet since the Bringing Them Home report and the National Apology, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are being removed at higher rates than at any other time in Australian history. Currently, 37% of all children in out-of-home care are First Nations children, despite making up only 6% of that population. One in five First Nations children are removed from their families in their first year of life. And just think about that alongside the fact that long-term orders, potentially keeping children in out-of-home care until they reach 18, are increasing. By 2029, the number of First Nations children removed to out-of-home care is expected to double.

I want to now bring into the conversation two of my colleagues, Dr Paul Gray and James Beaufils, who are coming into this conversation with an incredible commitment to reversing that trend and a lot of experience at the coalface in dealing with this issue that is, of course, one of the key issues that we need to address before reconciliation is possible.

Since 2007, Paul has worked in a range of roles focused on the safety and wellbeing of Aboriginal children and young people. Dr Paul Gray is now the Associate Professor at UTS's Jumbunna Institute, where he leads the Indigenous Child Protection Hub. He's worked as a psychologist and in policy and project roles with the New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice, and served as the Executive Leader of Strategy, Policy and Evidence at AbSec, where Paul led the development of Aboriginal community-led child protection systems, policies and practices and advocated for systemic and practice reforms. This focus continues at Jumbunna, where he works in close partnership with Aboriginal communities and community-controlled organisations to critically examine and reimagine child protection systems and practice, elevating the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in policy and practice and building an evidence base for community-led approaches. So welcome, Paul.

It's also my great pleasure to introduce James Beaufils, a Research Fellow and PhD candidate at the Jumbunna Institute and at the Faculty of Law at UTS. A Gundungurra man from the Pejar area and Kanak from New Caledonia, James works closely with Aboriginal children's organisations. On his doctoral thesis exploring the experiences of Aboriginal people in out-of-home care, Paul also brings extensive experience and understanding about the dynamics of First Nations experience in the criminal justice system as well, which is a really important intersection which we'll explore a little bit later on. So welcome, James. It's great to have you with us too.

We're almost a quarter of a century since the Bringing Them Home report was released. So, Paul, I thought it would be great to start if you could give us a brief overview of the importance of that report and what was outlined.

PAUL GRAY: Thanks, Larissa. I'd like to acknowledge Country that I am joining from today, Dharawal Country on the outskirts of Sydney. I want to pay my respects to Elders past and present.

Bringing Them Home for me was a critical opportunity for truth telling in our nation. A huge part of the importance of Bringing Them Home was the testimony provided from hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people affected by policies of forced separation. I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge and honour members of the Stolen Generations, those forcibly removed from their families, and the families that were left behind. Their resistance, their resilience and their ongoing advocacy continues to be a source of inspiration. Stolen Generation survivors and descendants have long been incredibly staunch advocates in this space, speaking their own truth but also calling for change to contemporary systems for those that come after them.

So in addition to mapping this important history through protection and assimilation and integration, Bringing Them Home made a powerful argument for reparations, for acknowledgment of the harms, for redress and, importantly, for guarding against repetition.

As someone who is focused on contemporary child protection systems and the ongoing disproportionate impact on our families and communities, this is an area that I tend to focus on, but I want to make it clear that this is only a part of the story of Bringing Them Home.

Bringing Them Home made a number of important recommendations for structural reform. It acknowledged the impact of forced removals for First Nations kids and their families and called for a greater focus on healing and trying to address those harms. This included a recommendation for a comprehensive social justice package, which was about addressing those harms and focusing on the drivers of contact with child protection systems today.

It also called for a national approach to enable self-determination so that we could transfer the jurisdiction of child welfare but also other associated systems to First Nations communities themselves, so that decision making is being made by communities, shaping the futures for their kids.

It also called for national standards, including how the principle of best interests for First Nations children should be understood, and the importance of ongoing connection to family, to community and to culture that's needed for identity, for belonging and for lifelong wellbeing.

Now, sadly, because so many of those recommendations have not been implemented, it's a report that still, almost a quarter of a century later, has currency today.

