National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds described the death of a 10-year-old as an “unspeakable tragedy” last week.
She then said the child’s death was preventable. She is right.
Ms Holland’s, and we, can comment and comment and comment on issues relating to children and their protection, but there comes a point when actions must take over from words.
The number of children in care in Western Australia has risen from just under 2,000 in 2004, to 5,170 last year.
And, as Ms Hollonds rightly observed, the child protection systems around Australia are overwhelmed.
And if that is the case, then children’s safety will be at risk.
Yet, when you look closer the WA child protection system has been reformed a number of times in recent decades.
The ABC wrote that substantial reforms have come as a result of the tragedy around Susan Taylor, who took her own life while living at the Swan Valley Noongar Camp in 1999.
Lessons should have been learned from that event, and some may have been, but here we are 25 years later and we face another horrific tragedy.
25 years on and we are told the proportion of Indigenous children in care has risen from just under 35 per cent of the total in 2004 to almost 60 per cent last year.
So quite rightly questions will be asked as to ‘what’ lessons have been learned.
Senator Lidia Thorpe’s usual volatile response to this event does nothing to even question the issue, let alone offer any way to solve it.
Ms Thorpe believes, if her comments are to believed, that this young boy was part of an “ongoing genocidal project.”
A 2021 amendment to the Children and Community Services Act said priority in placing Indigenous children must be with family members first.
The child was living with family members, under the supervision of State authorities.
But, the question then, and now, is how much training and support the family member had received – and how much family members do receive.
Liberal Party WA leader Libby Mettam made a valid point when she responded to the issue by stating that it is “inexcusable in a state as prosperous as Western Australia to see such under-resourcing for an agency that’s charged with overseeing and supporting our most vulnerable children.”
According to WA’s Child Protection Minister Sabine Winton, the State had increased the number of child protection workers by 30 per cent.
But just increasing numbers only is a starting point. Is an understanding of culture, as well as modern society which governs us all, a way forward?
Who is the State recruiting in these roles, and what cultural training is available?
We have long said that education is key – and education, combined with health and social services needs to be less reactive and more proactive, engaging much earlier with communities to ensure tragic events like this do not happen again.
Peter Rowe – Editor
