Research finds children are ending up in out-of-home care simply because they don’t have a safe place to stay

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Indigenous women and children have so few ways to escape domestic and family violence that mothers are losing custody of their children simply because they don’t have a safe place to stay.

New research has found Indigenous women are losing their children to the out-of-home-care system “through no fault of their own, but rather as a consequence of systemic failures in housing policy and availability.”

There is such a disconnect between housing, Centrelink and child protection services that “the familial and cultural continuity of Indigenous people is at risk,” the latest Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) study has found.

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Indigenous women are routinely waiting more than a year for housing. Many wait several years even though authorities know that housing instability is a risk factor for child protection services to become involved in a family.

“Child protection services often blame the mother for failing to protect the children and place significant conditions on the care and custody of their children,” the AHURI lead researcher, Dr Kylie Cripps, said.

All states and territories have legal limits of between one and two years on the time a mother has to meet the criteria for having her children returned. If the deadline can’t be met, children are placed in permanent out-of-home care until they turn 18.

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“This doubly punishes Indigenous women, who are not only victims of violence but who also risk removal of their children despite severely limited options to ensure their own safety or that of their children.

“It becomes a revolving door of unsafety,” Cripps said.

“These sectors have long operated as silos. Time and time again the reports show us that, but we don’t seem to overcome it.”

Indigenous women and children in remote areas are routinely turned away from refuges and safe houses because they are at capacity, the AHURI report said, which is likely a key factor in the high rates of domestic and family violence-related injury and death amongst Indigenous women.

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Improving integration between housing, domestic and family violence and child protection services should reduce rates of Indigenous women’s injury and death, as well as rates of Indigenous children’s out-of-home care, the report said.

Indigenous women and children are judged and questioned as to whether they are worthy victims deserving of support.

“We approach the issue from a deficit place: this is a bad mother. If only we looked at it from the perspective of giving a mother credit for what she’s provided, for the resilience she’s shown in getting to where she has. We need to honour them, not treat them as blame-worthy,” Cripps said.

Housing services should be required to ensure Indigenous women in imminent danger of serious injury or death have appropriate options for safe, affordable accommodation, regardless of their housing history, the authors said.

From 2012 to 2014, two in five Indigenous homicide victims (41%) were killed by a current or previous partner, twice the rate of non-Indigenous victims. Indigenous women were 32 times as likely to be hospitalised due to domestic and family violence as non-Indigenous women.

“At least a dozen inquiries into domestic violence in the last 20 years have said that you need a focused, holistic response that addresses [the] issue for women, men, children and anybody else in the household who is affected by the violence,” Cripps said.

“If we don’t have a holistic response, we repeat the cycle, we don’t solve it.”