No Child Left Behind: Insights from Reunification Research to Liberate Aboriginal Families from Child Abduction Systems

Abstract

Bring them home, keep them home is research based in New South Wales (NSW) Australia, that aims to understand successful and sustainable reunification for Aboriginal families who have children in out-of-home care (OOHC). This research is led by Aboriginal researchers, and partners with Aboriginal organisations. It is informed by the experiences of 20 Aboriginal parents and family members, and more than 200 practitioners and professionals working in child protection and reunification. This paper traces the evolution of Bring them home, keep them home which is now at the forefront of influence for NSW child protection reforms. Using specific examples, it highlights the role of research advocacy and resistance in challenging and disrupting systems in ways that amplify the voices of Aboriginal families and communities and embeds these voices as the foundation for radical innovation for child reunification approaches. The paper shares lessons being learned and insights for Aboriginal-led research with communities in the pursuit of restorative justice, system change, and self-determination. Providing a framework for liberating Aboriginal families from child abduction systems, this paper seeks to offer a truth-telling and practical contribution to the international efforts of Indigenous resistance to child abduction systems.

1. Introduction

Aboriginal1 and Torres Strait Islander children, families, and communities must be liberated from statutory child protection systems—or more accurately, child abduction systems2. Indigenous futures depend on this. Reminiscent of past genocidal and assimilationist policies, colonial states attempt to erode Indigenous cultures with each subsequent generation of children legally abducted and forcibly ostracised from their kin and culture. We are well beyond the point of crisis.

Liberation from child abduction systems means that Aboriginal children and families are free from the colonial violence of racist and oppressive regimes (Dettlaff 2024), the fear and distress that comes with being surveilled, investigated and biasedly assessed as a risk to their children’s safety (Roberts 2023), and the grief when their children are legally stolen (Newton et al. 2024b). Children and their families will not endure the abuse and injustices that come from every facet of the child abduction, out-of-home care (OOHC) industry, and children’s court processes (Blackstock et al. 2023, pp. 315–16). When Aboriginal families and communities are liberated, they will have the sustainable resourcing, autonomy and self-determination to care for each other (United Nations 2007), implement community-based responses, and provide nurturing and support to families when they need it, without judgement or fear of punishment or losing their children. Liberating Aboriginal children and families from child abduction systems importantly includes emancipating children currently held captive living in OOHC. This is called reunification. True liberation cannot be achieved while thousands of children remain imprisoned in OOHC, so my work focuses on the reunification space—simultaneously focusing on getting children home now while working towards the transformations needed to one day render child abduction systems obsolete for Aboriginal families.

This paper chronicles the Bring them home, keep them home research. It captures the research process and shares how the research has centred advocacy and systemic change at the heart of this work. It takes the lessons and knowing from the research and cultivates it into a call to action- to mobilise in alignment with Aboriginal liberation outlined in this paper. Many are already doing this work through grassroots, organisations and broader campaigns3, and this paper acts to crystalise what is being done within a broader framework to liberate Aboriginal families from child abduction systems. This paper is also a tribute to the hundreds of people who continue to shape the research, particularly the Aboriginal parents and young people who have entrusted us with their stories (Newton et al. 2025). The research has evolved, and focus shifted in response to the findings, the political climate, and the priorities of our research partners, participants and broader Aboriginal community-controlled sector. Our integrity has always remained firm and uncompromised, as our Why guides everything we do: Aboriginal children are not coming home from OOHC.

1.1. Terminology and My Positionality

This paper will dispel benevolent and passive language that dilutes the intensity and extent of violence and inhumanity children and families experience from child abduction systems, to instead use more accurate and often confronting language aimed to provoke thinking and challenge dominant discourses about families shackled within these systems. Crafting the language in this way unveils a truer experience of Aboriginal families silenced by the system (Coates and Wade 2007), and as researchers it is our obligation to honour and platform these experiences to their highest authenticity. I will interchangeably use the terms reunification and restoration, as the latter is the official term used in NSW.

