Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

Once each person is reunited with their family, it’s the beginning of a slow process of getting toknow their family and learning about their community. Support and counselling of the manyunderlying issues, is normally required as an ongoing process for many years … (Link-Up (Qld)submission 397 page 4).Going home is fundamental to healing the effects of separation. Going home means finding outwho you are as an Aboriginal: where you come from, who your people are, where your belongingplace is, what your identity is. Going home is fundamental to the healing processes of those whowere taken away as well as those who were left behind (Link-Up (NSW) submission 186 pagexi).It is essential for Aboriginal people to ‘have a country’ … There is [the need for] re-education ofcountrymen and the Land Councils who have been forced to forget the Stolen Generations …(Rosie Baird presentation included in Karu submission 540, pages 29-30).Link-Up (NSW), Link-Up (Qld) and Karu (NT) are committed to assisting allaspects of reunion. The Inquiry however is not satisfied that the funding they receiveadequately takes the need for cultural renewal and reunion into account.Most worryingly many of the remaining family reunion services are so constrainedthat they are unable to accomplish all core reunion tasks much less attend to clients’broader and longer-term needs. Failure to appreciate the significance of ‘culturalreunions’ by supporting them financially seems to spring from assimilationist thinking.At the very least it is a failure to acknowledge and redress the damage of assimilationpolicies thereby permitting its perpetuation in future generations.Coherent policy baseThe inequality in the distribution of ATSIC funding for reunion assistance belies anyacceptance at the Commonwealth level of the right of all affected families to familyreunion assistance. This in turn suggests that services are funded on an ad hoc basis.There is no sense of an underlying policy objective driving Commonwealth spending inthis area. The current arrangement removes governments from accountability foroutcomes. That would be acceptable if funding were adequate to enable family reunionservices to respond fully and quickly to demand. This is not the case however.The virtual absence of State and Territory funding has been mentioned. InsteadIndigenous services tend to rely on the States for co-operation, for exampleresponsiveness by State record agencies to requests for records. The Inquiry has beenimpressed with the level of co-operation between Indigenous services and recordagencies. The government record agencies in the NT represent a notable exception withIndigenous services having to ‘advocate’ repeatedly for their co-operation. As describedin the discussion of access to records, Indigenous user services are routinely involved innegotiations for improved record access guidelines and link-up workers are eitherformally or informally ‘accredited’ researchers for the purposes of accessing records. Atthis level, then, there is a commitment to facilitating family reunions by inter-agency co-