Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

Inquiry to examine all services applicable to Indigenous people, because all are‘available’ to those affected.The examination is further confined to services and procedures provided bygovernments or by churches who were involved in caring for forcibly removed childrenas responses to the history and its effects. Many services are provided by Indigenouscommunities. When these are funded by government it is appropriate that the fundingmechanism and quantum be evaluated by the Inquiry. However, community-basedservices are otherwise for Indigenous people themselves to evaluate and reform if that isconsidered necessary.Term of reference (b) requires the Inquiry to evaluate the effectiveness and theadequacy of the relevant services and procedures, of ‘responses’ to the effects of forcibleremoval. To make a useful and thorough evaluation which can assist in the developmentof improved responses, the Inquiry has considered each response within two distinct butoverlapping frameworks.With respect to government responses we consider first the framework establishedby governments themselves based on the recommendations of the Royal Commissioninto Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Second we propose a framework that satisfiesAustralia’s human rights obligations and takes account of the levels of need identified bythis Inquiry.In this Part we outline and evaluate the three principal government responses to thecontinuing effects of separation:1. provision of access to personal and family records,2. provision of funding to Indigenous services assisting family reunification, and3. provision of services to address the individual and family well-being effects offorcible removal.We briefly describe the response of the churches in the final chapter of this Part.Our first evaluation of each government response takes as its starting point the statedor implicit objectives of that particular response. We ask, ‘What does the response aim toachieve?’. Then, ‘Have these objectives been achieved?’. Achievements are comparedwith aspirations. We conclude that achievements do not match aspirations. Moreover, theaspirations themselves are often minimalist. The major reasons for this are a limitedunderstanding of the Royal Commission recommendations, failure to understand andincorporate human rights goals and ignorance about the size of the problem and theextent and seriousness of the need for services. If government responses to the effects offorcible removal are to be adequate in the future, they must be established within aframework of Indigenous human rights and with a commitment to healing the effects offorcible removal for which governments bear responsibility.