Kids in Care ‘Losing Culture’

HALF the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander foster children in Queensland do not live with indigenous carers, risking disconnection from their culture and identity.

Indigenous children are increasingly overrepresented in state care, the Queensland Child Protection Inquiry has heard. One in every two indigenous children is expected to be reported to the state’s child safety department this year and half the children in out-of-home care will be Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander by 2015, up from 37 per cent now. Almost 4 per cent of the state’s indigenous children are in out-of-home care.

“Eight years after the Crime and Misconduct Commission highlighted a ‘gross over-representation’ of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the child protection system, the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children entering out-of-home care has almost tripled,” a policy paper said.

Care leaver Sharmayne said she identified as Aboriginal and was recognised as such in her local community. But her former case worker researched her background and determined she was of Maori ancestry.

“The department had told me (a certain case worker) who used to transport my brother (to see mum), did a family tree and that we originated from New Zealand,” she said in a submission. “This made me so confused. I had no idea who I was and I didn’t feel like I belonged. I felt like no one. I felt unknown.

“The last two carers I have lived with . . . are from New Zealand. They speak the Maori language and have grown up with the Maori culture.”

Under the child placement principle indigenous children ideally should be homed firstly with their extended family, next within the local community, third with an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family.

NSW authorities place more than 80 per cent ofindigenous children in adherence to this principle, compared to 53 per cent in Queensland.

“The residue from our Stolen Generation lives on in the hearts of our elderly and is visible in our young,” Townsville Aboriginal and Islanders Health Services chief executive Kathy Anderson said in a submission.

“The evidence is profound in that we have the highest rate of children in protective care. Our journey and our story must not allow such atrocities to be deleted from the annals of Australian history or be repeated with the same ‘good intentions’.”