Nt Has Seen 30% Surge in Child Abuse Reports, Royal Commission Told

The Guardian
September 29, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/nt-30-surge-child-abuse-reports-royal-commission

A little girl poses for photographs to illustrate the topic of child abuse. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP Image

There has been a 30% increase in reports of child abuse in the Northern Territory in the last financial year, an inquiry has heard.

The NT Department of Children and Families (DCF) has also seen a 25% rise in the number of children in out-of-home care, and a 29% increase in investigations into child protection matters in the financial year to 30 June, said Simone Jackson, the executive director of the out of home care division at the department.

“We are all shocked and trying to work out that increase in volume,” Jackson told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse in Darwin on Monday.

“It’s sad to say we have a lot of parents who are unable to provide the minimum care requirements for their young people. Child protection is the symptom, never the issue.”

She said more than four out of five children in care in the NT were Indigenous, and child protection workers in the NT had difficulties accessing families living in remote communities.

Jackson told the commission there was currently a “very poor” system in place for therapeutic support for parents whose children were in care, and said there were a “confusing” number and variety of responses from agencies to allegations by children in care of sexual abuse.

There was not currently a specific culture support plan for Aboriginal children placed with non-Aboriginal carers, she said.

“Aboriginal children do best when they have that [cultural] connection, when they come out the other end as adults knowing who they are, their identity intact,” Jackson said.

The NT has the lowest placement rate of Aboriginal children with Aboriginal carers in Australia.

Jackson said carers received training every 12 months, but not specifically to do with protective behaviours and grooming for sexual assault.

She said there was always scope for more Indigenous Australians to enter the system as carers, but there should not be a loosening of current rigorous screenings of carers for Aboriginal children just to boost numbers.

“You can’t, in good [conscience], do anything differently for an Aboriginal child; why does that child deserve any less than any other child?” she said.

Government would do better to increase understanding in Indigenous communities of the role of child protection and to help dissolve the stigma surrounding those involved with the system, Jackson said.

Children in care in the NT 2013/14:

• DCF received 12,940 child protection reports, an annual increase of 29.7%

• DCF commenced 4,906 child protection investigations, an annual increase of 29%

• As at 30 June 2014, there were 932 children in out-of-home care, an annual increase of 25?

• About 85% of children in care are Aboriginal

• There has been a 90% increase of children in care over the last five years

(Source: The NT Department of Children and Families)