Aboriginal children and young people continue to be over-represented across the statutory child protection system in NSW. In particular, Aboriginal children and young people are about 10 times more likely than their non-Aboriginal peers to be removed from their families and tend to remain in care longer.

This paper outlines a model framework developed by AbSec in partnership with Aboriginal Community controlled Organisations (ACCO) Intensive Based Family Services practitioners and Protecting Aboriginal Children Together (PACT) practitioners.

Key Findings/Recommendations:

• Child development occurs within the context of their social and physical environment, with relationships playing a key role in optimal development and adaptive outcomes. Effective approaches to improving outcomes for vulnerable children must include supporting positive change for the child’s social network, their parents, extended families and communities. A genuine integration of services that support children, both directly and indirectly, through strengthening the capabilities, stability (including economic) and resilience of families and communities is required. Interventions then can become genuinely inter-generational, thereby optimising the developmental context and trajectory of the next and subsequent generations of Aboriginal children and young people.
• Culture is a significant and positive factor in overcoming adversity and disadvantage for Aboriginal individuals, families and communities. Empowering communities to develop and deliver culturally sound, universal and targeted preservation and restoration interventions will contribute to the development of a comprehensive, state-wide safety-net of services that are embedded within the communities they serve, leading a community-wide response that will support Aboriginal families to keep children safe and connected to their families, communities, culture and Country.
• The Strategy recommends that immediate challenges impacting on the family’s abilities to provide a safe and stable home need to be addressed (including external challenges such as adequate housing etc.), with step-down supports to sustain changes achieved. Support parents to build key skills and enact more appropriate and effective strategies with respect to their parenting and broader relationships that impact on their ability to provide a safe and stable home (including healing). Strengthen community level responses and family engagement to support families to access effective formal and informal supports sooner, reducing risk and preventing harm

This model seeks to enhance community-level supports for families, creating an integrated approach to family supports at the local level, in recognition of the important role that communities, immediate and extended family as well as broader peer networks play in supporting Aboriginal families to safely raise their children.