Make a difference for Indigenous young children and their families.

Australia's Indigenous young children are the only group for whom participation rates in early childhood services is falling. An absolute and most urgent priority for the next Australian Government is to immediately develop and fund a long-term policy commitment and strategy to improve access, participation, attendance and retention of Indigenous children in early childhood services.

This strategy must acknowledge the particular issues facing Indigenous families, and support family functioning within Indigenous communities, by assisting families to meet the cultural and developmental needs of their children.

The strategy must be informed by, and developed with, Indigenous stakeholders and must include provision for real choice between services and the inclusion of Indigenous children in other early childhood services and their programs.

The Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) have identified nine issues relating to Indigenous families.

Key commitments political parties must make to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families
This is a summary of the pre-election briefing paper prepared by SNAICC to inform the policy work of all the major political parties in federal parliament.

1. A national apology for the Stolen Generations and their families.
2. Development of an Indigenous family support and parenting program.
3. Funding for facilitated playgroups for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
4. Development of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander healing and wellbeing program.
5. Development and funding of a national Indigenous childcare strategy. The immediate child care priorities that SNAICC wants a strategy to address are to:
   • recognise that the purpose of child care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families is more broadly focused on supporting children's development and supporting families to care for their children and that the current number of Indigenous specific childcare places meets only a small fraction of the need
   • recognise that multi-functional Indigenous specific child care is the only appropriate form of child care for many Indigenous families and that this form of child care needs to be supported and expanded across the country
   • immediately expand the capacity of current Indigenous specific childcare services
   • immediately establish new multi-functional Indigenous specific childcare services in areas of high need
   • develop a separate childcare accreditation process for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child care services and programs recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander approaches to child rearing and parenting.
6. National Indigenous children's services workforce development plan.
7. Re-funding of the SNAICC Resource Service (SRS).
8. Development of national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander out-of-home care standards and legislation.
9. National monitoring of the implementation of the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle.

This is an excerpt of the summary written by Julian Pocock and Julie Higgins and published in the Secretariat of National Aboriginal & Islander Child Care Newsletter.

• Read the complete 'Key commitments that SNAICC wants political parties to support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families' summary.
• Read the November 2006 edition of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal & Islander Child Care Newsletter (PDF).

Related resources
The priorities listed above reflect the content of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care's key policy framework documents, available on the SNAICC Briefing papers and publications page:

• Seven priorities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families (PDF)
• Achieving stable and strong out of home care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander children (PDF)
• 2007–2009 SNAICC strategic plan (PDF)

Visit these related pages of Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care website:

• SNAICC Resource Service
• Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care – Briefing Paper 2007 (PDF)

Early Childhood Australia has committed to five main issues for its election agenda:

• Climate change and sustainability
  
• Indigenous young children and families
  
• Parenting support
  
• Investment in early childhood
• Children's rights
  

We encourage all those who are involved in the care and education of young children to make your voice heard in the lead-up to this year's federal election.

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