Actioning children’s rights in out-of-home care in NSW: A focus on the right of family connection

In Australia, children’s rights are incorporated in standards that must be met by institutions and organisations that care for, educate and/or provide services to children and young people. Organisations that provide out-of-home care (OOHC) must also meet rights-based standards to receive and maintain accreditation by state and territory bodies with statutory parental authority. As OOHC casework practitioners, we regard upholding or, better, actioning rights as the core basis and moral justification of casework with and for children and young people in OOHC. At the same time, we are aware of and witness the painful and ongoing legacy of statutory casework practice and its negative impacts on the rights of children, young people and their families. The genesis of this commentary was an invitation to the lead author to present at the Children, Trauma and the Law conference in 2023. The purpose of the presentation was to highlight for a non-caseworker audience the relational dynamics and time involved when actioning, or giving effect to, the rights of children and young people in OOHC. The presentation drew on the author’s experience of casework practice in government and non-government OOHC organisations in NSW and provided three examples of rights-based casework practice. In this commentary, we develop the rights-based themes of that presentation. We describe a national consensus that the rights of children and young people in OOHC must be prioritised. We also set out key aspects of the most important reviews of OOHC in NSW in the last two decades and return to the three casework practice examples in the original presentation. In our view, the national consensus and these reviews have shaped contemporary casework practice in NSW for the better. In particular, the attention and efforts of OOHC organisations and their caseworkers are now more attuned to a right of family connection and the impacts of family separation. This brings a more empathetic and historically informed perspective to OOHC casework practice and, in so doing, a stronger focus on the rights of children, young people and families who are in contact with the child protection system, and its twin, the OOHC sector.