As Aboriginal people, we know and understand the connection we have with our children and what this means to us, but this continues to be questioned by colonial systems. Staying connected is very important.
Try to remember you will always be a parent no matter what systems say. Try to rely on your family, friends, community, and support team. Community understands, and this is what makes our mob strong, because we are connected through our stories, and also sadly through our grief. You are accepted as you are because you are more than what has happened to you.
Choose who you talk to about what you are going through. Not everyone will understand and you do not want to open yourself up to opinions and comments from people who do not understand the system, people who lack empathy, and who are careless with their words. Recognise people who are safe or unsafe to talk openly to.
One mum said that the way family time was done didn’t help her connect with her new bub:
“I was full time breastfeeding my child at the time… The visitations should have been longer, they were three hours per time, I would have like at least half a day so I could bond with my newborn. The carer should have met my needs as well as their own, they were late to visits quite often and some of the notes they would send me would be advice on how to parent my own child. They didn’t respect me as the child’s mother. I would have like to have not been in a dull depressing office, somewhere like a park or cafe outside.”
– Parent, Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home research
You don’t have to have family time visits in the DCJ offices and you can ask for them to be in a better space. If you have a new bub or are breastfeeding, work with your lawyer, advocate and support service to try and get more family time for this important bonding time.
DCJ or the out-of-home-care (OOHC) agency responsible for your child are legally required to tell you some types of information about your child’s placement (section 149C of the Care Act) unless they think there would be a danger to your child, other family members, or the carers for you to know this information (section 149I of the Care Act). They must write to you to tell you what level of information you will get. You do have a right to know if your child is placed on Country and how the placement complies with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principles found in section 13 of the Care Act. This means DCJ must tell you if your child is staying with family or kin. If DCJ does not tell you this, ask your lawyer, advocate, and support service to ask DCJ if your child is placed with a family member or not. DCJ says that “the caseworker will make a time for your child to see and hear from you. The caseworker must also give you updates about your child. The caseworker will let you know how your child is going when they are in care” (Guide for Families, 2024).(DJC Guide for Families, page. 32). It is the experience of Aboriginal parents that this does not always happen. Ask your lawyer, advocate, and support service to contact DCJ to make sure you get updates and that a visit with your child is organised as soon as possible after they are removed.
What if my child is in foster care? The carer has a right for their identity and details to be anonymous. DCJ have to tell you if your child is placed somewhere far away, because you are entitled to visit your child (this is called ‘family time’) and you must be told if you will have to travel for these visits, or if the distance between you and the placement impacts on how often you can see your child. Other parents have said if you are able to build a positive relationship with the foster carer who is supportive of your relationship with your child, this helps with family time and increases chances of a successful restoration.
The main way you will see your child is through family time visits, sometimes called ‘contact visits’. It’s important to establish a family time visit schedule with your child and their carer as early as possible.
Your child has a right to ongoing connection to their family even if allegations have been made about how you look after them. Family visits can happen as often as everyday (especially for babies and if you are breastfeeding) and you can advocate for this with your lawyer or support service. Once the amount and frequency of visits has been set, it can be hard to get more, and easier to get less.
You have a right to see your child, but more importantly, they have a right to see you. You still have a right to see them if you are in places like hospital or jail. How you have family time and how often it happens depends on a few things, including their age (for example, if they are going to school) and whether DCJ wants to supervise your family visits. If you are in jail, your visits can be done though video.
“I settled on the condition that they would protect my time for the kids because I fought so hard for that time. Once they have final orders, they reduce it, so I said, no, I want it written in that they’re going to protect my time and then I’ll go down the path of the section 90.”
– Parent, Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home research
Parents have said it was helpful to have family time visits outside common places like DCJ offices, McDonalds or TimeZone. You can ask to go to places of cultural or community significance instead. While keeping the focus centered on your child, you can ask your caseworker if your child can have a say over where they would like to spend their time with you, and this could help to change it to a place everyone might enjoy. Some of the considerations that DCJ or your agency might consider about the location of a visit is how easy it is to supervise, and safety things like closeness to a busy road or open waterways, etc.
One way to stay connected if you have a young infant or toddler is to arrange for your family visits to be at a supported Playgroup. You can attend with one of your family members, and this gives both yourself and your kids time to connect with Community and feel ‘normal’. This strengthens your community connections and creates an opportunity for the community to see you with your child and provide real references about your attachment with your kids, your cultural connection, and your parenting capacity. Some communities have didge, dance and weaving groups for kids. These are great if you have kids who are of school age.
