Regulation and support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander out-of-home care

1. Regulation and support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander out-of-home care Clare Tilbury School of Human Services Griffith University

2. Overview Literature – regulation, carer support, placement quality Study design, sample, interviews, analysis, limitations Results • practical support • enabling support • care about children • respect Discussion • regulation high, support low • importance of Indigenous foster and relative care

3. Context • History of Indigenous–government relations in child welfare, over-representation, limited involvement in policy formation, government resistance to calls for self-control • Socio-political context in which regulatory mechanisms are being generated and used - risk society, inquiries, media attention – risk management focus in OOHC

4. Carer support needs • A good relationship with the child’s worker; practical and financial assistance; help with managing a child’s behaviour; peer support; respite care; and a support worker (Broad et al 2001; Thoburn 1999). • Kinship placements tend to be more stable and provide ongoing ties with family and culture but carers receive less training and support, have fewer social and economic resources, and are unsure of their entitlements to support (Ainsworth & Maluccio 1998; Broad et al 2001 Children’s Defense Fund 2000; Cuddeback 2004; Thoburn 1999; Sultmann & Testro 2001)

5. Regulation of care • increase in the formality, complexity, intensity and specialisation of regulation (Hood et al. 1998) • information-gathering, measuring and checking processes of regulation provide assurance that government is properly managing risk • institutionalisation of audit – ‘checking gone wild’ → producing comfort and hiding real risk v. real organisational intelligence (Power 1997)

6. Placement quality • Both regulation and support are aimed at improving placement quality • Reasons to support carers: meet child’s needs, retention, and recruitment – placement quality • Reason to regulate care – placement quality

7. Study • Collaboration, engaging with Indigenous knowledge • Exploratory study, qualitative methods • Indepth, semi-structured interviews • Purposive sample – 20 carers, 6 workers • Inductive and deductive analysis techniques • Limitations – small sample, limited generalisability

8. Practical support • No, we just pay it and Department says ‘oh we’ll reimburse you’. I don’t trust them. They say they do this and do that and they don’t. No, they don’t do nothing. I’ll pay for it myself. • It is frustrating that sometimes, they just let things lapse. If you don’t push it, and you don’t ask, then you don’t know what rights and responsibilities you have. • They make you feel that you are begging and it makes you feel very uncomfortable

9. Some did get help they requested • Yeah they helped. They provided us with, we got the boys double bunks and a cupboard …so they did it the same day the boys were brought down • She was very good but she doesn’t come any more. • Just regular contact. I mean, things started happening when I had that regular contact with someone from the department.

10. Enabling support • Some specialist, that’s what I want. So I can sit down and talk to someone, somebody who’s a professional that can help • Like if the boys were having a problem at school and you would ring someone and say, ‘this is happening, what do you think we should do?’ and not hear ‘oh, all boys are handfuls’ • Like we’ve had issues with (child) where he’s been a handful for the daycare and she said, you know, it’s a struggle. She (statutory worker) has never come out and said ‘let’s talk about it’

11. Care about children • Worker: The dept is making decisions about the kids in care and the carers want to see that the dept really care about the children. • From my point of view just to make sure, all right they checked me out and all that sort of stuff, but I’d still like to see them to come and see for themselves how the kids are doing … I’d like to see, you know, a couple more of the department people coming out and seeing the children and see how they’re doing.

12. Two carers wanted little contact with the department • I don’t want them in my face or in the children’s face when it is not necessary. I want those children to feel as comfortable and as normal as they can ever feel. • To be quite honest the less I have to do with the department the better I like it.

13. Respect • Culture, upbringing is different. It sort of upset me in a way that we had to get permission if we took her out of town or if we went to a family funeral or a wedding that’s outside of town where we would just make a last minute decision. European ways you have to get all papers and legalised and documents • You try to talk to them on the phone and they talk cheeky back to you. I won’t tolerate that, I’ve done nothing wrong, so I’ll talk straight back at them. • I think they need to have a nicer approach, they need to be mature and treat us as human beings and not names and numbers.

14. Motivation • We are not actually fostering we are just taking family • Well I always cared for these two little ones before they went into care … like I would give their mother a break all the time. • For the children, we’re family. We’re family, that’s where they should be. • I didn’t want him to end up what happened to his other brothers and sisters (they were fostered to different families) because their lives are mixed up and … I didn’t want him to go through that … I want him to have a good future.

15. Regulation high, support low • ‘Responsive regulation’ - distinct regulatory framework for OOHC that is not constrained by a conventional model of foster care and goes beyond procedural approaches to accountability • Systems to enable and support the placement, such as increasing the time available for professionals to visit placements and provide direct input on the care of the child and listen to the carer’s views, would also have the effect of increasing monitoring

16. Indigenous OOHC • concern about retreat from CPP • Means and ends confusion - Support placements as main objective • Recruitment secondary to finding and supporting relative placements – focus on care not carers; quality and outcomes not outputs

17. Acknowledgement and thanks • I wish to acknowledge the contributions of the carers and workers who agreed to participate in the study; everyone in the child protection team at the QAIHC especially Trish Elarde and Jody Currie; and the Indigenous agencies’ management and staff who helped with recruiting participants and welcoming the researchers into their agency