Jarra is an 18 month old baby living in an Indigenous community in a remote part of the Northern Territory - in a small, isolated town with basic facilities, on traditionally owned land. The community has about 200 inhabitants and is closed to outsiders for cultural reasons - but it is possible for non-aboriginals to enter for official reasons.
Jarra is failing to thrive. He cannot speak and seems uninterested in his surroundings. He has had repeated chest infections and is underweight for his age.
His aboriginal family is unconcerned. They know he is not thriving but are treating him regularly with traditonal medicines and therapies.
The official (non-aboriginal) authorities are obliged to check on all Australian children. The health and social workers assigned to Jarra want to remove him from his family to get Western medical care. They say he is being neglected and should therefore be removed from his family.
Do you agree?
"Australian Bureau of Statistics population projection data for 30 June 2012 indicates that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children would comprise 4.72% of all children aged 0-17 years in Australia (AIHW, 2013); yet in 2011-12 they constituted nearly 33.6% of all children placed in out-of-home care. In all jurisdictions, the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children on placement orders was higher than that for other children. As of 30 June 2012, there were 13,299 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care in Australia - a placement rate of 55.1 per 1,000 children. In contrast, the rate for non-Indigenous children was 5.4 per 1,000.
www.aifs.gov.au/cfca/pubs/factsheets/a142092/ www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/08_2012/second_action_plan_0.pdf