Article by Joseph Carbone, courtesy of The Australian.
The question of how to reconstruct families that have become dysfunctional and stuck in “the welfare state” is central to Indigenous affairs in the most troubled remote towns and communities, Gija Walmajurri elder Ian Trust says.
Mr Trust, 73, from the East Kimberley town of Kununurra, told the Bush Summit on Friday that the rise of welfare, easy access to alcohol and breakdown of family structures had created a cohort of Indigenous children who felt that nobody loved them.
He offered the story of a child welfare worker who was apprehensive about visiting an Indigenous teenage boy – a prolific offender – at Western Australia’s Banksia Hill detention centre.
The welfare worker had expected a tough kid but instead she found the boy crying in his cell. He told her he just wanted somebody to love him. “You look at Alice Springs … these kids are like that,” Mr Trust said.
Mr Trust is the national chairman of Empowered Communities, an alliance of 14 leaders from every state and the NT that seeks to speak directly to government.
The alliance’s work has been slow but at times highly effective.
In some cases communities have been able to redirect millions of dollars of funding by pointing out services and programs that are duplicates or do not work and nominating those that get results so they can be scaled up.
Mr Trust also runs the Wunan Foundation in Kununurra, an organisation that believes economic and social development must go hand-in-hand. Its most recent project is the purchase of a resort that employs 17 local Indigenous people.
The foundation worked with locals to get them “job ready” because it was hard for a person who had never been employed to begin a full-time job without some training and preparation.
“If you don’t have a role or a purpose in life, you don’t have a reason to get out of bed,” Mr Trust said.
He convinced the WA government to create a transitional housing program in the Kimberley that had become an incentive for unemployed Indigenous adults to find and keep a job.
In the past, people on welfare would likely lose their subsidised government rental home if they worked because their incomes would rise beyond the threshold.
However, under the scheme, parents who find work are invited to rent a house at a discount – and rent to buy if they wish – so long as they keep their job and their children go to school.
