The New South Wales government has been lashed for effectively abandoning its own strategy to reduce the representation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care and failing its own targets.
The state ombudsman, Paul Miller, handed down a scathing report into the five-year Aboriginal Outcomes Strategy (AOS), noting that since its 2017 launch the Department of Communities and Justice appears to have abandoned it without explanation.
The ombudsman found that by 2022 Aboriginal children were 11 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be in out-of-home care – up from 9.3 in 2017 – and the department had not met any of its four targets.
“Our concern has been the failure of [the department] itself to report transparently on what it did to implement the strategy and its failure to publicly report on the outcomes of the AOS,” the report read.
“It was apparent to us that at some point within its five-year timeframe, [the department] effectively abandoned the AOS.
“[The department] did not report on what had been achieved by the AOS in the time it was operating, and nor did it announce that the strategy was being abandoned or why.”
When the strategy was first announced in 2017, there were 6,839 Aboriginal children in out-of-home care. They accounted for 38.4% of all children in the system.
Over the five years the strategy was supposed to run, the proportion of Aboriginal children grew to become 43.8% of all kids in out-of-home care.
One target set by the department was for 1,500 Aboriginal children to be restored to their families over five years. The ombudsman found just 999 were returned – representing 67% of the goal.
The ombudsman was particularly scathing of the department’s lack of transparency.
“[The department] did not complete the AOS. It did not formally bring an end to the AOS,” the report read.
“It did not report on whether the strategy achieved what it set out to achieve.”
A response from the department’s secretary, Michael Tidball, was attached to the report and said that while the strategy was “well-intentioned”, there were also competing plans.
“The AOS was well-intended and the [department] established a board sub-committee to oversee the AOS,” he said.
“A machinery of government change in 2019 resulted in the chair of the sub-committee moving to another agency and continuity was lost.
“At the same time multiple reviews of Aboriginal over-representation in child protection resulted in a range of competing strategies and plans. Without clear governance, the projects all continued but were disconnected from each other.”
He said that out-of-home targets were contained through other initiates with the department.
The ombudsman said it was fine to set ambitious targets as a department but that they needed to be followed through.
“When a strategy is launched and targets are set, at the very least the strategy should be delivered with appropriate governance and reporting against those targets,” the report read.
“Even if [the department] considered that the AOS had been superseded by various other strategies and plans, any decision to abandon the AOS in favour of those other strategies and plans should have been made explicitly and transparently.”
