Children of the North

Updated

Aboriginal children in Victoria are 15 times more likely to be removed from their families than non-Indigenous children, but a Melbourne court is trying to turn things around by putting culture and family back in focus.

Ash Morris was just 24 when he was tasked with setting up Australia's first Aboriginal child protection court in Melbourne's outer north, where ice, gambling and family violence are rife in parts.

With short hair, a collared shirt and smart leather shoes, Ash blends in with the lawyers at the Broadmeadows Children's Court, and yet he does not have a university degree. Until now, his only legal experience was in criminal court administration.

"I never really ever wanted to work in child protection because it's such a close, touchy subject for Aboriginal families," Ash says.

Record high numbers of Aboriginal children are coming through courts and being sent to live in out-of-home care.

Victorian Aboriginal children are 15 times more likely to be removed from their families than non-Indigenous children — the second highest rate in Australia, behind Western Australia.

Aboriginal on his father's side, Ash knows something needs to change.

"I'm scared that we're really just creating another Stolen Generation," he says.

"Not all kids can go home and that's life.

"But wherever kids grow up, they need to grow up strong on who they are and where they fit in with a connection to their family."

When the Victorian Children's Court hired Ash as the Koorie Services Co-ordinator at Broadmeadows, it hoped he could bridge the gap between Indigenous Australians and the legal system.

"Ash is the most extraordinary young man I have ever met," Magistrate Kay Macpherson says. "He has wisdom beyond his years."

But the young man has a massive task ahead.

Time is running out for the children of the north.

We asked if you thought the child protection court could bridge the gap between Indigenous Australians and the legal system. Read the discussion in the comments.

Changing the system

Soon after he was appointed in early 2016, Ash hit the phone to pick as many brains as he could. Inspiration came from an unlikely source

Lisa Thorpe operates an Aboriginal-run early learning and family well-being centre in Melbourne's north for Aboriginal children.

Finger-painting and playtime might seem to be light years away from the earnest work at court. But this is no ordinary daycare-cum-kinder.

Of the 75 families using Bubup Wilam, 75 per cent are considered "high risk" and 90 per cent are affected by family violence.

"For some of these children it has been their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents," Lisa says. "They've just always been in that cycle of going through the system."

But rather than become enmeshed in a victim mentality, at Bubup Wilam they learn resilience through a strong connection to culture.

"When children are old enough to go to school they know who they are," Lisa says. "They're proud of who they are so they can stand up for themselves."

Bubup Wilam also helps parents with issues ranging from unemployment to homelessness and substance abuse.

Lisa gave Ash advice that struck a chord.

"You have to keep asking, how are we able to help families be the best they can be?" she said.

Ash's goal was to create a court where Aboriginal families get the chance to say what they want and need. Magistrate Macpherson, who is in charge at Broadmeadows, backed him.

"The difficulty with Aboriginal families is that, for historical reasons, they don't like to come to court and I can't say that I blame them," she says.

"The history has been that they come to court and they either have their children taken away from them, or they go to jail.

"But because they didn't come to court and didn't take part in the proceedings, we were often making decisions that weren't in their best interest and that were clearly wrong."

Inside the courtroom

Fast forward 18 months.

Outside the Broadmeadows courthouse, a father shouts at his partner that if she'd just go clean they'd still have their kids. She whimpers that he doesn't understand.

A teenager gets sick of waiting in a queue at reception to sort out paperwork. Suddenly there's chaos. Smashing glass and bleeding, he rushes over to Court Room 2 in which a contested child protection case is underway.

Just as he pulls open the door, security officers overwhelm him with pepper spray.

The hearing continues without interruption; the officers lead the man away. People comment on the pepper spray but not the incident. It's accepted that this is a building in which emotions run high.

You'd be forgiven for thinking nothing's changed since Ash started working on how to fix the system.

But something extraordinary has happened.

Once a week, Aboriginal parents and grandparents turn up to court — some with babies, toddlers and school kids in hand.

Most are confused and scared. But when they see Ash, the panic subsides.

He's been talking with them over the phone for weeks; he's gentle, he's glad to see them and he's one of them.

