Australia's First Charter of Rights for Parents and Families

Seven years to the month after Dr Sharynne Hamilton and Professor Valerie Braithwaite published their report “Parents and Family Members Matter: A Charter of Rights and Responsibilities for Parents and Family Members with Children in the Care of Child Protection Services in Australia” (summarised in this blog), a similar charter has been launched in WA, the first of its kind. Dr Hamilton’s speech from the launch event is below.

Thank you for asking me to speak here today at this fantastic, and incredibly important event. I just want to also acknowledge that we gather on the land of the Noongar Wadjuk people and acknowledge our Elders, past, present and emerging, and the ongoing contribution of the Aboriginal community to the care of the country on which we are privileged to live and work on. And thank you Aunty for your welcome. With that, I want to begin by acknowledging that for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, addressing child removal and the impact this has on our kinship networks is a major priority. I have had the privilege of working with the Ngulluk Kulunga Ngulluk Koort Elder Co-Researchers at the Telethon Kids Institute on their identified research priorities which include child removal and child protection. We have begun some work on responsive regulation, and regulatory pyramids which draw on the extensive knowledge of the families and community that are held by the Elders and Senior Aboriginal members of our community. This work is very much based in relational governance, which ultimately go hand in hand with rights based approaches.

Back in 2003 when we founded FINWA and we began conceptualising the service, the lack of attention to the rights of parents involved in the child protection system was foremost in my mind. Time and time again, parents were approaching our services with complex difficulties relating to child protection interventions.

Combined with the trauma, loss and grief of having their children taken away, they were attempting to navigate a complex system, many with no support and many with the additional burden of having their own experience of out-of-home care. There were many inquiries being undertaken into child protection services around the country that highlighted the long term negative effects child protection interventions had on children and their families and research reflected what seemed like a truly ‘wicked’ problem.

For 5 years I worked in research with Professor Valerie Braithwaite and the community capacity building in child protection team at the Australian National University, and we moved away from work that continually regurgitated the idea that child protection was an intractable problem to more solution-focused and innovative ideas around child protection practice. We worked on projects which emphasised the importance of networks and drawing on strengths which exist in families and communities and in community organisations that can assist to enhance child safety and family and community wellbeing.

One of these initiatives was to explore parent rights alongside FINs around the country and leading human rights experts, and in 2014 we published “Parents and Family Members Matter: A Charter of Rights and Responsibilities for Parents and Family Members with Children in the Care of Child Protection Services in Australia”. This was important work because human rights are an integral part of democratic systems of governance.

We often think about rights as personal. And indeed they are. At a minimum, we should expect that individuals will have equitable access to resources, information, advocacy and support that gives them the best chance at positive outcomes, or what we call ‘justice capital’. But understanding rights as personal attributes isn’t really enough.

We need to think more broadly about how rights are facilitated at the level of institutions that govern the lives of families – governments, the courts, service systems and so on. Very often, systems can unintentionally compound injustices. There is a significant power imbalance that exists between parents and family members and these institutions. And so there has been development in this work around ‘institutional justice capital’. That is, thinking about what factors we need to consider that support the rights held by individuals.

We need to think about how actors can support justice at an institutional level particularly in relation to the distribution of power, the cultivation of relationships and breaking intergenerational cycles of harm. We are developing these ideas within four pillars of institutional justice capital.

That means talking about what constitutes ‘good enough’ parenting and developing a greater understanding that parenting standards and practices are subjective and vary among different cultures.

It means a greater focus on respectful relationships and ways of working together – so that we can rely less on higher level state interventions and focus more on building relationships that actively assist communities and organisations to support families to care for their own children.

It means recognising that child removal is highly traumatic for all involved, and so offering protection from further harm when they are involved with these systems. And it means considering parental rights. Parents must have effective resources to understand processes and the reasons for decisions. They must be able to access effective legal advocacy and representation in courts and avenues to challenge decisions that are made when they seem unfair.

And that is exactly what the Charter of Rights for parents does. It provides a tool to draw on and understand the right to be treated fairly, with respect and without discrimination. The right to have culture respected and understood. The right to be given explanations and relevant information and to receive information about decisions in a timely way and in a format that is understandable. The right to raise concerns without fear of incrimination. The right to be included and taken seriously about decisions that are being made that affect them, their children and their families. And the right to procedural fairness, to legal advocacy and to legal representation.

I congratulate everyone involved in the development and implementation of the Charter; the Minister and those involved from the Department for Communities for supporting this important innovation. The parents and family members who have shared their lived experience, wisdom and collective knowledge to shape the Charter. And the powerful advocacy work of Debbie Henderson and the FINWA community who have ensured these ideas around a Charter come to fruition.

It has been first implemented here in WA, and I really hope we see more Charters of Rights for parents and family members involved with child protection systems developed and implemented by States and territories around the country. But for now here in WA, the important work begins to ensure our institutions and services have the education, training and resources to enable them to fulfil and enact the rights embedded in the Charter.