Page 485 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 2019
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of Our Booris, Our Way, we are also supporting Gugan Gulwan Youth Aboriginal Corporation, in partnership with OzChild, to undertake a 12-month trial of functional family therapy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families at risk of ongoing involvement in the child protection system. The aim of the trial is to reduce the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people entering or remaining in out of home care through interventions that strengthen families and communities.
I would also note that some of the policies implemented under A step up for our kids that I spoke about earlier—Uniting Children and Families, as well as Melaleuca Place, a therapeutic response to children and young people, and the Red Cross birth family advocacy service—are having very good outcomes in engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people, and families as well. So there is a suite of measures. There is no one-size-fits-all. There is no silver bullet. We are working very hard to address this issue.
MRS KIKKERT: Why should Canberrans believe, after 18 years of Labor government, that you have the solutions to improve the lives of Indigenous children in the ACT?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: This government believes that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have the solutions to the challenges in their community. That is why Our Booris, Our Way is led by a wholly Aboriginal steering committee, and it will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations that lead the way in providing the answers to this very challenging—nationally challenging—issue of overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in our out of home care system, something that is entirely unacceptable, something that we are working very hard to address.
Madam Speaker, as I said earlier, the number of children and young people in out of home care is not going to go down overnight. We already have a number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out of home care in stable placements, sixty per cent of them living with extended family and kin. We are not about to disrupt those placements. Those children and young people will probably remain in out of home care until they turn 18.
We are going to do some more work on finding where we can return young people to their families, but the numbers themselves are not going to go down overnight. What we need to do is intervene early, provide early support to families to ensure that we see fewer Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families coming into contact with the child protection system in the first place—something that I note is not necessarily the responsibility of the child protection system—and then, when they do come into contact, work with families to understand how to keep their children safe at home.
Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders—out of home care
MR WALL: Madam Speaker, my question is to the Minister for Children, Youth and Families. Minister, the ACT Children and Young People Commissioner has stated
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