Ash ducks into one of the hearing rooms to get it ready for Marram Ngala Ganbu, the Aboriginal Child Protection Court that's being piloted.

It's a new twist on the Aboriginal criminal court model operating in different states.

The walls showcase artwork by local Aboriginal artists, including a piece that Bubup Wilam children made.

Ash pushes the bar tables together to make a rectangle, covers it with a possum skin cloak and puts a coolamon filled with gum leaves in the middle.

Every Tuesday morning, Marram Ngala Ganbu starts when people turn up. Sometimes it is 10:30am, sometimes it's later.

Right now, Ash spots Margaret McNally. He calls her Aunty as a mark of respect for her role in the community.

"Aunty Marg was removed as a child herself," Ash says.

"So she's fought every day of her life to make sure these kids know who they are and where they fit in."

Over the years, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has found many of her grandchildren to be at risk.

Each time, she has asked the authorities to let the children stay with her until the parents sort themselves out. But she struggled in the regular courtroom, where people like her are seen but not heard.

Today she's helping an extended family member, who can't be identified for legal reasons. The DHHS demanded his children be removed when he and his former partner were running amok on ice.

"When I first walked in and seen the possum rug on the table, my hands went straight on it," Aunty Marg says.

"To me, the elders are there, past and present, and you think, well these are my people, my people are here to help us."

After DHHS case workers and lawyers finish filing in, Magistrate Macpherson enters and joins them all at the table.

She starts by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land and then explains what's going on.

"The Children's Court feels that in the past we haven't dealt with Aboriginal children very well," Magistrate Macpherson says, looking at Aunty Marg and her relative.

"And I certainly don't want to be part of [creating] another Stolen Generation."

Aunty Marg throws in a curve ball.

"The possum rug is done all wrong; the stitching is all wrong."

Ash winces.

Magistrate Macpherson says she hopes Aunty Marg will help the court with this later, and turns to the relative.

He says he has been attending anger management classes and regular drug testing.

"So why can't he see his kids alone?" Aunty Marg asks.

Magistrate Macpherson notes his recent tests have come back clean and says if the father keeps that up, he can have unsupervised access to his children.

"The judge is very good because she'll ask questions and a lot of Aboriginal people are shy," Aunty Marg says.

The children's mother is now seeking custody. But she hasn't turned up to court and she has failed her drug tests so the case is postponed.

As the courtroom clears, Aunty Marg pulls Ash aside. She presses the cloak to the table to show how it buckles where the possum skins are stitched together.

"When you're doing our culture, you've got to do it perfect," she thunders.

When he explains that he made it with some of the children and parents who came to court, her face softens.

"I'll bring it over to your place sometime if you will show me how to fix it," Ash adds. She smiles.

Demons from the past

Ash is proud of his Aboriginal heritage. He comes from the Lovett family, members of which have fought in every Australian war. Despite their service, they were forced to leave their ancestral land.

Ash's father Ricky joined the Australian Defence Force in 1990.

"We were a really close-knit family," Ash's mother Tanya Morris says.

"But there were moments in time when Ricky would really struggle with stuff when he was drinking."

Ricky grew up with alcoholic parents, domestic violence and stints in various boys homes.

"You remember the scary moments of being away from family. The absolute loneliness of it all," Ricky says.

"But the strength of Mum and Dad came through in the end when they could help themselves and got help and we were all reunited."

Ricky was deployed to East Timor with the Interfet forces, and to east Afghanistan.

"On my return from active service I've gone into some dark spaces," he says.

"My boys have seen that, and it's embarrassed me as a father."

"I don't want kids to feel what I felt," Ash says. "But that's what I see every day."

"I've never seen anything good come out of alcohol."

A sanctuary away from the battlefield

As a pilot program, Marram Ngala Ganbu is still being road-tested and there are bumps along the way.

A magistrate orders that a mother battling ice addiction be allowed to see her protected child at Bubup Wilam, the child's kindergarten.

But no one thinks to ask the kindergarten's operator, Lisa Thorpe.

The access visit is a disaster. What's meant to be a sanctuary becomes a battlefield. There's a lot of shouting and the child is traumatised.

