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

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.