WHY
CHILD SAFETY IS EVERYONE’S BUSINESS
A new approach to protect and nurture our vulnerable children
We have a problem and we need your help.
Right now, more than 170,000 children are in contact with the child protection system in Australia and, for 68% of those children, this is not their first contact. In Queensland, 25,000 children have been in contact with the child protection system; in Brisbane and Moreton Bay, the number of children in contact with the system as increased by more than 34% between 2016 and 2021. 7,174 Queensland children under the age of five were subject to a child protection notification in 2021.
In 2020-21 the Child Death Review Board considered the deaths of 55 children. This is alarming and something needs to be done fast.
Across Australia, government bodies are struggling to cope with the dramatic rise in reports of child abuse – up 7.3% in the past 12 months – while the number of foster carers in Queensland is steadily decreasing.
The facts are clear. Simply put, our system is struggling, and our community desperately and urgently needs a new approach.
The solution is Bindi Bindi Place.
Image credit: Bindi Bindi Place and ARUP
Bindi Bindi Place is a purpose built, 7-day shared care centre, using a proven model for supporting our most vulnerable children.
Bindi Bindi Place will support children and babies under 6 years of age and their parents, breaking intergenerational abuse and mapping out a better future for participating families.
This new and alternative model to protect and care for these vulnerable children and at-risk families is needed immediately and is based on the forward-thinking Abecedarian model and delivered by Communify.
This model will focus on:
early and intensive intervention
breaking intergenerational cycles of abuse and neglect
prevention rather than treatment
The first Bindi Bindi Place will be located in north Brisbane.
Why we need Bindi Bindi Place
Based on a proven approach used in the US and Australia (Victoria), Bindi Bindi Place will be a purpose-built, high quality, multidisciplinary specialist care centre, operating up to seven days a week, and will adopt an enriched Early Years Education Program.
Culturally inclusive practices will lay the foundations for participation by every child and family that attends the centre. This will serve to strengthen children’s self-identity and recognise the importance of kincare and the wider community in parenting children. The majority of the operating costs will be sourced through the Commonwealth Child Wellbeing subsidies that have been established to give extra help to families where a child is considered to be at risk of harm, abuse, or neglect, in formal foster care or formal kinship placement or in the care of the state, territory or Minister.
Bindi Bindi Place will also have specialists such as child psychologists, behavioural experts, allied and physical health practitioners who will have regular contact with children living in high-risk family environments.
Integral to Bindi Bindi Place will be an attachment-focused, trauma-informed, primary-care model with small teacher to child ratios. This means that every child will be allocated a key specialist who is that child’s primary carer.
The goal of this model is to allow significant attachments for children who may be experiencing attachment disorders in their homecare environments. This is particularly crucial for the growing number of children moving through the Queensland foster care system.
An important part of the care model is to provide the children with at least 75% of their daily nutritional needs and any required healthcare.
Building trusted relationships between centre staff and parents is critical. Parents will be encouraged to be highly involved in the program and invited to spend regular time alongside staff to further develop their parenting and caregiving skills.
Why under six years?
Recent data shows an alarming increase of reported abuse and neglect in children under six years. This age group are the most vulnerable as they don’t have a ‘voice’ or have regular contact with authorities, educators or leaders within the community.
Over the past decade, multiple reviews of the current system has identified the need for ‘eyes on’ vulnerable children.
In infancy and early childhood, social, emotional, cognitive and physical experiences shape neural systems in ways that influence functioning for a lifetime. Children under six years of age, who have been exposed to abuse, frequently start school with cognitive problems, experiencing academic delays, and deficits in executive function skills, difficulties with attention regulation, time perception deficits and disruptions to the body’s stress response.
These issues often remain with them through their life and see them interacting with the mental health, addiction and the justice systems.
It is for these reasons Bindi Bindi Place will deliver a tailored program for children under six who are considered at risk of entering the child protection or are in the foster care system.
Why we need your help
Bindi Bindi Place is an initiative of Communify, a not-for-profit organisation that specialises in delivering crisis, early intervention, recovery, care, wellbeing and inclusion programs for people experiencing challenges that expose them to risk and vulnerability.
Communify has the strong support of a steering committee of volunteers who are committed to having a number of Bindi Bindi Places throughout Queensland to protect our most vulnerable children.
When it comes to at-risk children living in dangerous environments, it’s everyone’s business. It’s not a question of why you should donate, but when and how.
Our government authorities are at capacity.
The number of foster carers in the system are decreasing at a steady rate and children are slipping through the cracks due to a struggling and at capacity system.
It’s time for the community to support a new model that protects our most vulnerable children. These children need our help now.
Donations contributed will go directly towards the development of Bindi Bindi Place centre and the ongoing operations required to provide a much-needed safe haven for vulnerable children in today’s communities.
Bindi Bindi Place will be unlike anything else on offer in Queensland.
The benefits it will deliver are extraordinary – for the children involved, their families, their neighbourhoods and the broader community.
This is an opportunity to help solve problems before they begin, and to develop a blueprint that could change the face of child protection across Australia.