Adam Reilly appointed deputy chief executive of SA’s Child Protection Department

Adam Reilly spent time in state care as a baby before he was adopted. Now he’s been appointed second-in-charge of the child protection department that changed the course of his life.

Adam Reilly was separated from his teenage Aboriginal mother at birth and adopted when he was just a couple of weeks old.

As an adult he was “drawn” to the desert and ended up working in Aboriginal communities.

But it wasn’t until he was in his late 30s that he learned he was a descendant of the Murrawarri mob of northern New South Wales.

Now Mr Reilly has become the first Aboriginal person appointed deputy chief executive of South Australia’s Child Protection Department.

It is a full circle moment for the man who was likely “carried around the office as a baby” in one of the same department’s buildings in the short weeks he spent in state care before being adopted by Beverley and John Reilly in the mid-1970s.

Adam Reilly, aged four months, with his adopted mother Beverley at home in Adelaide in 1975. Picture: Supplied

“Part of the welfare version (of his childhood) was that my parents were both from England. (But) going back into remote communities as an adult people would say to me ‘Who’s your mob? Where’s your country?’,” Mr Reilly said.

Eventually he reconnected with his birth mother, who he calls Ma, who had come to SA as a pregnant teenager after the death of Mr Reilly’s birth father in NSW.

“Once I started talking to Ma all the pennies dropped … but it was a catch up because there was that lost connection to culture for so long”, he said.

Aboriginal children are vastly over-represented in SA’s child protection system, accounting for more than a third of the 4700-plus young people in care but less than five per cent of the population.

And they are more likely to end up in state-run homes with paid carers than with relatives or foster carers.

Asked what he believes drives this Mr Reilly was clear: “I’ll call it out, there is systemic racism that exists and it’s not unique to any one jurisdiction. There’s subconscious bias which creeps in, and that’s something we have to not only own but be proactive in addressing. And there’s also white privilege.”

This often “plays a part” when assessing risks to children,” he said.

An Aboriginal home may be deemed unsafe for a child but “when you actually drill down it’s more of a values based assessment”, Mr Reilly said.

“The environment is loving, the child is nurtured … but the physical appearance of the property might be the trigger. They are things you can work on … it doesn’t need to automatically be a removal (of a child).”

Adam Reilly is the first Aboriginal person to be appointed deputy chief executive of SA’s Department for Child Protection. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Mr Reilly worked in youth justice and child protection in SA before working in the ACT, WA and the NT. He was most recently executive director of the Victorian Department of Families, Fairness and Housing.

He said he understood there was still fear among Aboriginal parents about the involvement of child protection workers, as they lived with the ongoing impacts of colonisation and the Stolen Generation.

“In Victoria there were still Aboriginal mums who, when they go into labour they get in the car and they drive somewhere else because they think welfare is going to take the baby in the birthing suite. There would be some of that same anxiety here (in SA) as well,” he said.

Mr Reilly said he wanted to direct more funding to Aboriginal-run organisations to work with First Nations families, grow the number of Aboriginal workers in the department (currently about five per cent of the workforce) and “try new things” like running cultural camps for young people in care.

“We keep doing similar things over and over and the numbers speak for themselves … outcomes are getting worse,” he said.