Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs

Transcription

Brian: This is the fourth in a series of Families Australia - Orations by a prominent Australian offering perspectives on important family and child related issues and to discuss future policy directions. Before I introduce our speaker I'd like to gratefully acknowledge the Berry Street Childhood Institute which has sponsored this address. The institute works to build and share knowledge about first of all what sustains good childhood, second the best ways to restore the health and wellbeing of children, and finally how to create opportunities for the people who have not had a good childhood. I'd like to warmly welcome Marg Hamley who is the Inaugural Director of the Berry Street Childhood Institute. Later on Marg will say a few words to close the session. Although she's overseas at present I'd also like to acknowledge the leadership of Sandie de Wolf, the CEO of Berry Street who I think will be known to maybe many of you here this afternoon. Sandie was the chair of Families Australia in our first 10 years and it was under her leadership that this Oration series was established, the first oration being delivered about four or so years ago by the Governor General Quentin Bryce in her first major address as Governor General. It's wonderful that this year's address is being delivered by Australia's Inaugural National Children's Commissioner, Megan Mitchell. As so many of you know the idea of establishing the position of National Children's Commissioner has been around for many years, that is having one is Australia. We're one of the last countries in the OECD set of countries to have one. Megan's appointment last month to the position was a landmark event. And she's a great leader, she's a great champion for children in so many respects, demonstrated not the least by her most recent role as New South Wales Commissioner for Children and Young People. And I've had the pleasure of listening to some of the media interviews that Megan has been giving given over the last couple of weeks and I hear intriguing things like her impending National Listening Tour to hear firsthand from particularly children and young people. This is a priority area for her and I'm sure she's going to talk about in a few moments about the things that they would like to see her do in this job. I'm sure you're all looking forward to hearing more about her plans for the job and this is her first major address in this new role. She has very kindly agreed at the end to take some questions but also hear your thoughts too and your comments about the sorts of things that I think you'd like to see her do in the role. So would you please join me in welcoming Megan Mitchell. Megan Mitchell: Thanks Brian and it's great to be amongst so many people committed to the wellbeing of Australia's children. And I'm really thrilled and honoured to be invited by Pru, Warlow, and Brian Babington and Families Australia to deliver the Berry Street Childhood Institute Families Australia Oration. As Brian pointed out my first speaking engagement in my third week as Inaugural National Children's Commissioner and can I say Brian and all those who are working with you what a wonderful event this has been and how smoothly it's all gone. I'm sure everybody is experiencing that. I'd also like to thank the other sponsors of the oration. Sandie de Wolf, the CEO of Berry Street and Margaret Hamley, Director of Berry Street Childhood Institute. I too felt the work in the country was pretty special this morning and it just shows us how much we have to learn and what deep opportunities we have learn. But I too would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this conference takes place and pay my respects to the elders, past and present. I don't need to explain to this audience that the call to establish a National Commissioner has been around since Australia ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990 and over this time a range of groups like Families Australia and the Human Rights Commission have repeatedly highlighted the need for dedicated national advocate for children and meanwhile several bills were presented without success to Parliament. Perhaps the most recent impetus provided by the first national action plan part of the national framework for protecting Australia's children, that's from 2009 to 2012, and because of that and all those other advocates out there legislation was eventually passed last year to establish the role and I do need to congratulate the government for taking this step to acknowledge the needs of Australian children. And with this long history its no surprise that we're all anxious to get off the starting blocks. The starting blocks are a bit scary I have to say. It's a very big job. There are lots of needs of children that we're all aware of and getting this role right will need the help of all of you. This afternoon it's tempting then to recite a catalogue of all the issues that need attention and certainly as well as outlining my role I intend to identify some critical child rights issues. But we know children are diverse and they have a diverse range of needs and experiences and so it is not possible to do an all justice in just one address. What's more essential perhaps is to build an understanding of the framework for which these issues can be approached as well as to establish a commitment to genuine readiness to listen and engage. For as is the case with any sector of the population vulnerable to disadvantage too often we make the mistake of shaping an agenda for them rather than with them. In fact often the casualty of recognition of people's vulnerabilities is a failure to acknowledge their agency. And this may be a particularly complex balancing act when thinking about issues relating to children however its nevertheless essential to acknowledge that children can and should participate in decisions that affect them and this is a fundamental principle of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. What's more children's innate understanding of fair play and equal treatment has a lot to teach the adult world about the promotion of human rights. And certainly recent years have seen much said about the importance of listening to and respecting children's voices. However, its harder to match the rhetoric to the reality and even when legislation does require children to participate in the decisions made about them are limited examples of this actually occurring or even fewer instances where feedback is given or action is taken as a result. I come to this role then with some initial priorities, yes, with much determination, and with a child's right