While community-controlled organisations are delivering solutions that help close the gap, experts argue governments are failing to follow through with the commitments and funding required to ensure this critical work continues.
SNAICC's tenth annual Family Matters Report, released Wednesday, found early intervention and community-led supports — including Aboriginal community-controlled organisations (ACCOs) — remain chronically underfunded, while investment continues to flow toward crisis responses such as child removals.
The report found Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 9.6 times more likely to be removed from their parents than non-Indigenous children and make up 45 per cent of those in out-of-home care. Only seven per cent were reunified with family, compared with 10 per cent of non-Indigenous children.
"Without action on the underlying causes of intervention, like poverty, housing insecurity, racism and exclusion from services, and improved supports for families experiencing crisis, little will change," it said.
NSW's Child, Family and Community Peak Aboriginal Corporation — AbSec — welcomed the report. CEO John Leha said Indigenous children remain over-represented in OOHC because "governments are not confronting the bias against our people within their systems and because they continue to fund crisis, not prevention".
"Until we shift investment into Aboriginal-led, community-controlled solutions, nothing will change for our kids," Mr Leha said.
In NSW, AbSec says the number of Aboriginal children in OOHC continues to grow, with families often pushed into crisis before meaningful support is provided.
"Every year we delay, more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are removed from families, Country and culture. That is unacceptable. NSW must act now. We need a system that works with our Mob, not against them," Mr Leha said.
In Victoria, Aboriginal children are placed into child protection at higher rates than anywhere else in the country in a system now Commissioner for Indigenous Children Sue-Anne Hunter says is "failing First Peoples". The Family Matters Report notes First Nations children and young people are 22 times more likely to be placed in care than non-Indigenous children.
In June last year, Coroner Simon McGregor found systemic racism within Victoria's child protection system after the death of a 17-year-old Wemba Wemba child, known as XY, who died by suicide after multiple requests to connect with her Indigenous culture were ignored.
Victorian Aboriginal Child and Community Agency (VACCA) chief executive Muriel Bamblett said the report confirms what experts already know: Indigenous children and young people are "still removed from their families at disproportionate and alarming rates".
She said governments pay "lip service" to the figures while progress remains slow. Although Aboriginal children account for 32 per cent of all children in care in Victoria, ACCOs receive only ten per cent of care-services funding.
Evidence shows that when "Aboriginal-led alternatives to mainstream systems are supported and funded, the outcomes are better for our children," Ms Bamblett said. She pointed to VACCA's work as evidence that "culturally safe, trauma-informed services delivered by ACCOs work".
"What we are seeing are failures right throughout the system, before our children are even born," she said. "ACCOs are showing, time and time again, that Aboriginal decision making in Aboriginal hands works to protect, strengthen and reunite families."
The Yoorrook Justice Commission previously heard accounts of child removal linked to domestic violence, poverty and racism.
Evidence included unborn notifications that allegedly result in one-in-five First Nations children being removed before three months of age, while witnesses also described First Nations victims of domestic violence being misidentified as perpetrators, and poverty being interpreted by child protection workers as neglect.
SNAICC chief executive Catherine Liddle said this week ACCOs are essential to reducing the over-representation of Indigenous children in OOHC.
"The whole system needs to be turned upside down," she said. "While all investment is put into the crisis end we'll never be able to change the story at the scale and speed we need to and every time we fail to do that, we have lost an opportunity."
Last week, the Victorian Government responded to a major recommendation of the Yoorrook Justice Report by introducing legislation to improve coordination between government agencies, including schools, health services and housing.
The reforms will remove fixed time limits on Family Reunification Orders, giving the Children's Court more flexibility to allow families extra time to make necessary changes before reunification, where safe and in the child's best interests.
Ms Bamblett said governments must demonstrate they are listening. This requires working with ACCOs and communities on a coordinated, sector-wide response, alongside increased investment in evidence-based programs and services.
"Funding must be guaranteed - we need continuity and certainty because we know we can deliver the outcomes our community needs."
Mr Leha agreed, saying: "The evidence is right in front of us."
"When Aboriginal organisations lead the work, families stay connected, cultural identity is protected and children are safer," he said. "NSW must start backing the very organisations that keep our kids strong."
With AAP
