Evidence Library

Recordkeeping and Rights of the Child Research Program, is a transdisciplinary research agenda investigating how multiple and lifelong rights in records and recordkeeping can be recognised, respected and enacted in child welfare and protection systems utilising digital and networking technologies.

This submission outlines their support for the recommendations of the Yoorrook for Justice Report (2023) for both urgent reforms (Recommendations 3-26) and comprehensive systems transformation (Recommendations 1-2) across Victoria’s Child Protection System. They believe that a vital part of this is re-imagining and re-designing the data, information and recordkeeping infrastructure that underpins the current system.

This submission outlines the difficulty in obtaining support for a child with developmental delays. Despite notifying Child Protection and initiating a referral, it took 1210 days to receive help from a Speech Pathologist. It notes that the lack of timely support for developmental delays is causing lifelong implications for vulnerable children.

Laura Griffin is a legal academic of Anglo settler heritage at La Trobe University Law School has had the privilege of undertaking or supervising research on historical and ongoing injustices against First Peoples, focusing on colonial laws and legal institutions. They coordinate the Law School’s Indigenous Strategy and prepared a Scoping Paper on Decolonising the Law Curriculum.

Their submission compromises a series of documents. This file summarises how each document relates to the work of the Yoorrook Justice Commission (‘Yoorrook’) and/or to upcoming Treaty negotiations, and offers recommendations on that basis. Some of this research has been undertaken individually, and some in collaboration with colleagues or former students.

This submission is from a teacher with experience in Victorian schools and teaching within the Juvenile Justice system. They write this submission due to the consistent discrimination and oppression faced by First Nations Australians, which they have witnessed both professionally and as a student. They discuss the erasure of First Nations voices and histories in education, the impact of this on students, and call for First Nations voices to be amplified and the truth of Australia’s brutal history to be told.

Anglicare Victoria outlines in its submission how facilities operated by its founding agencies included many children’s homes that accepted First Nations children who had been forcibly removed from their families and communities and were separated from kin, culture and Country. It acknowledges the extensive nature of forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families across Victoria and Australia. It outlines its historic practices around historical records and its services today in responding to requests for files and records, as well as its work to be culturally safe in its current practices.

This submission is from a takatāpui (LGBTQIA+ Māori) rōpū (group) based in Narrm. They make this submission in the hopes it contributes to the healing of the wounds of colonial violence.

The submission covers:

1. background regarding their whakapapa as a rōpū;
2. the kaupapa of their submission & rōpū experiences;
3. their expression of support for Aboriginal kaupapa as Indigenous manuhiri in Victoria;
4. and further acknowledgements

It also includes a waiata (song) described as a “a love song to Aboriginal land and peoples”.

This submission discusses the unfair treatment by police, hospitals and courts of a mother whose children are no longer under her care.

Thelma Chilly, is a proud multi-clan nation woman with ties to the Wiradjuri, the Mutti Mutti, Watiwati, Wamba-wamba, Barapa Barapa and Yorta Yorta nations. In this submission she wants to tell her story, about her ties to religion and how colonisation has impacted community. She shares her story of growing up in Robinvale, recalling fond childhood memories of church and community life but later learning of the harsh realities and mistreatment her community faced. She emphasises the importance of truth-telling about the mistreatment in missions and institutions.