I am a proud Wiradjuri woman and mother to three children. My grandfather was born and raised on Erambie Aboriginal mission in Central Western NSW. My father and I grew up on Gadigal land in Sydney, and I raise my children on Dharawal land in Sydney. I have been an academic researcher specialising in Aboriginal child and family research and policy since 2007. I am privileged to lead the Bring them home, keep them home research, which for me is more than just a research project. It is both an expression of, and my source of strength for, resistance.

1.2. Our Why: Aboriginal Children Are Not Coming Home from Out-of-Home Care

In Australia, and comparative international settler colonial contexts, Indigenous children and families continue to be oversurveilled and targeted for state-sanctioned abduction by systems that were supposedly established to keep children safe (Blackstock et al. 2023). Prior to the 1970s, all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed are considered part of the Stolen Generations as part of genocidal policies (HREOC 1997); however, the truth is that the Stolen Generations never ended and instead the state just adopted new methods and justification for abducting Aboriginal children and not giving them back to their families (Turnbull-Roberts 2023; Krakouer 2019).

The prevalence of systemic racism in child abduction systems has been well argued internationally (Roberts 2023; Dettlaff and Copeland 2023; Blackstock 2016), and in Australian contexts, this is an accepted explanation for the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in OOHC (Krakouer 2023; Davis 2019; SNAICC 2024). Australian scholars have proved that child abduction departments use racially biased tools to assess the risk and potential future risk to children, contributing to the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in OOHC (Jenkins and Tilbury 2024). A recent NSW report concluded that the NSW Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ), was not safeguarding the human rights of Aboriginal children in contact with the child abduction system as required under legislation and international Human Rights law (NSW Audit Office 2024).

Over the past couple of decades, the numbers of Aboriginal children entering OOHC have been steadily rising each year. To illustrate, at the time of the Australian government’s National Apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008, there were 9070 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in OOHC (Productivity Commission 2018, p. 7 of Table 16A.2). Today that number has increased by 62% to 23,9084 children at June 2023 (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2024, Data Table T3). Once children are captured by the child abduction system, it is very unlikely they will go home while they are still children. Reunification rates across the nation are poor, at just 16.4% for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children between 2020–20215 (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2022). From a longitudinal perspective, our previous research used NSW DCJ data and found a restoration rate of only 15% for the 1018 Aboriginal children tracked until June 2019 from the time of their abduction between May 2010–October 2011. The research exposed the oversurveillance and lack of preservation work with families, finding that 40% of these children were removed following just one or no substantiated risk of significant harm report. We also found that children who were abducted as infants were the least likely to be reunified (Newton et al. 2024a).

Contrary to the statistics demonstrating that the system is geared to abducting and imprisoning children in OOHC, the state claims to prioritise and value reunification and continued family connections following child abduction. For instance, across Australian jurisdictions reunification is the permanency preference for all children and legislations have enshrined the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle to safeguard Aboriginal-led decision-making6. In NSW the Aboriginal Case Management Policy developed by AbSec—the NSW Child, Family and Community Peak Aboriginal Corporation—was endorsed and published by NSW DCJ (NSW Department of Communities and Justice 2023). These, and many other policies are all mechanisms to, in principle, ensure that children return home to family, and at the very least remain connected until they get there. However, legislation and practice guidance are often open to subjective interpretation, and when neglected or misrepresented, there is little accountability or consequences (Libesman et al. 2024, p. 65). Instead, the result is more system inflicted damage and violence perpetrated against Aboriginal families, without restorative justice.

In short, Aboriginal children are not returning home because the system was designed to keep children once stolen. To mask this truth and promote the illusion of wanting to reunify children, the system must find clever reasons external to its own blame, as the cause for children not going home. Thus, child abduction caseworkers and service providers are trained to locate the problem and responsibility for unsuccessful reunifications in Aboriginal families themselves, and specifically, Aboriginal mothers who are often blamed for not protecting their children from their violent parent (Davis 2019). Parents are mandated to fulfil task after task to meet reunification plans and goals, with the expectation that each act of compliance, each tick of the list, will erode their deviant behaviour and bring them closer to their children coming home. Blame is also scapegoated at the level of poor practice and the inability of frontline workers to efficiently and adequately fulfil their duties, lack of adequate resources to support families, and availability of services (Collings et al. 2024).

