Prevention not cure: Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation chief executive Aunty Jill Gallagher has told the Yoorrook Justice Commission that more needs to be done to prevent First Nations children being incarcerated or removed from their families.
The chief executive of the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, or VACCHO, has made an impassioned plea for greater commitment to prevention to end the cycle of child removal and First Nations incarceration, or risk seeing imprisonment numbers double.
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Aunty Jill Gallagher, a Gunditjmara woman, was also formerly Victoria’s Treaty Advancement commissioner and has worked with VACCHO for decades.
She told the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s second day of hearings examining the experiences of First Nations people moving through the justice and child protection systems in Victoria that more funding goes towards dealing with a problem after it has already emerged, than preventing it from happening in the first place.
“We already have a service system out there that can play a big role in this prevention space,” Aunty Jill said during the hearing on Tuesday, December 6.
“The same amount of investment, if not more, that we put into the tertiary end of the child protection system should go into the prevention end.
“We don’t have to create a whole new service system, we have it there already.”
Aunty Jill said such a change in emphasis could transform the child protection system.
“I think the focus when it comes to child protection is not about who’s going to become section 18 (of the Children, Youth and Families Act enabling a protection order to be issued for a First Nations child or young person), whether it’s my responsibility as the CEO of one of those organisations to actually make a decision whether I’m going to take the children away, it’s about how do we stop that decision being made,” she said.
Aunty Jill said the system also needed to have a greater focus on helping children in care to continue to learn their culture.
“If they are in care, once they’re in care, then the focus should be on how do we grow that child to become culturally strong in their identity, in their community and know where they’re from,” she said.
“We need Aboriginal healing as part of that care.
“We still need to look at how do we stop our children going into out-of-home care, how do we stop our children going into youth detention centres.
“That’s what we’ve got to look at. Otherwise we’ll be here in another 20 years and the numbers would have doubled if we don’t do that.”
Torn apart: Aunty Eva Jo Edwards has recounted her family’s story to the Yoorrook Justice Commission, which involved her and her siblings being taken from their mother and told she did not want them.
Giving evidence on the opening day of the commission’s new session on Monday, Boonwurrung, Mutti Mutti and Yorta Yorta woman Aunty Eva Jo Edwards told the commission of her experiences with the child protection system, including her family being torn apart.
“I can’t remember my life before the institutions. My earliest memory is a torch being shone in our faces while we were sleeping,” she said.
“They came back the next day and we were removed early the next day.”
Aunty Eva Jo and her siblings were gradually separated over time, including her six-year-old brother being returned to an institution when the couple she and he were with decided they did not want to look after him anymore.
“My baby brother suffered a sense of abandonment and rejection, he fell into addictions from the trauma of his early life and ultimately, and very sadly, took his own life at the age of 25,” she said.
Aunty Eva Jo told the commission she was institutionalised for 13 years, and the way she was treated still impacted her relationships.
“I was never told that I was loved, hugged, kissed, needed or ever recall being encouraged to think about what it is I might achieve in life,” she said.
Aunty Eva Jo was reunited with her mum when she was 15 years old.
“She cried and said she was sorry,” Aunty Eva Jo said.
“My mum died in ’85 and she was in her late 50s, having had a difficult life, and I do believe she also died of a broken heart.”
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has admitted too many First Nations children are being taken away from their families and vowed to overhaul the child protection system.
Child Protection Minister Lizzie Blandthorn, who was appointed to the role by Mr Andrews after Labor’s recent election victory, will be tasked with overseeing that reform.
