The Aboriginal Child Placement Principle 1998-present
Laws and policies begin to incorporate the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle (ACPP), which aims to prioritise the placement of Aboriginal children with extended family, members of their Aboriginal community, or local Aboriginal families and involve Aboriginal families and organisations in placement decision-making. However, challenges in implementation and inadequate resourcing have hindered the full application of the ACPP, resulting in ongoing overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care.
The ACPP has five core elements:
- 'Prevention: protecting children's rights to grow up in family, community and culture by redressing the causes of child protection intervention'
- 'Connection: maintaining and supporting connections to family, community, culture and country for children in out-of-home care'
- 'Participation: ensuring the participation of children, parents and family members in decisions regarding the care and protection of their children'
- 'Partnership: ensuring the participation of community representatives in service design, delivery and individual case decisions', and
- 'Placement: placing children in out-of-home care in accordance with established Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Placement Principle placement hierarchy' ().
Before the 1980s, laws did not consider 'the cultural needs of adoptees or the impact of removing children from their natural families' (). In the mid-1970s, the NSW Department of Youth and Community Services began involving Aboriginal people in the placement of Aboriginal children removed from their families (). By 1985-1986, changes in policy recognised that Aboriginal children fare better when cared for by their own kin or communities and aimed to address the disproportionate number of Aboriginal children in non-Aboriginal care ().
In 1987, the Children (Care and Protection) Act 1987 (NSW) () introduced a less developed model the ACPP. If an Aboriginal child was removed and could not be placed with a member of their extended family, a member of their Aboriginal community or with a local Aboriginal family, the Act required consultation with the child’s extended family and an Aboriginal welfare organisation to find a suitable person.
The Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 (NSW) () included the same consultation requirements as the 1987 Act. In addition, a principle of the Act is that Aboriginal families, kinship groups, representative organisations and communities were to be given the opportunity to participate in decision making.
Introduced in 2000, the Adoption Act 2000 (NSW) () includes a placement hierarchy and required Aboriginal participation when placing Aboriginal children for adoption. The law also states that ‘Aboriginal people should be given the opportunity to participate with as much self-determination as possible in decisions relating to the placement for adoption of an Aboriginal child’ ().
In 2001, the amendments to the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 (NSW) () required compliance with the placement hierarchy during permanency planning and adoption.
In 2009, the NSW Government’s Keep Them Safe Report discusses the need for increased consultation with Aboriginal communities in relation to the child protection system, including through empowerment of local Aboriginal community decision making and the need for integrated locally based services ().
Dr Terri Libbesman, expert in Aboriginal children and the law, found that ‘a frequent complaint is that Aboriginal people are inadequately consulted with, their opinions given little weight, that their voices are often not heard in the Children’s Court and that the placement principle is applied without consulting relevant family and community members, leading to a loss of children from Aboriginal families and communities’ ().
In 2013, the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care outlined the five elements of the ACPP: Prevention, Partnership, Placement, Participation, Connections (). These five elements reflect the original intentions of the ACPP and were designed to address the issue of the ATSICPP being solely a placement hierarchy in practice.
In the period of 2004 to 2014, the Productivity Commission found the ‘proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children being placed in out-of-home care has increased, the proportion placed according to the [ACPP] has decreased’ ().
The Children's Guardian Act 2019 (NSW) () includes the ACPP as a guiding principle for decision-making.
In 2022, the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Amendment (Family is Culture) Act 2022 brought changes to the ACPP, including a definition of the five elements of the ACPP and provisions aimed at ensuring they are adhered to when decisions are made about Aboriginal children ().
Despite efforts, the full implementation of the ACPP during this time faced challenges. Reports have highlighted a lack of adherence to the principles and decreasing compliance over time (, , , , ). The ACPP has been found to be fully applied in only a small percentage of child protection cases (), and there is an ongoing issue of overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care (, , ).
The law and policy in this subject is accurate as of 1 June 2023.