‘Open adoptions’ enable indigenous children to retain connections
ADOPTION is still a dirty word due to the legacy of the Stolen Generation. But modern “open adoptions’’ ensure children retain connections to their culture and kin, writes Natasha Bita.
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A CHILD is murdered by a family member every fortnight in Australia.
National Children’s Commissioner Megan Mitchell reckons Australians need to wake up to rampant child abuse.
“We hear about one woman killed every week by a partner or former partner, but one child is killed every two weeks by a family member,” she says.
“This nation needs to wake up to itself in terms of our obligations to keep children safe.”
Across Australia a record 57,221 children are living in out-of-home care, with relatives or strangers paid to look after them in foster homes.
Child safety authorities fielded nearly 120,000 reports of abuse or neglect and substantiated 50,000 cases last financial year.
Nearly three-quarters of the children are what child protection officials refer to as “repeat clients”, and a third are indigenous.
Nine Queensland children died from assault or neglect in 2015-16, with six killed by a family member.
Domestic violence is fuelling the number of children removed from their families for “emotional abuse” – code for exposure to violence, drugs or pornography.
In Queensland 464 babies – many born to drug addicts – were taken from their mums at birth last year. Some mothers have had newborns removed more than once.
Indigenous children are 10 times more likely than other kids to be put in foster care, and seven times more likely to be victims of substantiated abuse or neglect.
In Queensland an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander woman is 35 times more likely than a white woman to end up in hospital from a domestic assault.
Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnston says some remote indigenous communities are like “war zones”, and she wants safety precincts set up to shield women and children from sex offenders, drunks and domestic violence.
“Give the children somewhere to live safely so they don’t have to go to bed at night scared someone will bash the door down and beat them to a pulp or rape them,” she says.
“We can’t expect indigenous parents to protect their children in a war zone – we have to provide safe communities.
“You can’t just take the children away – kick the bad guys out instead.”
Her view is echoed by indigenous woman Donna Kawane, former head of the Central Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Agency, who shudders every time she hears a paedophile is out of jail and heading home to a remote community.
She wants government services bolstered in remote communities and paedophiles banned from returning.
The federal Assistant Minister for Children and Families, David Gillespie, caused a furore when he told The Courier-Mail last week that he wants to relax rules requiring abused Aboriginal kids to be placed with relatives or other indigenous families.
This would inevitably result in more white families fostering or adopting black children.
Gillespie said the need to keep Aboriginal children in indigenous communities “doesn’t trump other issues”, and that “in small communities, if a family is dysfunctional, that’s not satisfactory”.
Despite sensitivities over the Stolen Generations, he was more worried about creating an abandoned and damaged generation.
State Minister for Child Safety Di Farmer, however, says any suggestion that simply removing Aboriginal children from Aboriginal families would solve child safety issues is “outrageous”.
“When there is harm, we need to intervene, but ripping children out of their communities and severing all ties with culture and family causes long-term harm,” she says.
Statistics from Farmer’s own department reveal only 57 per cent of indigenous children in foster care were placed with kin or other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander carers last year – so the fact is, white families are already looking after nearly half.
Indigenous kids accounted for one in every three Queensland children who were repeat victims of abuse or neglect in 2016. And of the 165 Queensland children harmed in foster care during 2016-17, 45 per cent were indigenous.
Adoption is still a dirty word in Australia due to the dreadful legacy of the Stolen Generations, when children were torn from their families just because they were black.
But modern “open adoptions” ensure children retain connections to their culture and kin, while giving them the stability of a functional family.
Only 143 Australian children were adopted last year.
Even the Children’s Commissioner is open to adoption if a “safe family member” can’t care for a child in need.
Governments have a “duty to act” when kids are abused, but foster care, Mitchell warns, is “not, on the whole, a great outcome for kids.
Some children go on to be abused in care themselves, or are placed with multiple foster families.
Children need stability, love, safe parenting, and a good chance at life.”
Recently, Aboriginal protesters accused Channel 7’s Sunrise program of racism for daring to discuss comments Gillespie made to The Courier- Mail.
But surely it is racist to leave vulnerable kids in danger because they’re black. It’s time we stopped turning a blind eye.
Need help? Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800 or kidshelpline.com.au; DV Connect 1800 811 811 or dvconnect.org
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