The little Aboriginal boy is 12 years old, but he’s already lived a lifetime of trouble. He’s seen his father choke his mother amid a barrage of alcohol-fuelled domestic violence (DV). He’s watched his mother abuse his siblings, been left to wander the streets late at night stealing food and acting up, and his school attendance is patchy. He’s seen things no child should witness and is now copying that behaviour in his own violent crime sprees. This kid hasn’t been invisible to his Northern Territory community, the police, his teachers or a child protection system that’s meant to protect him. He has been in plain sight from the time he was born.
He was just an infant when safety notifications began piling in to the Department of Children and Families, the government agency that collects these reports and decides when, and whether, to intervene. In his dozen years, this boy we’ll call Tommy, has been the subject of about 100 notifications relating to neglect, lack of supervision, exposure to repeated domestic violence and parental alcohol abuse. The first substantiated report, relating to DV, occurred in his first year of life. The long and sorry trail of alerts from police, shelter workers, teachers, and community members – up to five in a single month – build a picture of a lost kid who was not deemed to need care and protection until more than a decade after that first validated notification.
By the time he was removed from his family he was endangering his own life with risky behaviour and allegedly committing serious violent criminal offences that are before the courts. And he’s not alone. A number of Northern Territory cases show children living in perilous situations for years while reports are screened in or out for investigation and cases are opened and closed. Reports of filthy homes filled with drunk adults, kids exposed to repeated drug use and violence, general lack of supervision and sudden falls in school attendance were deemed to “not meet the threshold to investigate”. Children reportedly staying in a home with a registered sex offender: no further action.
A report of a mother not providing food, clothing, medical needs, and the children leaving the home to scrounge for food: no investigation. In some cases that are screened in, the situation is resolved through supports such as medical intervention, parenting programs and housing. In others, the protection reports keep coming for years – and the traumatised child has moved from victim to perpetrator. In a court case in February, Justice Judith Kelly stepped through the background of a 16-year-old Indigenous teen who robbed a service station with a knife. The department received 48 notifications about the teen from 2009 to 2025; 18 were investigated and seven were substantiated involving emotional and physical harm, and neglect.
“It seems to me that, other than taking you into care for three days when your mother was too intoxicated to care for you … Territory Families did nothing about any of these instances of substantiated neglect, and many other reports that they determined were not worth investigating,’’ Kelly said. A clutch of other recent court cases reveals the severely deprived backgrounds of kids being sentenced for serious offences where the words “traumatic childhood” are on repeat. The spotlight has been on the Northern Territory’s embattled child protection system and the dire living circumstances of some children following the death of five-year-old Kumanjayi Little Baby, who was allegedly abducted from the Old Timers town camp in Alice Springs on April 25.
Conditions in the home where the little girl was left to sleep on a mattress on the floor were squalid and it was revealed she had been the subject of a dozen child protection notifications since infancy, including six in the last few weeks of her life. It is not known how many notifications, believed to include exposure to domestic violence, proceeded to investigation or were substantiated – that’s being considered by an external review led by former NSW police commissioner Karen Webb. But examination of multiple other cases shows many mandatory reports from frontline health, police and social workers do not meet a threshold for investigation.
“The whole system is set up to look like they’re taking action but they’re actually doing nothing at all,’’ says one frustrated senior police officer. “I’ve seen plenty of Department of Children and Families notifications get finalised the same day they’ve been submitted, with an investigation apparently ‘not required’.’’ If a matter proceeds beyond the initial report, meetings are held, reports are completed, safety plans are created to connect kids and adults with services, and concerns may be referred to Strengthening Families case meetings. Safety frameworks guide how workers deal with children in risky or unsafe home environments but sometimes investigations can remain open for years without resolution.
A former child protection worker, who did not wish to be named, said cases and notifications can be overlooked or not quickly addressed due to ongoing caseloads, staffing pressures and the sheer volume of calls. The department has a large workload and staff have said they are under-resourced and overburdened with complex cases: last financial year staff processed 23,668 notifications (many involving a single child or family) leading to just 4917 investigations, with 29 per cent of those substantiated, according to the department. In 2023-24, 81 per cent of notifications related to Aboriginal children, and 66 per cent of substantiated notifications, identified domestic violence as a contributing factor.