The recent Family Is Culture report really emphasised this. It called for greater family support, a reorientation of the system towards prevention and restoration, and particularly identified two key structural areas that needed to be changed if we're to address the overrepresentation: self-determination, greater recognition of self-determination, and much stronger public accountability and oversight.

So this is part of the unfinished business of Bringing Them Home and the change that we still need to see today.

LARISSA BEHRENDT: Thank you, Paul. James, I'll bring you in now. Obviously the other critical moment was the National Apology to the Stolen Generations back in 2008. I was wondering, now that you're working in the area and you have a really good understanding of the history of this space, from your perspective what has been the lasting impact and the importance of the National Apology?

JAMES BEAUFILS: Thank you, Larissa. Firstly, just wanting to acknowledge Country as well. I'm coming from Wiradjuri country, Wagga Wagga, paying respects to Elders past, present and future and rightly, as Paul said, to those who haven't made it home to date.

In terms of the question and the apology, I think looking back and looking at a lot of the build-up to that apology, taking 10 years from the Bringing Them Home report and then moving into a National Apology, following state apologies from '97 to '99, and then the motion of reconciliation in '99, there was a lot of lag until 2008.

In 2000, we had 250,000 people walking over the Sydney Harbour Bridge looking for that National Apology. We had another eight years.

A lot of focus is around the apology by Rudd, which most will know and most will watch, but what stood out for me and still does stand out for me is Uncle Tom's response to the apology that happened on the same day, which in the position he had representing two peak Stolen Generation bodies, national bodies, and to be able to stand and speak for them and talk about what it means, that was something that stands out to me.

Yesterday, with the anniversary and listening to it again, Uncle Tom spoke about the main thing that I took from it was listening and understanding lends itself to reconciliation.

So I think we now, taking action with this anniversary, in terms of the action, I still think we have to listen and understand in collaboration with any action that is taken in terms of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

So that is something that stands out for me. I was finishing school and being one of the only Aboriginal families at the school and not really doing anything for the acknowledgment at school but listening to it.

Now looking back, a lot has changed and a lot is moving in a different direction, but there's still a fair bit. I am liking talking about this topic in relation to it today.

But the lasting impact for me is more so what Uncle Tom said in terms of listening and making sure we are listening and not going into action without knowing or listening first.

LARISSA BEHRENDT: Thanks, James. It's great to be reminded that actually listening is an action. I think you're so right. Listening to you speak, I'm reminded of when you look back on the footage of the day, and even if you understand the statistics that we talked about at the beginning of our discussion, you look at the faces of the old people and how much emotion there was there, and it always makes me a bit teary to see how important it was. So thank you for those reflections.

You both work closely with Aboriginal communities and their organisations. Paul, I'll start with you. Can you tell us a bit about what the experiences and outcomes are like for children who are removed to out-of-home care, acknowledging, of course, that each child will have a very different experience, but obviously through your work, you would have seen some commonalities that have clearly emerged?

PAUL GRAY: Yes, absolutely. And that's a really big question and, as you say, Larissa, every child's experience and pathway is different.

So while I'll be touching on some of those key themes and statistics that emerge, I don't intend for that to be interpreted as this is the experience of all kids.

But what we do also have is there have been numerous recent reviews that in different ways have tried to tell those stories, and I think trying to engage with those and reading those case studies and hearing from young people and families directly, as James said, listening to the people affected is a really important action that we can take.

So there are things like the Family Is Culture review that I mentioned earlier that has great case studies. There was the Task Force 1000 process down in Victoria that did a similar process. There's been peak bodies like AbSec talking to families and communities affected, and so I encourage people to go and have a look at those resources.

But broadly, we know that for children and young people who enter out-of-home care, there are generally insufficient supports available, and particularly insufficient supports available to families in the first place to prevent the need for removal at the outset.

Particularly for Aboriginal families, these supports are not well-aligned to their needs and the needs of our communities.

So the outcome of this is that children, particularly Aboriginal children, are sadly unlikely to be restored when they're removed, or to have supports provided towards restoration.

