The New South Wales government will review a child protection tool that disproportionately affects Aboriginal children – and that has not been updated in the state for more than a decade.
The controversial system known as “structured decision making” (SDM) has been in use since 2010 to screen for at-risk children.
The minister for families and communities, Kate Washington, said: “We are committed to significant structural reform of the child protection system, because the current arrangements are not delivering the outcomes we want to see for kids.
“It is crucial these reviews are done in consultation with Aboriginal people and communities.”
It is understood the reforms will include a review of the SDM risk assessment tool. Advocates have long raised concerns about the tool and the government now accepts it does not make equitable decisions about Aboriginal children.
Using the tool, child protection caseworkers answer a series of questions to assess a child’s future risk of harm. Their risk is classified from “low” to “very high”.
Queensland abandoned several SDM tools in 2022, after researchers from Griffith University found racial bias and risk factors that were more likely to affect Aboriginal families facing historic disadvantage and discrimination.
The tool deemed previous involvement in the child protection system, larger families and younger children – all more common in Aboriginal families – to be risk factors, said Brian Jenkins, who led the Queensland study.
Aboriginal families have historically been reported to child protection at much higher rates than non-Aboriginal families and are more likely to live in multi-family households, especially in regional and remote areas.
“This can create a feedback loop where factors superficially associated with being reported to child protection – rather than being subject to maltreatment – are given more and more weight,” Jenkins said.
He found the SDM used in Queensland was more likely to classify Aboriginal children as high risk when they did not require intervention.
“This was exacerbating the longstanding growing problem of Indigenous over-representation in child protection,” Jenkins said.
About 45% of the 14,723 children in out-of-home care in NSW are Aboriginal.
The number of Aboriginal children taken into care in NSW has risen every year since 2015. Only 4.5% of the NSW youth population is Aboriginal, but in 2016 36% of children removed were Aboriginal. By last year, the figure was a staggering 47%.
A risk validation study of the SDM tools has not been completed in NSW since 2013, despite the recommendation of its developers, the US non-profit Evident Change.
In its 2013 review, the group said “periodic valuations” were needed to ensure the risk assessment was “calibrated to the cultural and demographic mix of families in NSW” and that the tool should have three risk categories rather than four.
These recommendations were not implemented by the former government, NSW parliament has been told. This means some Aboriginal children may have been kept in the protection system longer than was needed.
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In response to questions on notice in January about the 2013 risk validation study, the government said: “The proportion of Aboriginal families with a subsequent ‘risk of serious harm’ report was 49.1% (higher than the overall rate for other families of 38.3%).
“Eighteen per cent of families had a subsequent face-to-face assessment and approximately 10% had a subsequent finding of ‘in need of care and protection’ compared to rates of 30.2% and 16.8% for Aboriginal families,” it said.
Jenkins said it was “a huge problem” there had been no follow-up validations of the tool.
“I would think that you at least have a responsibility to make sure that this is based on current data,” he said.
The chief executive of Evident Change, Kathy Park, said the company began work in 2021 to conduct a full risk validation study of the SDM tools in NSW and challenged claims the tools were racially biased.
“These tools support equitable assessment in child protection, particularly when utilised with quality assurance, regular reviews and a sound practice model,” she said.
AbSec, the NSW peak group for Aboriginal children and families, said it was “staunchly opposed” to the use of the SDM tool when deciding whether to remove children from their parents.
AbSec’s chief executive, John Leha, said it was “a racially biased system that contributes to the gross over-representation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care”.
“Queensland has already scrapped the tool and NSW needs to follow suit.”
Do you know more? Email lorena.allam@theguardian.com or abogle@protonmail.com
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