Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

Royal Commission Recommendation 52 proposes,That funding should be made available to organizations such as Link-Up which have the supportof Aboriginal people for the purpose of re-establishing links to family and community which hadbeen severed or attenuated by past government policies. Where this service is being provided toAboriginal people by organizations or bodies which, not being primarily established to pursuethis purpose, provide the service in conjunction with other functions which they perform, the roleof such organizations in assisting Aboriginal people to re-establish their links to family andcommunity should be recognized and funded, where appropriate.In response to Recommendation 52 the Commonwealth committed $1.9 million toIndigenous family tracing and reunion services and related functions to be spent over fiveyears beginning 1991-92. This funding is administered by the Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander Commission (ATSIC) which budgeted $927,817 for family reunionservices in 1996-97. This funding has been quarantined from Commonwealth fundingcuts in the current financial year.Evaluation of the implementation of Recommendation 52 should focus on two majorissues: whether the funding model permits the Indigenous services to respondappropriately to the diverse demands of each individual case and whether the funding issufficient to enable the services to meet the demand in a way which is timely and doesnot exacerbate the hurt already suffered by separated families or the emotional and otherdifficulties surrounding the reunion process.A flexible individualised response to the needs of each client is critical to thesuccess of these services. The diversity of clients’ experiences and current needs isconsiderable. Many clients experience chronic multiple and entrenched problems. Clientsmay be of any age. Each client’s experience of reunion will be unique and the range ofreactions from new-found family and community is wide. The complexity is compoundedby the desire of clients to recover their identity and culture against a background of denialand denigration of Aboriginality.… it might be that the person who’s trying to go back to their community really struggles withhow to deal with that return and really needs quite a lot of help in adjusting to the old identity thatthey believe they were brought up with and this new sense of identity which they feel is muchmore their real identity, and that’s a very complex issue to come to terms with in any individualperson as well as within a family (Lynne Datnow, Victorian Koori Kids Mental Health Network,evidence 135).Funding through ATSIC permits family tracing and reunion services to respondflexibly to the needs of each client. Services are available for people removed as children,families searching for children removed and foster and adoptive families as well. ATSICfundedfamily reunion services have developed a range of skills, a network of contactsand appropriate responses to diverse client needs relating to reunion. Link-Up (NSW),Link-Up (Qld) and Karu (NT) offer the following services.