Who cares? A study of diverse care arrangements in Australian society

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily of the Commonwealth Government or the Department of Family and Community Services.

The Diverse Care Project being conducted in the Department of Family and Community Services has identified a number of instances in which formal administrative arrangements for paying family assistance do not fit well with the family structures of various groups.

Family assistance payments contribute to stronger families through supplementing family income. The intent of the payments is to assist with the costs of having and raising children.

Family Allowance was paid for long-term, ongoing care and assumed that a child would benefit when payment is made to a ‘primary carer’ who is usually a woman. That assumption is valid for a majority of Australian families and works when the family is stable and parents have care of children from birth to adulthood. Yet, as the Diverse Care project has already demonstrated, the assumption is not valid for a range of minority groups within the total family customer population.

Course of the Diverse Care Project

In the first phase of the project we drew qualitative data from several series of focus groups, workshops and consultations. We have since moved to the second phase, which involves testing the findings by setting up a Statement of Care pilot with more flexible payment approaches for Indigenous family groups in five locations around the country.

Phase two of the Diverse Care project might best be described as a program of continuous process and policy improvement.

Characteristics of sample

Three broad groups of family types were selected for study in the first phase of the project, which was completed in December 1999. The interim findings cover concerns raised by Indigenous family groups, a selection of newly arrived ethnic community and family groups, and a number of other groups whose family structures can be regarded as atypical.

All groups demonstrated varying degrees of child mobility, that is, children moved from one relative or carer to another for a range of reasons or were shared by two or more carers.

Indigenous family groups

Indigenous family representatives were consulted in remote, regional and urban areas. Their family structures were essentially large extended families that in many instances shared care of children between several relatives over varying periods of time.

Indigenous workshop participants were invited to discuss issues relating to their children and families. They spoke of their child-raising patterns, their concerns with child neglect, and the difficulties they faced in dealing with government at all levels. Isolation and communication barriers exacerbated their problems. They were emphatic about the mismatch between their non-nuclear family structures and the conditions they are required to meet under family assistance payment arrangements. Significantly, their use of the term "Kids’ Money" to describe payments reflects an accurate understanding of the policy intent.

The payment arrangements for family assistance payments do not accommodate the high mobility of Indigenous children. A primary carer must notify Centrelink whenever a child moves into the care of another person, even within an extended family group. Only if the new claim is accepted is the ‘losing’ carer’s payment cancelled.

Indigenous families saw these arrangements as a source of tension within extended families. They wanted ‘government policies’ to respect and support the role of their extended families. Their cultural and family obligation meant they cared for children as they arrived from others without asking for financial contributions from the child’s parents or previous carers.

Workshop participants reported many disputes over Family Allowance monies. They also reported that the use of Family Allowance for other purposes such as alcohol and drugs resulted in under-nourishment and other forms of child neglect.

Child protection authorities used child mobility (or changes of care even within extended family groups) as evidence of child neglect. Indigenous women said this made them even more reluctant to tell "government" that children had moved into the care of another person.

Indigenous participants wanted some way of ensuring the Family Allowance could follow each child as he or she moved from carer to carer. Payment arrangements do not currently facilitate payment when a child moves between different carers within the same family group. There was an obvious need for more flexible arrangements and perhaps a rethink of the notification provisions to accommodate shared child- raising practices.

Culturally and Linguistically Diverse families

The sample of ethnic families participating in project consultations was selected from Centrelink records of Family Allowance customers. Focus groups were held in 1999 with customers from the following cultural and linguistic groups:

• Arabic speakers
• Pacific Islanders i.e. Samoans and Tongans
• Horn of Africa i.e. Somalis, Eritreans, and Ethiopians

Groups were selected after discussions with the Multicultural Customer Segment in Centrelink, the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We also consulted migrant and ethnic community bodies including the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council of Australia, Migrant Resource Centres, and Ethnic Child Care Development agencies. The groups were selected in an effort to include refugees, recent arrivals and long-term migrants to reflect their varying experiences and views.

The groups represented families and children who had arrived in Australia in the past five years. As groups, they were expected to retain strong cultural links that impacted on family structures and child raising patterns. The objective in talking to these people was to identify their caring arrangements and to identify any problems.

When looking at the circumstances of some culturally and linguistically diverse families we found that they experienced situations comparable to Indigenous families. These arose partly from their extended-family structures.

For many participants, moving to Australia meant relinquishing the support of extended families until they were able to bring them here. In the interim, some families took on the more nuclear family structure widely practiced here while others retained the extended family networks with family members who already arrived.

None of the three ethnic groups perceived any difficulty in meeting the requirement to nominate a primary carer with ongoing care of a child for payment. In practice nonetheless, they often shared the caring and decision making of their children with those members of their extended family living in Australia. A typical example of this was that children were placed in the care of relatives when parents went overseas for long periods of up to a year.

Muslim women indicated that caring and financial decisions were shared with their partners and said that occasionally relatives from within the extended family made decisions for them. This included help with child raising and respite-care needs. The Muslim community influenced the placements of foster children within the cultural group because participants said children needed to learn customs and become familiar with cultural issues.

Families with other diverse care contexts

The third group studied included a mixed group of Family Allowance customers, including sole parents. Families were invited to participate in the project because of their possible experience with children going in and out of foster-care placements, institutions and respite care. They included foster carers, representatives of foster-care agencies and grandparents who cared for grandchildren whose parents were repeat drug offenders.

Single-income families were also represented, along with separated or divorced parents who shared the care of children under court orders or parenting plans. Some paid child support and many received it. In general, the group reflected the increasing incidence of divorced, separated and blended families with children, and atypical (or non-nuclear) caring and child raising arrangements. The group had a degree of child mobility with children moving between carers for a range of reasons.

