Indigenous mothers losing child custody due to housing policy failure, report says

Abstract

Research finds children are ending up in out-of-home care simply because they don’t have a safe place to stay.

Indigenous women and children have so few ways to escape domestic and family violence that mothers are losing custody of their children simply because they don’t have a safe place to stay.

New research has found Indigenous women are losing their children to the out-of-home-care system “through no fault of their own, but rather as a consequence of systemic failures in housing policy and availability.”

There is such a disconnect between housing, Centrelink and child protection services that “the familial and cultural continuity of Indigenous people is at risk,” the latest Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) study has found.