Furious, Lisa calls Ash.

He decides that the magistrates working at Marram Ngala Ganbu need a firsthand sense of what makes Bubup Wilam special, and drives them to the nearby centre.

Some of the children hug the visitors when they arrive. There are Aboriginal stories and paintings everywhere, and maps to show kids where their families belong. One of the magistrates wells up.

"We see kids in a point of crisis at court and it was good for the magistrates to see Aboriginal kids happy," Ash says.

A bell rings and toddlers run to the playground to take part in the twice weekly smoking ceremony.

"I think it is working because Aboriginal people need to know their roots, as we all do," Magistrate Macpherson says.

"That's something that we've stymied as a white population for many years."

The ceremony over, Lisa doesn't hold back. She confronts the magistrates about the recent incident and says some of their decisions are making it harder for Aboriginal families in crisis situations to get back on track.

Magistrate Macpherson apologises to Lisa.

"It's a learning curve for me. And it won't be done again in the future," she says.

Now the court is working with the kinder.

"We've had families that we've referred to Bubup Wilam, and 12 months later it has completely changed their life," Ash says.

"If we can give children a good start in life and give parents support, they're less likely to find themselves in the child protection court which I run," Magistrate Macpherson says.

The path Ash could have taken

When Ash was a little boy, he wanted to be either a teacher or a police officer. One day a constable came to the house, looking for Ash's eldest brother, Jozsef.

"I remember him sort of jumping over my nephew, pushing my mum out of the way and then dragging my brother through the house and putting him in the back of the police car," Ash says.

Ash knew then he didn't want to be a bully like that police officer.

He could have gone off the rails like his brother, but had no interest in that either.

Jozsef has done time in 13 different jails across Australia on charges including firearm possession, aggravated home invasion and drug trafficking.

"One thing led to another," he says. "I became accustomed to making money without actually physically doing anything."

His mother says Ash was "always there, always seeing what was going on".

"He's learnt what families go through," Tanya says.

"I think maybe that's why he's in the court system now."

Another beginning

Ash is thinking big.

Even though Marram Ngala Ganbu is still in the pilot phase, he's exploring ways of replicating it in courts around Victoria.

He's received a lot of support.

"Any process that alleviates the pressures of going to court has to be good," Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Wayne Muir says.

"Ash is a critical component in why this model works. He almost acts as an interpreter in bringing the court and community together in a respectful manner."

Ash's vision goes beyond Marram Ngala Ganbu. He'd like to see a system whereby at-risk Aboriginal people only deal with Aboriginal-run and culturally appropriate organisations, including the court.

He is now celebrating the announcement that the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency (VACCA) will assume responsibility for placing at-risk Aboriginal children in out-of-home care when the department removes them. It's an Australian first.

"Initially there will be 30 children," says VACCA's chief executive, Muriel Bamblett.

"We're not about breaking up existing placements but will try to find Aboriginal relatives to maintain connection."

However, the development has raised some concerns.

"It feels like to me a big handball," says Lisa Thorpe.

"What happens when something drastic happens under our watch? The department should clean up its own mess."

Ash now has his own child, a daughter called Poppy.

If Ash's wife, Amy, returns to work, he would love Poppy to attend somewhere like Bubup Wilam so she grows up with a strong sense of Aboriginal culture and community.

Outside Bubup Wilam, Lisa helps the three and four-year-old children board a bus to spend the day in the bush where they'll explore wombat holes, climb trees and pick flowers. Getting back to country is part of the weekly schedule.

It is something Ash has wanted to do for a long time. Ultimately, he would like to live in western Victoria on Gunditjmara country.

"I know that Ash will leave me eventually and move on to a different venture," Magistrate Macpherson says. "He is such a potential leader of the Aboriginal community."

But with the Marram Ngala Ganbu pilot due for assessment late next year, Ash has no plans to jump ship.

"I'd be absolutely heartbroken if this program didn't continue, get funded properly and go statewide," he says.

"The children of the north demand it."

Credits

Topics: indigenous-protocols, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, community-and-society, children, family-law, law-crime-and-justice, child-abuse, broadmeadows-3047, melbourne-3000, vic

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