Some sole-parent participants said they needed better access to respite care because they feared state child-protection authorities would remove their children. They said caring for children as a sole parent was stressful and without relief and put the children at risk of abuse.

Foster/substitute care is one element of contemporary family relationships impacting on the lives of around 16,000 children each year. Where children are removed for their own safety from their parents or carers by State and Territory child protection authorities, families lose entitlement to family assistance once it is established that a new carer (a foster carer) has ongoing care of the child. There may be a delay before a magistrate makes an order for the child to be removed temporarily or permanently or it may be ruled that the child may be returned as soon as possible to the family. In many cases the situation when a child leaves is unclear to the losing family and the foster carer. Parents said that because they did not know how permanent a placement would be, and hoped the child would return quickly, they were reluctant to tell Centrelink. The uncertainty of the situation meant they were sometimes overpaid Family Allowance.

A foster carer claiming Family Allowance for a foster child led to payment to the parent being cancelled, which reportedly had a negative impact on the relationship between the parent and the foster carer. Low-income parents faced the loss of a significant part of their resources when losing Family Allowance for a child. This sometimes meant losing access to accommodation deemed suitable for the child’s return.

All State and Territory child-protection authorities practice the gradual restoration/reunification of foster children to their natural or birth parents. Such processes take many weeks or months with varied success. Families said they needed Family Allowance to help them meet the costs of having the child back. They were not entitled to payment during these transitional phases but foster carers continued to receive payment despite not having the child constantly. Recognising the costs families face without Family Allowance supplementation, some States and Territories meet some of the costs arising from the restoration, but a number do not.

Key Issues: variety and continuity of care

Looking at the child-raising patterns in the three groups studied has shown that it is frequently difficult for carers within the groups to establish qualification for family assistance. Each group consulted in the project reported issues arising from two key areas of concern.

First, a variety of people may share the care of one child. Indigenous children, for example, move between different carers within and beyond extended family structures. It is difficult to identify one primary carer when a child moves as often as several times a week.

The second factor is mobility: children move, for example, between foster parents and natural parents. Ethnic children move from carer to carer. Such mobility, producing frequent changes of care, conflicts with the assumed ‘ongoing care’ requirement for entitlement to family assistance.

These issues are being pursued in two ways. First, by testing more flexible payment arrangements in a Statement of Care pilot with volunteer Indigenous families. Second, we are considering new approaches for children moved between carers at the intervention of State and Territory welfare authorities.

Statement of Care Pilot

The Statement of Care pilot is seeking to address some of the problems arising from the variety of carers and the mobility of Indigenous children. The pilot commenced in May 2000 and is likely to continue until February or March 2001. It is being conducted in Wreck Bay, Nowra and Wollongong, NSW; Yarrabah/Cairns and Cherbourg in Queensland; Suburban Melbourne, and Port Augusta, in South Australia.

Participants in the process are involved in forming care groups with other members of their extended families. They also agree to pass on family assistance to the person who currently has care of the child as a means of ensuring better outcomes for children.

The success of the pilot depends on group and individual understanding of the agreement to redirect funds, and on peer-group pressure. Each care-group member is responsible for passing around family-assistance funds as each child moves to other carers. They are not required to formally tell Centrelink the child has moved.

Care groups in the pilot are being supported in each location by small project teams comprising Indigenous Liaison Officers, local community representatives and other Family and Community Services employees.

The local project teams are monitoring progress in each location, and we plan to hold workshops with participants at the end of each leg to get first-hand information of their experiences and reactions. There is already evidence that families have found the arrangements empower them to manage their own families in a way that suits their natural child-raising patterns.

Foster care: the short-term transitions

Similarly, we are looking at new approaches to address broken periods of family assistance entitlement for children in short-term foster care. We are investigating ways of ensuring families going through the transitional phases of restoration processes can meet their children’s costs more easily. A possible response would be to direct payment to families involved in a restoration process as if they already had ongoing care of the child. Cost, of course, is a consideration.

Conclusions

On 16 April 2000 the Prime Minister announced the government’s "Stronger Families and Communities Strategy". As Family and Community Services Executive Director, Robyn McKay has said:

"We will have the privilege of modelling at every level the partnerships that lie at the heart of new social policy directions. At a practical level we can make an enormous difference to the experience and opportunities of Australian families and communities by enabling and encouraging partnerships which need not depend on government at all.

We will be breaking new ground on a number of fronts at once. The Strategy requires us to become facilitators – rather than national "experts"-- who support families and communities to bring forward initiatives which will best address their local needs."

That includes better outcomes for children in extended-family groups and those at risk. The Diverse Care Project is highlighting previously unacknowledged realities for certain groups in Australian society. We have identified two factors that affect the policy intent of families’ assistance.

It is always tempting to say that the solution lies in cutting through "bureaucratic red tape" and make arrangements tailored to every individual’s circumstances. In many of the cases we have studied, the issue is not whether people continue to remain eligible but whether they are in a position to report every time their eligibility changes. The family structures of the identified groups do not match the assumptions embedded in the arrangements designed for the majority of Australian families.

One approach could be to require all families to adjust to the norm and either meet normal eligibility requirements or go without income support. Clearly that approach would not meet our policy commitments to building stronger families and stronger communities. Just as clearly, as findings from the Diverse Care Project indicate, the enforcement of such requirements is unlikely to be effective. For these groups the standard requirement of reporting changes of care whenever a child has moved out of "ongoing care" is often impractical.

The Diverse Care project suggests that encouraging recipients to take responsibility for ensuring that payments are applied to the costs of caring for children is likely to be more effective than on the enforcement of arbitrary payment procedures. That approach expresses the principle of "mutual obligation" in seeking better outcomes for children regardless of differences in family structures.