My Journey into ‘Child Protection’ and Aboriginal Family Led Decision Making

Gender-Based Violence and Carceral Feminism in Australia: Towards Decarceral Approaches

“…As we demonstrate later in this article, in more recent times, similar speaking positions have been rearticulated in calls to criminalise coercive control where Indigenous women's voices have been spoken over by white women. Moreover, there is a general failure to acknowledge Indigenous women as victims and survivors in public advocacy on a range of forms of gender-based violence, including sexual violence and missing and murdered women, as identified in an open letter led by McGlade andLongbottom to Our Watch in 2021 (McGlade et al 2021. See also Carlson 2021).…”

“…Yet Indigenous scholars, activists and advocacy organisations are regularly silenced, overlooked and ignored in public debate about avenues for addressing gender-based violence (Moreton Robinson 2000;ALRC 2017;McGlade 2019;Carlson 2021;Deslandes et al 2022;Cripps 2023). Recent law reform commissions, such as the 2017 Australian Law Reform Commission's (ALRC) "Pathways to Justice" Inquiry and the 2020 Victorian Law Reform Commission's (VLRC) inquiry into 1 In Australia, the term "domestic and family violence" is preferred to "domestic violence" as it accounts for a range of harmful and violent behaviours in broader family and kinship networks rather than only violence that occurs between current or former domestic partners.…”

“We don’t want you to come in and make a decision for us”: Traversing cultural authority and responsive regulation in Australian child protection systems

“…In WA, almost half of the Aboriginal children in care are placed with non‐Aboriginal carers, despite the fact that there has been an emphasis over decades (Sommerland, 1977) on keeping Aboriginal children with their families and communities and ongoing calls for adherence to the Aboriginal Child Placement principle (Arney et al, 2015). The over‐representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the child protection system is unlikely to improve without full consideration of the contributing historical harm and without placing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices at the centre of decisions that are being made about individuals, families and communities (Gordon, Dew & Dowse, 2019; Maslen & Hamilton, 2020; McGlade, 2020; Robbins, 2015; Sherwood, 2013). Doing so assists with trauma and grief and has self‐protective properties for individuals and communities (Black, Frederico & Bamblett, 2019; Chandler & Lalonde, 2004).…”