Family Is Culture really had a big look at this and found that in the vast majority of cases where a care plan had been filed, it did not identify restoration as a realistic possibility, and in a third of the cases involved in the qualitative review, there was no casework support provided to achieve restoration.

Family Is Culture also noted that in some cases, possible family placements were overlooked, and the international research tells us that kin placements tend to be more stable, that children placed with family are more likely to remain in contact with their siblings or be placed with their siblings, and tend to have better behavioural and mental health outcomes.

Now, it is clear from the numbers that most children tend to be placed with family, and that's good, but that doesn't mean that we should ignore the experiences of families who are marginalised and excluded from that process and denied the opportunity to step in and provide alternate care when parents are not able to do so.

So the research in out-of-home care suggests that developmental wellbeing, education and justice outcomes are poor relative to those not in out-of-home care, and the outcomes for Aboriginal children tend to be particularly poor.

I think it's important—as we said, this is not all kids—but as a society and as a community, we are the ones who have authorised this significant intervention in the lives of kids. It happens in our name.

So we need to be honest and be aware about the experiences of children and the outcomes that we are achieving for them.

The simple fact is that we are not delivering the sorts of outcomes that I think, as a community, we should expect.

Too many don't receive the supports that they need for healing, to manage the trauma and the grief of being removed, and the supports that they need to develop a strong identity, a strong sense of self and a sense of belonging and connection to their family, to their community, to their culture and country, which we know is so central to the lifelong wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

Those supports are critical not just for the kids. I'm not talking about delivering supports directly to children and young people, but it's also about making sure there are supports that are available to their parents and families, to their carers, to everyone who sits around them and is trying their hardest to give them the sorts of future that we all want them to have.

We know things like exclusions from school, for example, disproportionately affect children and young people in out-of-home care. We know that far too many kids "age out" of the system into housing instability or homelessness. We know that far too many have disproportionate contact with the criminal justice system.

So it's important that we are aware of those things and that we're doing something to address it.

I think the best way to improve them is to intervene early, to address the drivers of harm, which Bringing Them Home talked about, and to provide supports to children and their families so that they can remain safely at home, rather than entering care in the first place. And then if they do need to enter care, that we provide them with the supports that are needed.

LARISSA BEHRENDT: Thank you, Paul. Obviously showing the depth of your knowledge of the area with that answer. But James also has had extensive experience in looking at these issues and part of his research involved a lot of interviews with people going through the system as well. James, just following on from some of the observations Paul has made, what are your thoughts and reflections?

JAMES BEAUFILS: Thank you for that. In terms of outcomes, it was a question that was posed to me at the start of my PhD. It was actually Paul that brought it up, the idea about outcomes and what they were, and in terms of the language around outcomes, what I have seen within child protection.

As Professor Behrendt noted, there are a lot more now longer term orders that are happening.

In terms of outcomes, I have found—and what people have spoken to me—when they believe or hear outcomes, it is always long term. So what's happening with this young person? When they go into care, the outcome that we're looking for is when they're exiting care.

But as a child development academic looking at what happens along that path, along that journey from—as we have said, it could be 18 years from birth—what happens along that? And the outcomes that are set or have been set in the past are more of a short-term basis through developmental stages.

As Paul noted, Aboriginal people having poorer outcomes, but a lot of these outcomes are imposed outcomes. They are not outcomes that are generated or that are looked for by or for Aboriginal communities.

These kids may be going up against other challenges that aren't recorded and so within these statistics, there's inherent biases to show poorer outcomes.

I think understanding and developing outcomes together and knowing what from the very get-go, as Paul has noted in terms of looking at the plans, that some young people don't have them or haven't had them, but really identifying things early and having those mapped out as a road map for however long they need to be in there.

In comes understanding of what outcomes are for parents or what outcomes are for community or family that do have their young one removed.

Restoration is something that I am looking at quite closely and that is seen as what an outcome should be and I think the whole philosophy around out-of-home care and within child protection is, yes, unbelievably horrible things have happened possibly to these young people by an individual or by individuals and restoration is not returning them specifically to those people.

