In the face of ongoing disproportionate intervention in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, communities are demanding transformed approaches and greater accountability. And their fierce advocacy is driving major legislative change.
In 2021, community members and their organisations in the ACT co-designed a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner role for the ACT.
The UTS Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research was privileged to work alongside the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community of the ACT to facilitate this process.
The work responds to the findings of Our Booris, Our Way, a review into the over-representation of Indigenous children in the territory’s child protection system.
“We have seen communities emphasise the importance of independent, empowered oversight mechanisms that understand them and the rights and needs of our children,” says Dr Paul Gray, a Wiradjuri man and a UTS Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Indigenous Research Fellow at Jumbunna.
“The Our Booris Our Way Review called for a Commissioner role to focus on the rights and interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and insisted that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community participate in shaping the role.”
“We were happy to facilitate that process as part of our high-profile program of research and policy development that supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in their aspirations to transform child protection systems and practice.”
A three-stage process
Dr Gray and his team worked with the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community through a three-stage co-design process intended to define the Children’s Commissioner’s role, including its mandate, authority and selection process, as well as its relationships with community, government, and other human rights institutions.
First, a community discussion paper was developed that drew together relevant literature, lessons regarding similar roles in other jurisdictions, and evidence from other ACT-based review processes.
Next, the researchers held a series of consultation sessions in which they asked community members and other key stakeholders to outline their expectations for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner and how the role should be appointed.
Finally, they held a refinement session in which they presented their draft recommendations for the commissioner role back to project stakeholders, testing key findings with community representatives and other stakeholders and clarifying recommendations.
“The simple way of describing the process is that we wanted to introduce ourselves to the community and share information with them about the scope of the opportunity,” Dr Gray says.
“Then we wanted to hear from them about what they want to see from this role. And then we wanted to go back to community and make sure we had heard them correctly.”
More than a symbolic role
Dr Paul Gray
During the community engagement sessions, participants were clear that they wanted a role that would actively promote and protect the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
Among other things, they expected an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner to push back against the coercive nature of existing systems that often led to children being separated from their families, particularly in the realms of child protection and youth justice.
“They wanted to make sure the Commissioner role had teeth — that it went beyond raising concerns to driving real change for children and young people,” Dr Gray says.
“That means it needs to have a particular mandate, as well as appropriate powers to be able to compel information, make recommendations in individual cases and on systemic issues, and then follow up on any action taken in response.”
The resulting recommendations describe an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner with a broad mandate to promote and safeguard the rights and wellbeing of children in the ACT.
“It’s particularly focused on holding accountable the systems and processes that governments might put in place with respect to the rights and interests of Aboriginal children,” Dr Gray says.
“Its job is to provide oversight of public policies, systems and programs that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, to make sure they’re delivering as intended and to provide advice on how they could be improved.”
Towards better child protection outcomes
The ACT Government has demonstrated its commitment to moving forward with implementation of the co-designed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner role, including introducing legislation in September 2022 and committing more than $3.5 million towards the role’s establishment.
In a letter of thanks to the Jumbunna team, Chair of the Our Booris, Our Way Implementation Oversight Committee Barb Causon wrote:
“Jumbunna’s collaborative approach, engaging Aboriginal community stakeholders, the ACT Government and other stakeholders such as the ACT Human Rights Commission has contributed to our momentum to towards establishing this important role.
“[It] has further increased our confidence that the role will likely have the independence, authority and resources to make a real difference for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people and their families in the ACT.”