framework through which to approach them. Above all I come with the aim of facilitating an authentic child voice being heard throughout Australian public policies and in the communities of people who work with children. So I was encouraged by the fact that as part of my recruitment process I was asked to discuss the topic of contemporary interest to a small group of years four and five students from Kingsford Smith School in Holt in the ACT. And I know that the ACT Commissioner who participated in that process is here today, Alasdair Roy, and he has some pictures of that event which he just showed me on his iPad. He's very cute, he always has an iPad. The aim was to stimulate a general consultation with the children and to evaluate how well each applicant communicated with children regarding a particular topic. Students in the sessions were volunteers, they were aged between 9 and 11 years of age and they were from a range of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds and had varying levels of literacy and variable skills. And during the introductory sessions that the ACT Children's Commissioner coordinated the students were asked "What do you think the National Children's Commissioner should be like? What characteristics should they have?" A nine-year-old boy, a 10eyar-old girl, and a 12-year-old girl had kindly agreed to read some of these students' responses for us and I'm going to play this for you. Why doesn't this work? Okay, that's it. Is that right? Sorry? Back one. Kids are really good at this. [Audio of different kids' voices] Friendly with kids. They have good taste in the job and help others. Really up for it. Good understanding of what they need to do. Someone with good responsibility, understands kids. Understands what kids want. Listens to kids. Don't talk down to children or put them down. Don't talk as if our say doesn't have a meaning. Hearing things from kids better than thinking adults know everything. Work well with kids. They're nice. They understand children. They listen to children. Friendly. Smart. Outgoing. They like being around kids. Someone who's smiling. Someone fairly young. Someone you know well. Someone who is not seven feet tall, hunched over, and scary. Someone who respects children. Someone that's patient. Someone that's caring. Someone who could help you. Someone that's calm. Megan Mitchell: That's what they said. And I think we'd all agree that the children identified many of the important characteristics that an effective commissioner should have and I'd like to think that I make at least some of those although I don't think I do the fairly young thing. I'm not quite a zombie yet which was one of the things that they said, not being a zombie, and I'll never be seven feet tall I know that. Nevertheless I think their words demonstrate a couple of things actually. The first thing that with sufficient time and preparation children and young people were well able to participate in a broader selection process. And I feel honoured to have been chosen via a process that involved children, at least in some part. But secondly I believe that it also - to think the characteristics that they pointed to are also the characteristics that anybody, any adult working with children who purports or seeks to be child aware should have so I think its a really important tip for all of us to think about what kind of characteristics adults need to engage effectively with children. So how will I live up to all of these expectations of those children? And I did say that they might want to come back to them in a few years' time and tell then what I'd done and for them to judge me so that's very scary but I think it's right. So let me first talk about what I see the role as. Well the main aspects are three-fold - to be a national advocate for the rights and interests of children, to develop unimpaired mechanisms that ensure focus on children's interests and enable their participation in decisions that affect them and to provide leadership and coordination nationally in respect to child rights issues. The Australian Human Rights Commission Act sets our more precisely some of the tools that I must use to perform my role. These include submitting a report to the Minister as soon as practical after 30 June each year so I'm a bit worried about that, promoting discussion and awareness of matters relating to the human rights of children in Australia and I think it's fair to say that there's not a big conversation in Australia about human rights generally and child rights in particular, undertaking research or educational or other programs to promote respect for and the enjoyment and exercise of human rights of children in Australia, and examining and reporting on existing and proposed Commonwealth Laws to ascertain whether they recognize and protect the human rights of children. The role is part of the collegiate body at the Australian Human Rights Commission and this is made up of a president who is also the Human Rights Commissioner and six other commissioners with Courage, Race Discrimination, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Social Justice, Sex Discrimination, Disability Discrimination, and Age Discrimination. This collegiate approach will be of great assistance given that these specialist commissioners and policy units conduct work on a broad range of issues impacting on children such as those affecting children with disabilities, indigenous children, the girl child, race discrimination, and child asylum seekers and refugees. And what's more the commission has existing mechanisms for resolving individual complaints and can intervene in court proceedings that involve children's rights issues. The commission has already advanced significant on children's rights prior to the establishment of the dedicated realm. For instance in 2004 it conducted a national inquiry into children in immigration detention and in 2012 released a national inquiry into the age assessment of young Indonesian fishing crews suspected of smuggling, people smuggling offenses. The commission is also currently prioritizing work that tackles violence, harassment, and bullying and builds understanding and respect for rights in our community. These are things that cut across the experience of all children everywhere and I was really excited then to see the powerful anti-bullying ads by young people in the commissioner's Back Me Up campaign which in partnership with a range of agencies and social media organizations offered young people the tools to take safe and effective action when they witness cyber bullying. Equally promising is the commission's participation in consultations on the national school curriculum and