It's returning them to mob, to community, to allow them to engage with their culture and continue that. If they're not, and with these longer term orders now put into place in permanency, what we are seeing or what I have been seeing is that restoration is just not happening. There's no working towards it.

Wanting to hear more from young people but also wanting to hear more from parents who don't have a case worker or don't have someone assisting them on their way and now with these longer term orders, after two years, if a parent or a community member that is a carer of this young person when they were removed has an issue with drug and alcohol or something else, that is unlikely to be addressed within the two-year period, so how is this person to address that within the two-year period and then move to a long-term order?

Things are not set in the idea that restoration needs to happen. We're seeing that as an outcome that is not happening, or if it is, there are little numbers of those entering into care.

I think best interest is something Paul has mentioned before in terms of outcomes, but what is best interest? Whose best interest and is that individual along the way for different young people or families or parents or carers or guardians now? Whose best interest is at heart?

I think that ambiguity around best interest, around kin and kinship, needs further work and further understanding made and information developed around those terms.

LARISSA BEHRENDT: Thanks, James. Very thoughtful reflections there too.

Paul, I just want to dig into one particular issue that I mentioned earlier and that is that one in five First Nations children who entered care last year were under the age of one. We have spoken holistically about the issues but can you tell us a bit more about this particular issue and what the alternatives are?

PAUL GRAY: Sure, Larissa. That statistic really demonstrates what an important and considerable concern this is for us, that 20% of those kids entering care—of Aboriginal kids entering care—are under the age of one.

So that's a considerable proportion of the number of our kids entering out-of-home care. That's a rate of about 46 per thousand or about 10 times the rate of non-Indigenous kids entering out-of-home care.

So there's a growing initiative led by First Nations practitioners and researchers and supported by non-Indigenous allies to raise awareness of this issue and to call for change.

The change that we're calling for is particularly to focus on providing supports to families early and preventing the need for removal wherever possible.

No-one is suggesting—and it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway—no-one is suggesting leaving any child in an unsafe situation.

But the key issue that I think we're focused on is, given what we know about the trajectories of children in out-of-home care, how do we best respond when issues of risk are identified to support children and to give them the best start to life?

We know that as families prepare to welcome—a new baby into their family, that's a great opportunity for change.

People are already thinking about the ways that this will change and the things that they will need to change and so it is a really key opportunity to go in and support families.

In a way, that's the whole point of the pre-birth alert systems that many jurisdictions have, so that we can identify those families that need support and direct support to them during that period of pregnancy so that at the time that the baby comes, there is a plan in place, there are supports in place, there's a broader family network that's been engaged around making sure that that child is safe.

But too often that's not the way that things work in practice, so for a range of reasons—and, again, Family Is Culture address this issue in some detail—we don't tend to see those supports offered in the weeks and months during pregnancy and those plans put in place.

Instead, it works a bit more like a surveillance system that identifies which families need assistance and then intervenes by removing the child soon after birth.

So part of what we're calling for is more specialised, accessible and culturally safe supports that can engage with families during pregnancy, at the time of birth and in the weeks and months following so that families can get the support that they need.

We feel that this is a much more effective way of giving kids the best start to life and promoting their safety and long-term wellbeing.

Now, there are great examples of this happening in partnership with Aboriginal communities across the country and we want to see more effort put into evaluating those and building them—sharing that process across the country so that all families have access to the supports that they need.

LARISSA BEHRENDT: Thanks, Paul. James, an issue that I wanted to dig into with you, as I mentioned earlier on, you've got experience working in out-of-home care sector but also the criminal justice system, so I was wondering what your observations were, what you could share with us about what you have seen in your work and research about the intersection between First Nations children in out-of-home care and the criminal justice system.

JAMES BEAUFILS: Thank you for that. In terms of what initially got me into child protection and looking further into the area, coming from corrective services and juvenile justice, was the idea which I was going to further look up but Kat McFarlane posted some work in 2018 about what has been termed now the crossover kids, the young people that have been moving from child protection into adult or juvenile justice and subsequent incarceration.

