This report contains the name of an Indigenous person who has died, references to self-harm, and details some readers may find distressing.

Days after learning she would not have her children returned to her after two years apart, 24-year-old Malana Brown took her own life.

She was found on September 2 by her mother, Heather Eades, who is seeking answers as to why her daughter was not reunited with her two young children long ago.

Today, Ms Eades lives in the same home in which Malana passed away but hopes to move soon as it is too painful to stay there.

"I've got six children now that are still living. I had eight altogether. The little one passed away through cot death. That was the first. Now she's my second. She's 24," she told National Indigenous Times.

"On that week when she passed away, the Monday, the 31st of August, she had court with the children's court. We did it by phone because they couldn't get all the documents together. So instead of us driving to Perth... the judge ended up organising to do a phone court telephone. She got her children taken for another two years.

"This was August the 31st, and she was crying that afternoon, like someone had passed away."

Ms Eades explained Malana had agreed to move out of her parents' home and into a new home, as part of the reunification process to get her children returned, despite being reluctant to be apart from her mother.

"She didn't really want to take that home. She had that attachment to me where she didn't want to leave me. I was her support. I was her safe place, and I had that attachment with her also."

"She was happy with her family, happiest when she was with her children.

Her children were her world, and she couldn't live in this world without her children."

- Heather Eades

Ms Eades had encouraged her daughter to move into a new home to help reunite her with her children, in the days leading up to the court appearance.

"And she signed for the keys because I got her auntie to have a talk with her on the phone. She (the aunt) said, 'I just asked her and said to her, Lana, do you love your little babies? And she said yes'. Well, she said 'you best to do that as part of reunification ... accept this house'."

Ms Eades said on the evening of September 1, she was sitting on her front porch at around 7pm having a coffee when Malana came outside for a cigarette.

"She never really showed any signs that she was going to take her life, and because her room is her sanctuary, her safe place where she goes in and sits, no one bothers her," she said.

"So, the next day, which was the second of September, it was 11:30am, and I don't usually go into her room, but it's just motherly instinct. And I went in there, looked on her bed, and no one was there. And I looked over. I thought she's taken off. I looked over towards the window. She was sitting there..."

Malana had taken her own life.

"I just screamed," she said.

"I think she thought that when accepting this house that she'd be also be able to have her children back with her, and she was a beautiful little mum, she did everything she could for her babies. She always provided for them and made sure that they were alright."

Malana's son is four years old and her daughter is three. They were taken from their mother in September 2024.

"At that time, she was over with us at our other house ... and we'd had that house for about nearly five years... DCP at that time, when they dropped Malana off, she had a breakdown in Katanning. She has told me there was domestic violence and the relationship was unstable. She had a breakdown, she was put into emergency family accommodation, like a refuge, but it's for a family," Ms Eades said.

"She didn't want to be there by herself with her children because it's just down the road from the cemetery. My car wasn't working at the time, or I would have went down and collected her and her children.

"The people at the Katanning Regional Emergency Accommodation Centre, KREAC, it was called, told me that they left her at the bus stop with all her stuff. She refused to get on the bus because she believed it was the wrong one, because it was a replacement bus... I had to ring a friend of mine to go and pick her up."

Malana later came to Perth with child protection workers.

"They dropped her off to my home and in the rush, she left her phone in the car. When they tried to contact her, they would have to call me."

Ms Eades said her daughter was afraid her children would be taken from her at the time.

"DCP tried to get her into a refuge... They should have tried to come out and liaise with us in person... Then they wanted her to go stay in a motel room, which she did, because she knew that if she didn't, they were going to come and take her children. She went to a motel room for an hour. She came back in a taxi, and they more or less kept on demanding Malana do this and that on her own."

She said this period took a toll on her daughter's mental health and wellbeing.

"She was broken," Ms Eades said.

She told National Indigenous Times about an incident which drew police attention to her daughter, and ultimately played a role in the removal of Malana's two children.

One weekday afternoon, Malana couldn't find her son in the house. She panicked and became agitated, at one point throwing an object across a room in frustration. Ms Eades called the police as she went outside to look for her grandson.

"I got on the phone to Triple Zero. I was walking, shouting out his name, and then the lady calmed me down. She said, 'Heather, go and look in the house again'."

The boy was found fast asleep, at the foot of his mother's bed next to a rolled up blanket Malana had placed there to prevent her daughter from rolling off the bed when she napped.

"The police got called out, that didn't look so great... it was a couple of days after that, we saw DCP at the house with the police coming in to take the children. She had to even get her kids and buckle them in. She even had to help the DCP worker strap her kids in the car so they could take them. That's so heartbreaking, so traumatising."

Two years later, Malana was still trying to get her children back.

"It was just so heartbreaking seeing her like that," she said.

Ms Eades said her daughter was told on August 31 this year she would remain separated from her children.

"The last communication we had (with DCP) immediately after that day, because we went for a visit, because we were doing it fortnightly, and they said we won't visit this fortnight because they were looking at getting the kids to know the carer," she said.

"I believe that she really thought that when she got her own house, that she'd be getting her children back... So, her mental health deteriorated really badly."

Malana learned she would not get her children back on Monday, and on Wednesday lost her life.

"Thursday the kids got put into my niece's care. I had tried asking DCP 'can I get guardianship of Malana and her two children?'

"I'm her mother. I was there always every fortnight in the last four months. I was driving her to Albany. Even though I got this disc bulge, I did all the long trips, so I made sure that my daughter was keeping that bond and keeping contact with her babies. But it was so heartbreaking after the visits.

"It was even affecting the little one, he's was saying, one visit in Albany, 'I don't want to be sad and angry'. He was happy at first, then sad she had to leave him and then angry, wondering why we aren't taking him."

Ms Eades said her grandson suffered an injury at an Albany group home and the family wasn't told.

"He got pushed off the trampoline and broke his arm."

She said staff wouldn't explain how it happened. When she told Malana, her daughter's reaction was "to go numb".

"It was breaking me and my heart. So, I could just imagine how it was for her, how it was affecting her 100 times, one million times worse."

Ms Eades also said her granddaughter needed to wear a 'moonboot' after sustaining a foot injury earlier, at a different group home - in Northam.

She said her grandchildren had "nine to ten different placements in the time they were apart from their mum".

National Indigenous Times has confirmed independently that Malana's son sustained a fracture in late 2025 at a group home, and her daughter wore a moonboot as a precaution after injuring her foot at a group home in early 2025.

Ms Eades said she needs her grandkids back.

"I was not part of the Stolen Generation, nor was my mother, nor was my grandfather on my mum's side. And now they have taken my grandchildren and made them Stolen Generation, and both of them got hurt while in care," she said.

"Malana had a lot of strength. I said to her once: 'Malana, I'm so proud of you, how strong you are.' She was happy with her family, happiest when she was with her children. Her children were her world, and she couldn't live in this world without her children.

"And DCP let her down big time. I was told ... now that the reunification process should have happened ages ago, right even down to where we should have been having the children for weekends, where we could stay with the children at a motel room or wherever, and nothing like that was happening."

A spokesperson for the Western Australian Department of Communities told National Indigenous Times the Department "extends its deepest condolences to Ms Eades and her family following their tragic loss".

"In keeping with legislative requirements, Communities is unable to comment on individual child protection matters," they said.

"Reunification for children in care is dependent on the child's safety and wellbeing being appropriately established, in keeping with the child's best interests."

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