I've been having discussions with the unit responsible for that. However, despite its significant work on protecting children's rights there has been no commissioner dedicated solely to child rights and until now the commission has not been specifically resourced to conduct policy work in this area and I'm very excited then by the prospect of working together with the commission and with you and other external partners to bring the human rights of children squarely into the spotlight. There are several areas of work at the commission on which I am particularly keen to collaborate. One relates to the work of Mick Gooda, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commissioner in promoting justice reinvestment. This is a strategy to help reverse the high levels of indigenous incarceration by reorienting criminal justice systems towards prevention rather than detention and investing resources into communities with high concentrations of offenders. As Mick has said the current approach to offending is clearly not working and it is critical to find ways to prevent offending and reoffending from an early age. And according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare indigenous children aged 9 to 17 were 31 times as likely as non-indigenous young people to be in detention on an average night in 2012 and this is up from 21 times as likely in 2008, that is 1 in every 217 indigenous young people aged 9 to 17 were in detention on an average night. Clearly we must do better. And in addition to working with Mick I hope to work with my state and territory counterparts to ensure all children's interests are adequately monitored in juvenile justice systems and examine how children can be more effectively diverted away from contact with these systems at all. Another related area at the commission is a project led by Graham Innes, the Disability Discrimination Commissioner. Research shows that many people with disabilities have inadequate access to justice within the criminal justice system especially those who need communication supports or who have complex and multiple support needs. The Disability Discrimination Commissioner's project will identify the impediments to access to justice for people with communication and other impairments, outline best practice, and incorporate a human rights approach into this practice. And I'm really keen to be part of and contribute to this project so that the needs of children with disabilities who are victims, who are witnesses, and offenders are better identified, understood and responded to. The foundation of all this work of course is a child rights perspective. When we chose decision makers to account which recognizes that children have agency as rights holders and which is firmly based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This convention is the most important of the human rights treaties underpinning the work of the Children's Commissioner and its specifically recognized in the legislation along with other relevant human rights conventions. It recognizes that children have the same basic rights as adults while also needing special protection due to their vulnerability of them being children. When it came into effect children were recognized as rights bearers for the first time in the international human rights treaty system. And apart from its ethical and moral force the convention is a legal document which sets out standards and assigns responsibility for ensuring these standards are met. Australia has obligations to realize the rights in the convention and by ratifying the treaty it has promised at international law to protect a range of children's rights. The question is whether the nation has made good on this promise. Certainly it's pleasing to see that the principles that underpin the national framework for protecting Australia's children are in line with the convention. However as many of you know last June the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child issued its concluding observation on Australia's five-year progress in implementing the convention and these show that while Australia has made some progress there are still many children who fall through the gaps. In particular the committee made critical observation regarding the convention's guiding principles of non-discrimination, the best interest of the child, right to life, survival, and development, and respect for the views of the child. And these guiding principles are the building blocks for a child-centered approach to legislation, to policy, and to practice. So I'd like to take the time to reflect a little bit more on what the committee said about them. The UN Committee was particularly concerned about the widespread discrimination faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people including in terms of the provision of inaccessibility to basic services as well as the significant overrepresentation in the criminal justice and care systems. I've already touched on the rise in the number of incarcerated indigenous children and we've heard today already also from the early speakers and throughout the day of the record numbers of children in out-of-home care and the RHW put that at 39,621 in 2012 and with the rights of indigenous children in out-of-home care 10 times the rate for non-indigenous children. And there's also been a 20% jump in the number of substantiated abuse and neglect cases involving 37 - nearly 38,000 children and this is 6.200 more than the year before. And Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were eight times more likely than other children to be the subject of substantiated child abuse and neglect. We cannot and must not become immune to figures like these. Addressing the needs of especially vulnerable children such as indigenous children in contact with the Child Protection System is surely one of our collective national challenges. Under the Human Rights Commission Act I'm able to give particular attention to children who are at risk or vulnerable and the act while it doesn't specify any particular groups the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has certainly identified Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children as one of the groups needing particular attention. So I therefore look forward to being part of the work that the Second National Action Plan, the Second Action Plan of the National Framework is going to pursue in terms of child safety for indigenous children under the National Priority for Closing the Gap. The UN Committee was also concerned that the principle of the best interest of the child is not widely known or appropriately integrated and consistently applied in all legal frameworks