Under NT laws, all adults must report if they have a reasonable belief that a child has suffered, or is likely to suffer, harm or exploitation. This can lead to the notification of minor incidents – a mother yelling at her child in the supermarket – but it’s often frontline workers who report more serious conduct. A former NT domestic violence shelter worker said she was often in despair at the revolving door of cases. “These poor women come in with their little kids, they leave and come back again, and nothing seems to have changed at home where these kids are being exposed to unbelievable violence. “I just can’t see how the caseworkers can stay on top of it all.’’
The issues that have surfaced since Kumanjayi Little Baby’s death are not new. They have arisen in coronial inquests and other reviews over the years and were investigated by former children’s commissioner Colleen Gwynne in her report on the rape of a two-year-old Indigenous girl by a 27-year-old man in 2018. The little girl required a blood transfusion and surgery for her injuries and was found to have the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea. Gwynne found that prior to the rape the child and her siblings were well-known to Territory Families along with the police and education departments. Just over 50 child protection notifications were made for the children from 2002 to 2018: 25 were investigated and 13 substantiated.
“The examination of this particular child’s life highlights critical intervention points where the system has failed her and her siblings,’’ the report said. “Timely, responsive, and meaningful intervention must be provided to vulnerable children and their families if outcomes are to be improved. Or alternatively, where there has been no improvement in a family’s circumstances, relevant action is required to safeguard children, including the application for protection orders and formalisation of kinship care arrangements when required.” The Northern Territory government this month announced changes to child protection laws with a universal principle to list safety as the primary consideration in these cases, regardless of background.
Child Protection Minister Robyn Cahill claimed workers had become fearful of removing Aboriginal children from their families and “being accused of being racist and creating a Stolen Generation”. “Every child matters regardless of where they come from, their race or religion. I am not prepared to turn a blind eye and abandon another generation of families and children,” she said. “Where it is safe to do so, we want children with their families, but where it is not, we will act decisively to give children the permanency, stability and care they deserve.” The NT government’s proposed legislative amendments have been widely condemned by advocacy and legal groups fearful they go too far.
There is concern they will water down the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle, which aims to keep Indigenous children connected to family and culture by ensuring, where possible, that kids removed from their parents are placed with kin or community. UNSW Scientia professor Megan Davis blamed bureaucratic ineptitude and poor practice for problems inside the child protection system, saying no government wanted to grapple seriously with resources at the front end of the child protection system. “It is easier to blame the placement principle than to confront the realities of poverty, addiction, infrastructure and overcrowded housing, family violence and under-resourced support services,’’ she wrote.
“Parents cannot turn their lives around without support. There is nothing cultural or inevitable about Aboriginal child removals or child deaths.” North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency chief executive Ben Grimes agreed all children deserve safety and stability. “Our concern is that these laws expand the state’s intervention powers without ensuring families can actually access the supports they need to safely care for their children,’’ he said in a statement. “When it becomes easier for the government to step into family life without clear concerns about immediate harm, every parent should understand how significant these changes are.”
Emeritus Professor Patrick Parkinson, a Queensland specialist in family law and child protection who now provides expert advice in child protection cases, says basic practice has always focused on keeping a child with their parents. Parenting programs are offered along with drug and alcohol and domestic violence and housing support services. “But if the writing is on the wall that the child will not be adequately parented and will not get support from extended family, it’s better to remove the child to a stable, safe and nurturing place,’’ he says. “If you leave things too long, it can be too late for that young person.” Several cases show a pipeline of notifications – relating to neglect, lack of education and exposure to violence – that end with the child committing their own violent crimes and ending up in juvenile justice.
Parkinson says a high number of notifications that did not proceed to investigation did not mean there was nothing worth investigating. “We don’t take sufficient notice of the cumulative picture and the experience of the people notifying who are very often at the frontlines of providing services,” he says. Parkinson says individual notifications may not signal an emergency. “But cumulatively, they tell you, or should tell you, that this child will not grow up to be a healthy adult unless something changes.” The issue, he says, is finding suitable homes for these traumatised children amid a shortage of foster carers nationwide. Even under the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle, only 25% of Aboriginal children are placed with kin or community in the Northern Territory.
“So we keep going on with more reports and more deaths and more blame. But unless something can be done to tackle the very high levels of violence and abuse in these communities, the problem will remain because there are only so many homes to place these children in,’’ Parkinson says. The department’s Deputy CEO Karen Broadfoot said the safety and wellbeing of children and families was their top priority. While acknowledging recruitment pressures, she said vacancy rates had been reduced from 40 per cent to less than 25 per cent. The department has a large workload and staff have said they are under-resourced and overburdened with complex cases.
Source: Compiled by APN from media reports
Print This Post