Where Children Run From Playtime

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday December 1, 2007

Jordan Baker and Joel Gibson

A community campaign to open a refuge for at-risk children in Bourke is mired in red tape, write Jordan Baker and Joel Gibson.

It's late morning in Alice Edward Village, a sparse, windswept Aboriginal settlement behind Bourke, and already residents are gathering to drink, smoke marijuana or inject speed. For many of their children, it's the start of a daily battle. The adults become aggressive as the day wears on. By nightfall, some have become sexual predators. Children, terrified, hide in ceiling cavities or wedge their bedroom doors shut.

"I haven't spoken to an eight-year-old and above that hasn't been molested," said Ron Pagett, a small business owner whose family has lived in the state's north-west since the area was settled by Europeans.

Pagett says he has visited homes where children have taken the knobs off their bedroom doors to protect themselves. "Most of the doors have been kicked in."

He has heard of 12-year-olds giving birth, and of even younger girls having backyard abortions. Once he found two young girls who had been camping near the school for weeks. "'We're not going home any more,' they said, 'we're sick of being dooried' - which means raped."

Residents such as June, pictured above with her grandchildren, are worried. Many have lost faith in the Department of Community Services. So Pagett has spent the past 18 months in a desperate campaign with members of his local church - about 40 per cent of them Aboriginal - to set up a circuit-breaker, a children's refuge.

It would simply be a safety net for parents who need a break, they say, and would offer food and shelter. But they face resistance from state authorities, which have so far refused to give them the money or the accreditation they need. The reasons are complex and often frustrating.

Bourke is arguably the most violent town in the state. It tops NSW in more than half of the major crime categories, including sexual offences, assault and domestic violence. Much of the child sex abuse goes unreported, locals say.

Pagett's claims about what is happening to Aboriginal children in Bourke fit with the State Government's own report on child sexual abuse in indigenous communities.

Breaking The Silence - Creating The Future, released in July last year, found that child sexual assault was four times more likely in Aboriginal communities and had become intergenerational and normalised in many, even though it was anathema to traditional Aboriginal culture.

The report found an atmosphere of "silence, denial and inappropriate responses" had developed because of the forced removal of children in the past and the historically "oppressive and destructive" approaches of authorities. Drug abuse, social disadvantage, a breakdown of family structures and pornography were also factors.

Recommendation 31 of the report was to "improve access to crisis accommodation through [the] Supported Accommodation Assistance Program".

But despite a reported request from the former attorney-general Bob Debus and three other ministers for $20 million to $40 million a year to tackle the problem, the Government did not allocate a cent of new money for it in this year's state budget.

Instead, departments were told to make savings to implement the Government's 88-point response. In that response, one of the "proposals for further research, assessment or development" was a plan to "develop options for increasing safe housing facilities for victims and families". A year later, Bourke still has no government-supported safe house.

Pagett, who is not Aboriginal, feels he has a moral responsibility to do something to help the local children. So do many of his peers, including Jumbo Johnson, an Aborigine who is worried about the welfare of his great-grandchildren.

Johnson said he had visited DOCS, but had not been served. He had also written to the former NSW community services minister, Reba Meagher, and local members, warning them that his grand-daughter was an alcoholic who could not adequately look after her three children. "No one's done anything," he said.

So Pagett and members of his gospel church have taken the initiative. They plan to call their refuge ARK House, which stands for "At-Risk Kids". They acknowledge the fears of the stolen generation, and insist there would be no attempt to force children into care.

"What we would try to do in an ideal world is for parents to make use of this as a sort of support," says Amanda McIntosh, who, with her husband, Malcolm - once a Sunday school teacher in Bourke - has been hired to run the centre.

"They're good parents, they love their kids. We are not challenging the proper agencies - we are about offering a safe place for children, or the mums who need a break. We are not setting up to stop all the problems in the community."

But to do it, they need government support. They can apply for a licence to start a day-care centre. But to become legal foster carers they need the co-operation of DOCS. The department has so far refused.

"I don't know why," Pagett said.

They also need $180,000 for staff and resources, which is now coming out of the pockets of local churches and residents.

NSW follows the Aboriginal child placement principle, which was one of the recommendations of the 1997 Bringing Them Home report on the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. It says that if a child cannot remain with his or her current carers, he or she should be placed with extended family or with another Aboriginal person from the community, or an Aboriginal family living nearby.

Only if none of these is practical can the DOCS director-general look at other carers, and only after consultation with the child's extended family and Aboriginal welfare organisations.

But the state and federal MPs for the Bourke area have both called for safe houses to be set up in western NSW towns - even if they are staffed by white workers.

The Nationals MP for the state seat of Barwon, Kevin Humphries, blamed "a convoluted DOCS bureaucracy of fly-in, fly-out people who don't work closely with people on the ground" for the lack of action.

"We know there are children having to be held in police cells overnight as it's safer than police taking them home to their families; we know that on every pension day there are families who will have a blow-out and spend it all on drugs and alcohol; we know children as young as eight are sniffing petrol in these communities ... and the minister knows it too."

He said there was a justifiable preference for Aboriginal foster parents and a reluctance to institutionalise children, but this was a local solution for a local problem.

"You've got good people here who have a history of living and working with Aboriginal people and are culturally accepted by Aboriginal people, so the bureaucracy should be the servant and not the dictator."

A DOCS spokeswoman said staff had met representatives of ARK House several times to discuss ways the project could comply with statutory child protection requirements.

"DOCS encouraged representatives from Bourke ARK House to attend the most recent DOCS foster carer training in Bourke, in October," she said. "The representatives are currently in the assessment process to become DOCS foster carers and this process is expected to be completed in the coming weeks."

The Minister for Community Services, Kevin Greene, said two DOCS case worker positions in Bourke had been filled. Five Aboriginal case worker positions in Bourke and two generalist case worker positions, one in Bourke and one in Walgett, had been advertised, which would bring the total in Bourke to 12.

"The Iemma Government is investing up to $189,000 this year to entice new and existing case workers to relocate to western NSW permanently or for a short stint," Mr Greene said. "DOCS case workers do an extraordinary job in supporting some of the most vulnerable children, young people and families in NSW.

"But I have asked the director-general to continue to look for solutions to get hardworking regional staff the support they need as quickly as possible."

As adults argue, the children of Alice Edward Village are still trying to find safe hiding spots at night in houses that are crumbling around them. Some will get pregnant, some will turn to alcohol and drugs, and the cycle will begin again.

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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