Some Indigenous children with disability are being taken from their families amid a shortage of support programs, the Disability Royal Commission has heard.

September 20, 2021

Some Indigenous families are having their disabled children taken from them amid a supply shortage of specialised support programs, an inquiry has been told.

The children often need constant care but a lack of services to help parents with children with developmental delay or disability is leading to perceptions of neglect, a central Australian health service says.

“They can’t meet the care needs of that child because the care needs are higher,” Central Australian Aboriginal Congress chief executive Donna Ah Chee told the Disability Royal Commission on Monday.

“We need to have equitable access so that the ability to provide the appropriate level of care is not a consideration for children being removed.”

The 16th hearing of the royal commission into violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with a disability has shifted its focus to the experiences of Indigenous children with disability in out-of-home care.

More than 20 per cent of Indigenous children have a disability, compared to eight per cent in the general population.

Out of the 45,996 children in out-of-home care in Australia in 2019 and 2020, 18,862 – more than 40 per cent – were Indigenous despite only making up six per cent of the total child population.

Unemployment and educational disadvantage are one of the big determinants of whether children do or don’t get removed from their parents.

Ms Ah Chee called for more early intervention and child care programs, and trained carers to help struggling families, many of whom live in poverty.

CAAC works with Indigenous children in the Alice Springs area but regularly gets calls to assist children from remote areas, which it is unable to do due to a lack of funding and staff.

The inquiry was also told some disabled children in the Northern Territory were unable to access full-time education due to the lack of services.

Overlapping or inadequate systems and tools had also led to some children receiving late or misdiagnosis of disability and poor provision of services.