Article: A Grandmother's Two-Year Fight

A Grandmother's Two-Year Fight

When a three-year-old was taken into non-Aboriginal foster care, child protection began looking for kinship care. Kinship care is the best outcome for children removed from their parents – it keeps children safe and connected to family and culture.

The child’s grandmother expressed great interest in being the kinship carer. The grandmother contacted NPY Women’s Council to help her understand the process. Navigating beaurocratic systems is always complicated but this is compounded when English is not a first language.

The process became increasingly complicated as the grandmother lived in a different state to her grand-daughter. The family lived in Central Australia at the tri-state junction of NT, SA & WA. During this time the child’s parents also moved across borders throwing the case into a complex limbo across states.

While constantly monitoring and supporting the grandmother seeking to gain care of her grandchild, massive delays occurred due to changes in case direction across states, the difficulty of completing carer assessments across borders, non-transferability of carer assessments, time-lag in transferring the case via the interstate liaison process, the timing out of assessments and delays in probity checks and housing checks. This all amounted to a two year delay in the placement of the child with her family and culture.

These administrative issues also meant that the child had no potential to be re-united with her parent either, even if their situation and ability to parent improved.

NPYWC Child & Family Wellbeing Service consistently advocated for the kinship assessment process to continue, despite the complexities to ensure the young person’s connection to language, culture and country continued. The grandmother was successfully assessed as a kinship carer and the child returned to her family and community in July 2022.

NPYWC will continue to advocate for a cross border Child Protection Framework to ensure that all children in need remain with their family and community, and heartbreak for both child and family is lessened.

Tjungu

Anangu Tell Their Story at the Disability Royal Commission

Therapeutic support for Anangu child with a disability in Alice Springs is not a “family holiday”

Supporting families caring for people with a disability produces the greatest quality of care. In remote areas where there are little to no specialised services, families step in to the bulk of caring for people with a disability with limited respite.

Speaking at the Disability Royal Commission NPY Women’s Council shared many stories of the extra hardship people with a disability living in remote areas face. Lack of access to therapeutic support & basic disability support services coupled with language and cultural barriers prevent engagement with NDIS plans.

NPYWC told the story of a child with a disability from the NPY Lands needing to access important early intervention therapeutic support in Alice Springs. Due to a range of serious family hardships including domestic violence and overcrowding, the child’s key carer requested that family members (siblings) come with her and the child to Alice Springs for her treatment.
Senior NDIS staff stated they could not support “family holidays”.

NDIS plans focus on the individual and fail to consider the families struggling to support people with a disability, often experiencing extreme financial hardship & with little access to services in their communities. Supporting Anangu families gives people living with a disability out bush the best chance for support.

Read our submission to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of people with Disability (an updated statement will be available soon).

Find out about Tjungu our Aged & Disability program

Youth

My decision to focus on school & how that led me to a job helping other young people outbush access education

In year 8 my family and I made a decision for me to move from Imanpa and stay with family members in Alice Springs to access education. It was hard but it was a good decision for me. A lot of my friends that stayed in Imanpa didn’t finish year 12, so I feel the extra support of larger schools in town really helped me.

When I finished year 12 I started the Iwara traineeship with NPYWC. Lulu took really helped me through the course. Lulu had completed the Iwara program the year before and was now helping new people learn about different work options and get some work experience and confidence.

When a position came up with the NPYWC in boarding school program I was really interested. I went through an application process and now I help other young people from Imanpa, Docker River, Pukatja, Mutitjulu and Amata interested in attending boarding school. I help their families learn about boarding school options across Australia and help them with forms and make sure they are ready and have things they need for school.

My job has allowed me to really grow; I have worked on a evaluation of the boarding school project and have been lucky enough to advocate for young people by attending WIPCE (World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education) in Adelaide and also meet with the Prime Minister on the current Alice Springs Youth issues.

School has helped to give me a really good opportunity in life and now I get to help other people access an education they would like, too.

Read about the Youth Service

NPY Women's Council is grounded in, and continues to live and work on, the sovereign Lands of the Arrernte people, and the Aṉangu and Yarnangu people - the rightful custodians of the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara Lands.

A Grandmother's Two-Year Fight

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