impacting on children. And there are of course areas where this principle has been embedded in law and example being the Family Law Act which now incorporates a direct reference to the convention and also in terms of state and territory child protection laws and this obviously helps to drive good practice in this area. However this principle has not been sufficiently integrated into other areas relevant to children, for instance in regard to asylum seeking children and children in detention and moreover there is an ongoing challenge I believe for the second action plan in marrying the policy impetus with the actual practice on the ground. Addressing the disparity I believe that still exists in this area will be fundamental also in monitoring the convention and its impact on children. The right to life, survival, and development is also a fundamental principle of the convention and without these basic pre-conditions how can our children thrive. The UN Committee expressed a number of concerns about the socioeconomic conditions for certain groups of children in Australia. It noted the significant health disparities of children living in rural and remote areas, children in out-of-home care, as well as children with disabilities and the gap in health status between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children. It is actually pleasing that some measures to address these disparities are having an effect such as the recent announcement under the Close the Gap campaign that under five mortality rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are starting to fall. And I think this also shows that if we're going to make a difference at a population level we really need to be in it for the long haul and in that context we do need assurances that funding will continue after June this year when that national partnership relating to the Close the Gap campaign runs out. The latest Australian Early Development Index findings also indicate some improvements. Since the first index in 2009 the percentage of developmentally vulnerable children has slightly decreased and the proportion of vulnerable indigenous children has fallen from 47% to 43%. And while there's a drop these figures are still obviously far too high. In this context I'm concerned we're not adequately addressing the socioeconomic needs of certain vulnerable groups of children. For example the recent Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth report, the ARACY Report report card showed that the gap between rich and poor continues to increase. It showed that over one in six children lived at or below the poverty line in 2010 and this puts Australia in the bottom third of OECD countries in that respect. In addition as many as 15% of 9 to 14-year-olds live in jobless families and this puts Australia fourth last out of all OECD countries for that indicator. These alarming figures surely call into question whether children's needs are being properly considered in social welfare measures and in it's latest reports families and children need to safeguard their wellbeing when work or well paid work is not an option. Finally, while the committee, the UN Committee acknowledged that Australia had put some mechanisms in place for the participation of young people it noted significant gaps remained in particular for children under 15. As I outlined I'm especially interested to know how we can promote meaningful participation of children in the decisions and processes that affect them, after all participation is fundamental to the enjoyment of other rights. For example individual complaint systems which many adults use to address injustices often do not adequately engage children and young people. How can children who suffer injustice seek redress or raise their concerns if mechanisms are unknown, inaccessible, and inappropriate. This is an area I believe needs urgent attention. We must also get better at using mechanisms that allow children and young people to be heard. I understand that the first national online survey of children in out-of-home care is currently being piloted in New South Wales, Victoria, WA, and Queensland. This is a great step forward. It will be important for us to ensure that the results are used to drive up the quality of practice across Australia so that all kids no matter where they live receive the finest care we can provide them. Equally I'd like to see children's rights principles incorporated in this survey all the time and I'll be working towards that. Either way it's essential to hear from children and young people about their experiences so that we can continue to improve our policies and practices in ways that work for them, not for us. As an example according to the CREATE 2013 report card -- and I know that others have talked about this report card today - less than one-third of children and young people surveyed knew about the existence of a care or case plan for them. These reveals that many children in care are not adequately involved in decisions which directly affect them and this is not only disempowering for those young people but it's also not good practice. We need more workers like the ones Mary Walk talked about that really seek to engage and can engage with children. And there are many practical changes that can be made to address this. For example with the help of CREATE young people now regularly assist with case working training, demonstrating the benefits of engaging young people and showing case workers that it's not that hard. Put simply we must learn from the mistakes of the past when children's voices were ignored with devastating consequences. The role of the commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse will I am sure uncover stories where children's voices were unheard and even when heard were deliberately not taken into account. We need to make sure our attitudes and systems respect child voice. This is one of the essential ways we can help children to be safe, to realize their potential, and to live confident, full, and happy lives. In the end of course there is no better advertisement for children's participation than the views of children themselves. I now like to play you some excerpts from a short DVD made by CREATE, the CREATE Foundation. Some of you might have seen this. It was shown at the 2012 ACWA Conference on Youth Participation. The young people speaking are no longer children but are speaking about their recent experience of being in out-of-home care. Is this right? There. Male Speaker: Participation means to me basically two words. It means getting involved so whether that's actively engaging in activities or someone's practices to just listening and collaborating