The Disability royal commission will continue examining the experiences of Indigenous children in care with evidence from Aboriginal health services.

September 20, 2021

Aboriginal health services are among those expected to give evidence to the royal commission into violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability when the latest hearing resumes.

The 16th hearing of the royal commission will on Monday examine the experiences of Indigenous children with disability in out-of-home care.

Representatives from the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress and Darwin’s Danila Dilba Health Service are expected to give evidence, along with a disabled Indigenous child and her carer.

The six-day inquiry is the second Indigenous-specific public hearing to be held by the royal commission.

It aims to provide an insight into the life course for Indigenous children with disability and their experiences of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation, including cumulative and systemic abuse and neglect by multiple systems over time.

On Friday, the inquiry heard Indigenous children suffer disabilities at more than double the rate of non-Indigenous young people, and account for almost half of all children in care despite only making up six per cent of the population.

Out of the 45,996 children in out-of-home care in 2019 and 2020, 18,862 – more than 40 per cent – were Indigenous.

“Significantly higher than the approximately six per cent of the total child population in Australia who are First Nations,” Counsel Assisting Lincoln Crowley said.

Of the Indigenous children in out-of-home care, 14 per cent were reported as having a disability, however Mr Crowley said that number is likely to be under-reported.

The commissioners heard evidence from a 17-year-old Aboriginal youth with a disability who had intermittently been imprisoned in Darwin’s notorious Don Dale youth detention centre since the age of 10.

The teenager said he had been placed in 20 foster homes in his life and that some of his charges related to breaching bail when he fled abusive carers.

“I’ve never really had anybody to teach me right and wrong, you know,” he told the inquiry in a pre-recorded interview.

“Didn’t have a good mum and dad and stuff like that, you know, that’s why I trusted Territory Families, but then they let me down, too.”