Media Release Some Key Points

Media Release – Some Key Points

• The theme for National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Day is – Kids in Culture: Strong, Proud, Resilient.

• National Aboriginal and Islander Children’s Day has been held on 4 August each year since 1988. It marks a day to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children all across Australia.

• We all have a role to play in creating and demanding the environment of respect and recognition that all children deserve to grow up in.

• Today Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are ten times more likely to be in out-of-home care than non-Aboriginal children

• Since the 1997 inquiry into the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families (the Stolen Generations), child removal has increased by 400 per cent. from 2,785 children in June 1997 to 13,914 in June 2013.

• Today, over one-third of children in out-of-home care in Australia are Indigenous, even though they represent 4.6 % of the child population.

• While the reasons for this staggering and highly disproportionate number of our children being removed are different to the motives that led to the Stolen Generations, the devastating impact on our children, their families and communities is all too familiar.

• We are calling a different approach to stem the tide on child removal — one that intervenes in the cycles of inter-generational trauma that impact our communities to heal and strengthen families.

• A new approach that looks to support vulnerable children and families from the earliest signs of trouble, that treats the safety of the child as paramount but tries to avoid the heavy human and financial cost of removing a child from his/her family — and that supports parents so that families can be safely reunified.

• SNAICC has consistently advocated the need for a raft of critical measures to address this situation, including culturally-appropriate carer and recruitment processes, participation for our communities in decision-making, building capacity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander out-of-home care agencies, and cultural care planning and resources for our children in care.

• In particular, the failure to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in decision-making, the people who know best about care options and risks for kids in our communities, is contributing to poor outcomes.

• SNAICC launched a national campaign in partnership with five other major agencies in the child welfare sector to halve the number of Indigenous children in out-home-care by 2018. The campaign is known as Family Matters — Kids in culture, not in care.

• As part of the Family Matters campaign, SNAICC and partner agencies are holding statewide forums across Australia to consult Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members, service providers and practitioners in the child welfare sector to identify contributing factors and local solutions to this critical issue.