ideas. Female Speaker: Big decisions like where I was going to go to school, who I was going to live with, when I was going to see my biologic family - they're all really big things that young people should be participating in. Female Speaker: Being involved in like decision making so I always wait [inaudible] so I had my transition [inaudible] and with that we go through a lot of "What am I going to do next year? What am I going to do for the rest of the year? What am I going to do [inaudible] Male Speaker: Even just the general conversations at school boards, what am I into at the moment, what cartoons am I watching, what games am I playing - that's what really built the connections with my case workers and I. Male Speaker: My relationship with my CSAs is formal and very formal like we had a friendship, we were able to talk about my day and what you did. We sort of stayed that fine line of being able to connect on a social and professional level. [Why is participation important?] Female Speaker: I definitely think that participation is important because without that it feels like our lives are just sort of being controlled. Male Speaker: Those decisions really did make me feel like I was making my own choices because a lot of the time I always felt like I was always being told what to do, where I was meant to go. Male Speaker: I think participating alongside adults gave me a lot of confidence. I felt like I gained a bit more resilience when it came to the adults because all they ever did was take over my life pretty much and I feel working alongside of them and actually being equal with them gave me confidence to actually listen and made me feel [inaudible]. Female Speaker: To say this is my voice and this is what I think and it didn't always happen in the way I wanted it to but I was giving my opinion. Male Speaker: I absolutely enjoyed my case workers coming over because I was like "Yes, my best mate's here" and we're going out. We'd go [inaudible] and we're going to go do something fun. I'm not going to sit around the house all day watching cartoons. Even feeling spoiled for that five minutes that's what really made it for me, really made it for me with my case workers. [What stops young people from participating?] Female Speaker: One mistake that's made with young people in participation is that too many people assume that you don't understand exactly what decisions are being made therefore it's okay to make them without the young person present. You're never too young when it's your life that's changing. Whether or not they get to decide whether it happens or not they still have the right to say "This is my opinion." Male Speaker: Yes, a lot of decisions are being made without even a consultation like you go to school for seven years, get into foster care, and then won't even ask you if you want to stay in that school, they just change it. [What can be done better?] Male Speaker: My advice to any case worker is your attitude. If you walk in there with a big bubbly attitude "Hey mate how are you going?" anything like that the kid's going to open up to you a bit more, they're going to want to see a best friend, someone who's going to be around whenever they can call them or anything like that. And then once you've had your little bit of fun sit down and have a bit of a conversation about the more serious things. Female Speaker: There's a time to be formal and there's a time to be informal and you can still be formal while coming down to that young person's level, making him feel comfortable enough to want to be involved. Male Speaker: I mean for the child to realize that it's okay to participate is the biggest thing and they can't feel like it's okay to participate if they don't feel like they were a bad person so the biggest part is a relationship. Male Speaker: If you don't have that friend you're not challenged, you're not going to get anywhere. They're going to just see you as another person in their life telling them what to do. Female Speaker: So not telling us what we should be doing, not telling us that these are the right decisions to be making, listening to what we think will be like a good decision. Female Speaker: I think if the young person is old enough to be told that this discussion is taking place and that this is the decision that came out of that they're old enough to be involved in the decision process. Female Speaker: It's really important to know that people are real and people are there and people actually care. After what we've been through [inaudible] for a reason, most of the time it's because no one's cared. Megan Mitchell: They do some great work, CREATE. And who wouldn't want a job that involves going bowling? As Joelene told us in the DVD "If you're old enough to be told and to understand the results of a decision about your life then you're old enough to be involved in that decision in some way" in my experience with kids is that they are the experts in their lives, they have a lot to say, and they're incredibly insightful and we need not to ignore them. This returns me then to the beginning of my speech. Over the few weeks that I've been there and over the next little while my team and I have been mapping out a National Listening Tour to commence as soon as possible so that I can talk directly to children and young people and children's advocates about what's important to them. Given the diversity of kids within the community we need to think very carefully about how their views are best obtained and I'd like to use the results of this tour to guide our future work and it's so important in that context that we hear from groups of children across the states and territories. That said it will not be possible for us to cover absolutely every issue relating to children as much as I would like to. And some top choices will have to be made about priorities. What I can say with certainty is that ensuring the authentic child voice will be a part of the package. As a commentator in the news recently said about my appointment which is a pretty remarkable thing to say in the news was "It's time to grow up and talk to kids." In five years' time I'd like to be able to say that genuine engagement of children in the decisions that affect them is a systematic part of decision making both within government and within agencies that work with children or in behalf of children and I look forward to shaping that work with the many of you here today and it's only by working together - and that's another thing that this conference that we can enable children to be better heard and in doing so make children's rights a reality and that's for every child and that's everywhere and that's every day. Thank you.