Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

and appropriate behaviours considered to be necessary for parents to act in a ‘socially acceptable’way (Jamrozic and Sweeney 1996 pages 26 and 90).In the 1970s the expectation that governments provide greater social equality and therecognition that inequalities underlie social problems gained currency. Theseunderstandings provoked a shift within welfare departments from protection toprevention and assistance. In the 1980s the re-emergence of a focus on abuse, particularlysexual abuse, in welfare work facilitated an ideological slip back into the notion ofwelfare workers as saviours of children from morally deficient individuals and families(Jamrozic and Sweeney 1996 page 98).We have seen that Indigenous families were historically characterised by theirAboriginality as morally deficient. There is evidence that this attitude persists. A focus onchild-saving facilitates blaming the family and viewing ‘the problem’ as a product of‘pathology’ or ‘dysfunction’ among members rather than a product of structuralcircumstances which are part of a wider historical and social context (Gilbert, Thomas,Dingwall et al 1983). Indigenous families face both race and class prejudice among manywelfare officers.Indigenous efforts to retain their childrenIndigenous communities have fought consistently to keep control over theirchildren. Resistance to separations has taken various forms.There are no studies solely devoted to opposition by Aboriginal people to the removal of theirchildren. It is a history that demands to be written, one that would provide a fascinating and tragicaccount of a struggle that has been at the core of the battle for survival of Aboriginal people. It isa subject that would highlight the role of Aboriginal women – and men in the protection of theonly guarantee for their survival when they had little or no material possessions and negligiblecivil rights. Resistance moreover, did not occur in confrontational ways alone; more often thannot it was through evasive means, given the absolute lack of power of Aboriginal People (SNAICC submission 309 page 4).The formation of national Aboriginal organisations in the 1960s and 1970s followedlocalised struggles for Indigenous peoples’ rights, including the rights of families andchildren. The effects of Aboriginal separations and placement with non-Aboriginaladoptive and foster carers were brought to general public attention at the first, second andthird Australian Adoption Conferences in 1976, 1978 and 1982 and at the FirstAboriginal Child Survival Conference in 1979.During the 1970s the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Care Agencies(AICCAs) were established. In NSW the Aboriginal Children’s Services was formed in1975. Delegates at the First Australian Adoption Conference in 1976 encouraged theformation of the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency.The Agency is geared to service delivery and community development. It aims at ultimatelyproviding an autonomous community centred service for children, based on the notion that therealready exists within the Aboriginal community, multiple and diverse resources which can be