The Long Road to Reform

Last week I got the opportunity to facilitate a forum workshop, called by the NSW Minister for Families and Communities Kate Washington about the urgent need for systemic reform of the Child Protection System. Aboriginal young people are significantly over represented in out of home care and forced removal policies and over a whopping 30% of those children removed are because of neglect.

This was tough for me, because both me and my sister are from that 30% removed from our families because of neglect, with parents who at the time dealt with addition, diagnosed mental health and extreme poverty. I often reflect back on that time of my life, and the memories I have of my father begging what was then referred to as DOCS for help as he was homeless with my sister and to be turned away with nowhere to go.

That same Government agency he turned up to in tears begging for help, then turned up on his doorstep less than a year later and took his daughter away.

So, despite the fact that I don’t LOVE facilitating I knew somethings just need to be done. And you have to show up.

My good friend nellie pollard-wharton , who some of you might know from a recent episode of the Impact Policy Podcast on Codesign, said something to me on the day that I can still feel stir up tears as I write this newsletter on a Friday night weeks later.

After we spoke directly with Kate Washington the Minister for Families and Communities in a break out session, Nellie messaged me and said “you right?”, I said to her, “you know its really hard to be here, it’s a triggering space. But. THAT. is our obligation as Blackfullas to our families and to our communities, to show up. When its hard, even when we dont want to”.

Nellie looked at me and said, “yeah, But little Sam needed you to show up to”, talking to my inner child and it took the absolute life of my energy to not breakdown then and there.

We need urgent and immediate progress towards a systematic reform agenda in New South Wales for forced child removal policies and Department of Communities and Justice broadly. It is an exciting time because we have the leadership of the Minister speaking truth to this and in New South Wales it’s the first Labour Government in 10 years, so we are hoping at Impact Policy that this is progress in the right direction.

I believe that with the right holistic, Culturally and trauma informed support for my parents that there may have been a strong chance that none of us had to be removed and experience the loneliness and sadness of out of home care.

I hope Impact Policy can be apart of that journey, and that together we can keep another Sam and his sister, all our kids, families and communities together.

Keen to understand more about this critical issue right now? Check out our Impact Policy blog we wrote in more detail unpacking the experiences of young people in out of home care and centring the voices of survivors.

Like most things, this system reform work is talked about through the lens of ‘Co-Design’ as best practice for the future of these systems. To dive deeper into this check out our most recent episode on CoDesign with KA McKercher here – I honestly cant recommend their work any higher and I learn so much about my own leadership in this space so hope you can too!

There is so much happening in the Impact Policy world to share with you all, so these weekly newsletters are timely. Next week we are off to present at the first Social Impact in the Regions conference with the amazing Kerry Grace so cant wait to come back and share everything impact from across the regions of NSW with you.

Finally a question/invitation for you? How can we help? Wrestling with something at the moment or on the horizon, that you just really want to bounce off of someone? It might be specific to Aboriginal Affairs or CoDesign, or Engagement or Communications or Research or Policy or RAPS or MEL Frameworks or.. You get the point.

Reach out for a yarn by responding to this newsletter or you can follow me directly and connect through LinkedIn here - it would be great to connect regardless.

Enjoy the weekend. Fathers day coming up, to all the fathers and father figures, And all the single parents out there being both, ENJOY! For me personally, its my favourite day of the year!