Others have after-school programs grounded in culture, where family and community members are also able to attend. Having family time in community is also great for their connection to their Aboriginal community and culture and can help with their own wellbeing, their sense of identity and grounding. Be mindful that DCJ might not let the person leading a group community activity to be the supervisor of your visit, which might mean bringing a DCJ worker into a community space. This is a good time to nominate another community or family member to supervise or ask for partial supervision (contact worker takes your child to visit and picks them up, but you are technically unsupervised during the group time). This last option is often built into restoration plans.
You have the right to ask to have an Aboriginal worker present at your family time visits. Parents that have had their family visits supervised have said it felt unnatural and made it harder to bond with their child. They also said it can be useful to form a positive relationship with the supervisors (if possible), which made family time better and was useful for the reports that are written about your interactions with your child, and they can also provide extra support to you.
If you find a supervisor who you get along with or who writes a good report that you think reflects your experience well, let your lawyer know. You can ask for that worker to supervise more of your family time. DCJ says you “have the right to ask for another supervisor if you feel like the supervisor is poorly impacting on the time with your child” (DCJ Guide for Families, page 35).
The caseworker must tell you if your child’s carer changes, if they move schools or houses and anything to do with their health, including disability and medical information. The caseworker must also tell you about their school reports and if they have received any awards (as part of the progress updates). DCJ says that a caseworker shouldn’t tell you information about your child if your child specifically said they don’t want you to know, it’s not safe for you to know, or the Court said you are not allowed to know (DCJ Guide for Families, page 33).
DCJ’s ‘Interim Restoration Assessment Approach’ Manual 2024* (page 26) says “In early days, for some parents this may be things like simply understanding the need for time and making efforts to repair relationships and rebuild trust.” DCJ view keeping in contact after removal as ‘insight’ and ‘repair’ but other Aboriginal parents said it was DCJ that was the barrier to staying connected to their child, and some also said this was the hardest time to stay connected to anyone, because of feeling shame, guilt, loss, and grief.
*DCJ document not publicly available.
Other parents say they would like a lot more time with their child than they get given, including knowing things about their day-to day lives. One parent said:
“The kids wanted to tell us what they were doing at school but apparently they were not allowed. Not sure what happened in their lives while they were not here.”
– Parent, Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home research
You have a right to know what is happening in your child’s life. The service that has case management of your child legally must tell you about your child’s progress and development (Section 163, Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 (NSW).
If you are being case managed by an agency that’s not DCJ and is supportive, this could help in having frequent time with your kids, but it’s likely to vary depending on the agency and caseworker. One mum said:
“Then [ACCO] yeah, said I could have her unsupervised for a day. Then after I got this house, then my mum could supervise. So, my mum could bring her in and spend as much time as I wanted with her as long as my mum was here. Or an adult, like a reasonable adult… I would just have her in one of the rooms they have there and we’d never really done anything like I mean, I would take cupcakes and we would ice them and play games and I would take art and craft and stuff like that. We would sometimes go to the library but really, since she’s been with [ACCO], we go to the zoo, we’re doing a lot more. We could go, like we could just meet at [ACCO] and say okay, what do you want to do and she’d go oh, go to the library or go shopping or we could just make up our minds there and then.”
– Parent, Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home research
If some parents’ kids were placed in care far away from them, they would lean on their community to stay connected to their kids. One mum said:
“When I was separated and could only see them every second weekend, it was so hard to get through that two weeks, to wait to just see them. But yeah, I suppose I was in a way one of the lucky ones that had a community that worked, even my mum and dad. Certain members of the community out there would let me live at their house to keep me close to the kids.”
– Parent, Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home research
AbSec and our partners acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout NSW and their continuing connections to land, waters, and communities. We also acknowledge the lands on which these stories were told, the lands of the Dharawal, Yuin and Wonnarua people.
We acknowledge the Elders, leaders and advocates that have led the way and continue to fight for our children. We also acknowledge the Stolen Generations who never came home and the ongoing impact of government policy and practice on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, young people and families.
This website shares the experiences and advice of Aboriginal families involved in the NSW child protection system who participated in the Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home research at UNSW. We acknowledge and thank the families who generously gave permission to share their stories.
These experiences reflect what worked for those families and do not constitute advice or views of AbSec. AbSec recommends seeking independent legal advice for your own circumstances.
