Calls grow for government to bring home Indigenous kids in British foster care debacle
The mother of two Indigenous children stranded in the UK says she is devastated they were taken from Australia and urgently wants them home.
The mother of two Indigenous children stranded in the British child protection system says she is devastated her son and daughter were taken from Australia and she urgently wants them home.
In an interview with The Australian, the Wiradjuri woman said she had not seen her children, now aged 14 and 15, since 2020 when their foster mother took them to England with the approval of the NSW Department of Communities and Justice.
The trip was meant to be temporary but their return flight was cancelled because of Covid and they remain in Britain. It is understood one of the siblings has not lived with the foster parents for some time and has been placed in that country’s child protection system. The other child is also expected to be relinquished.
The teens do not have visas or passports and are not considered citizens or permanent residents of the UK, leading to concerns about their legal status as the NSW and federal governments scramble to work out how to bring them back.
“I was devastated. I didn’t want them to go,’’ said the mother, known in court documents as DN, of the decision to let her children go to England. “I want them to see and be part of their family and live in their country. Australia is their home. I don’t want them to be part of the UK child protection system, that is not right.’’
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says it is assisting NSW authorities and the Attorney-General’s Department in the matter but federal child protection spokeswoman Kerrynne Liddle said the government had known about the children’s plight since December. “The response to date is simply unacceptable. Decisions about the future of Australian children must not be made in a foreign country where they have no status,’’ she said.
The long-running case began in 2009 when NSW authorities took the two babies from DN because of concerns around their care. Attempts to place them with kin faltered and by 2017, when the siblings were at risk of being separated, the foster mother, who worked with an Aboriginal agency, offered to take them.
The foster mother and her husband are both British citizens and when their visas were about to expire, they were given approval by NSW authorities to take the children back to Britain to renew their paperwork. They did not return.
DN said she had never wanted the children to leave the country and so began a battle to be reunited with her kids, taking the case to the NSW Court of Appeal.
In 2020, before the children left for England, she applied to the NSW Children’s Court to regain parental responsibility.
The following year the carers, living in the UK with the children, applied for parental responsibility.
In 2022, the Children’s Court divided up the children’s care arrangements, making the departmental minister in NSW responsible for family contact and “religious and cultural upbringing’’ while allocating all other parental responsibilities to the foster carers.
Late last year, DN challenged these orders and won, with the NSW Court of Appeal agreeing that the Children’s Court did not have the power to make orders relating to children living overseas.
“It is unclear how … order 5, requiring the secretary to provide ‘an assessment of the child’s contact with the child’s maternal and paternal families’ might operate given that the children were living in the UK and were expected to remain there,’’ the appeal court judges said.
They pointed to other gaps in the case, observing that “although no order appears to have been made with respect to DN’s application [for parental responsibility] the effect of the orders that were made was (presumably) to dismiss her application.’’
It is unclear what the children’s wishes were, although both were represented in the Children’s Court case. The appeal court judgment noted their legal representatives “said nothing’’ at that hearing. “Whether they had said anything on any previous occasion is unclear.’’
The mother said she’d had two Zoom calls with the children early in their time in Britain and, outside court proceedings, no other contact. She said she wanted the children back in Australia where they could work on a reunification process. “I believe I had a connection and a bond with my children before they left.
“Over in the UK, they are not connected to their culture or their family. It’s terrible and really devastating.
“They don’t belong in the UK. They need to come home,’’ she said.
Children in the protection system, even in cases of adoption, often have court-ordered contact plans to ensure some form of ongoing connection with birth families. In the case of Indigenous children, it is a legislated requirement that they be placed, where possible, with family or the wider Aboriginal community. When this is not possible, foster carers are required to sign up to cultural-care plans to help the child maintain their Indigenous identity and sense of belonging to family, community and country.
SNAICC, the peak body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, joined calls for the federal government to act to bring the children home. “These Aboriginal children should be in their country, with their family and community,” it said.
More Coverage
Role in voice ‘No’ campaign led to cancellations: Mundine
Warren Mundine claims his appearances at the AACTA festival have been cancelled as a direct result of his role in the campaign against the Indigenous voice to parliament.
EDO could be stripped of its charity status
The EDO could be stripped of its charity status if the non-profit commission finds it breached public trust and failed to act responsibly in its legal challenge against Santos.