So that is not an idea. That's happening in terms of young people in child protection. They're entering these systems at much higher rates.

There's literature around over-surveillance of families once they do come in contact with the justice system, having those young people and having those families surveillanced more so by government departments and then leading into subsequent arrest and incarceration.

So there is that connection there once there is that engagement with the justice department, it's quite hard to stop further removals or incarcerations because they're seen as—or what can be seen as—a norm. Families are getting incarcerated or have been at higher rates, and why aren't they?

So that is something that is definitely a concern and an area, whether that be police being used as behavioural management tools during out-of-home care. That's something that I'm looking at at the moment.

What is the idea when a kid is in care to engage the police force, to engage police coming out? If you at your house had an unruly child who was your child, would you call the police as a deterrent? Probably unlikely.

Are these police being called at higher numbers for out-of-home care situations as a deterrent? What's happening in that area? So there is that connection and there is that engagement, unfortunately, leading to higher numbers in the criminal justice system.

LARISSA BEHRENDT: Thanks, James. Paul, I want to just quote something you wrote recently. "Child protection systems and practice remain grounded in non-Indigenous perspectives about children and families, continuing to impose their view of what is best for First Nations children. The same assumptions that have underpinned government intervention in First Nations families since the earliest days of the colony, but while the colonial foundations of these systems remain intact, they have become carefully obscured by the language of reform."

It's a wonderful quote that speaks to the systemic challenges ahead and links what we see now with the practices of the past and makes the point that all of this is an ongoing project of colonisation.

The Family Matters group, which you co-chair, has devised a road map with four building blocks to overhaul this system. Can you talk us through what those are?

PAUL GRAY: Sure. I think that quote that you mentioned captures James' earlier point too about how we understand the best interests of our children and that idea of responding to secure the futures of First Nations children has been a common refrain through the eras of protection and assimilation and the outcomes of that have been devastating for our communities.

So a big part of what Bringing Them Home was about was returning that decision making to communities, and the Family Matters campaign, which is a national campaign led by the national peaks, and a leadership group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advocates, has kind of picked up on that unfinished business of Bringing Them Home.

Every year we release a national report outlining key issues of concern and the progress of various jurisdictions in addressing those systems and practice issues towards eliminating the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in child protection systems.

Very concerning that last year analysis from the report suggested that if we don't change the way that we are responding to this issue, the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care is likely to double by the end of the decade.

As you said, Larissa, the building blocks outline our road map for change and in a way they reflect those themes that Bringing Them Home identified more than two decades ago about reorienting the system towards prevention and putting decisions back in the hands of our communities.

So the first building block is we want to ensure that all families enjoy access to quality, culturally safe universal and targeted services. The services that all families need to help them in their child rearing duties and to support their children to thrive.

This is about reorienting the system from crisis to prevention and acting early to give kids the best start.

Related to that, the second building block, it is important that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities and their organisations participate in and have control over the decisions that affect their kids.

So this is not just about decisions in individual cases but also about shaping the systems and services and responses that are available to families so that those services are tailored to our needs and are most effective in addressing the issues that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families are facing.

The third building block is for law, policy and practice in child welfare to be culturally safe and responsive, making sure it has the right safeguards in it for our kids, including, for example, enshrining the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child placement principle.

And finally, the fourth building block, that governments and services are accountable to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

As I mentioned earlier, Family Is Culture identified that accountability remains a key issue and it's part of why, as part of the Family Matters campaign and alongside SNAICC, we're calling for the establishment of independent, empowered statutory officers to focus on the issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and to hold those systems accountable.

So we'd like to see a national commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children to keep a clear focus, as well as empowered commissioners in each jurisdiction.

So that's the building blocks. It's a very simple framework but it is really about reimagining the system rather than piecemeal or iterative change to a system that we know is not currently working for us.

LARISSA BEHRENDT: Thank you, Paul. I just want to underline the information and the reports that are generated by Family Matters and that are led by Indigenous voices and it's a real