Framing the problem and solution in this way absolves blame and accountability on the part of the system. This dominant narrative has effectively shrouded the real reason for Aboriginal children not coming home, and thus when reforms are posed for the system, stakeholders are tricked into believing that better practice and better-behaved parents is going to improve reunification outcomes. It might be that simple, if the system was just, fair and unbiased. On the contrary, this is why all reforms have failed. Libesman, Gray and Gray note that while reform efforts, which largely focus on improving practices, policies and engagement with families, are

well intentioned, they nonetheless offer little substantive change to structural barriers that have characterised colonial interventions with First Nations families for more than two centuries. Despite wide acknowledgement of the need for structural change, cycles of reform frequently reinforce the same flawed colonial logics and result in the same avoidable, poor outcomes.

(Libesman et al. 2024, p. 64)

Even when systemic and structural barriers are acknowledged, government solutions are always in ways that protect the system to ensure its survival and preservation, that is, fixing the system rather than resolving that it cannot be fixed because it is not broken: it is working perfectly well as it was designed. The government cannot face that the only logical path forward is to terminate the current system.

2. Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home

2.1. About the Research

Bring them home, keep them home is mix-methods community-based participatory research based in the Illawarra Shoalhaven region in NSW, Australia. The research aims to understand and inform successful and sustainable reunification for Aboriginal families who have children in OOHC. I am the primary researcher within a team of dedicated Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers7. This research partners with the peak body AbSec and three Aboriginal community-controlled organisations (ACCOs): Waminda- South Coast Women’s Health and Wellbeing Aboriginal Corporation, South Coast Medical Service Aboriginal Corporation, and Illawarra Aboriginal Corporation. These three ACCOs deliver Aboriginal child and family support and OOHC services in the region. The project was conceptualised with AbSec and Waminda for the funding application and we partnered with the other organisations once the project commenced. The Australian Research Council funded Bring them home, keep them home for four years to early 2026, and will then continue in various forms beyond this initial funding, including a 5-year grant awarded by the National Health & Medical Research Council from 2026. We are guided by an Aboriginal advisory panel, and ethics approved by the NSW Aboriginal Health & Medical Research Council and the University of NSW.

2.2. Qualitative Methods

2.2.1. Community Forums

We held three Community Forums in a location central for the range of services across the Illawarra Shoalhaven regions to attend. Each Community Forum was planned, led and co-facilitated with our partners, who also guided the invite lists. Representatives from all three ACCOs, NSW DCJ and a range of non-government organisations (NGOs) attended each forum. Most participants lived and worked in their local communities, and most participants were either Aboriginal or worked for an Aboriginal organisation. On average, between 40–50 participants attended each forum. About half attended all three forums, which enhanced meaningful community continuity and engagement in the journey. All Community Forums were interactive with a range of small and large group discussions, brainstorming, data analysis exercises, and conceptualising the desired future state for Aboriginal families. The first Community Forum, held in March 2022 introduced participants to the research and provided a comprehensive understanding of family and community needs and priorities across the region specific to child abduction intervention and reunification experiences (Newton et al. 2024b).

The second Community Forum in July 2023 was held after we had completed interviews with families and practitioners and began preliminary data analysis. This was an opportunity to share and seek feedback on some of the emerging research findings and ensure community and practitioners were involved in interpreting the research findings. We also engaged deeply with three case studies from families’ stories involved in the research, to illustrate systems abuse and missed opportunities for supporting families, and how the system and sector could be more accountable to families.

The third and final Community Forum in September 2024 focused on sharing both qualitative and quantitative findings, updating and seeking feedback on impact initiatives, and discussing the next steps to continue research partnerships beyond the current funding. This Community Forum was also a celebration of the journey and all that we had achieved in our partnership through community-based research.

2.2.2. Interviews

A total of 22 family members from 20 Aboriginal families (17 mothers, 3 fathers and 2 adult children) were interviewed for the research between April 2022 and August 2023. Participants were recruited through our partners and Barnardos Australia (an NGO particularly supportive of the research) and comprised the services’ current and former client families. Most families had lived or were currently living in the Illawarra Shoalhaven region. We kept in close contact with families following interviews, and at the request of several mothers, we held a series of online Parent Gatherings in September and November 2023, September and October 2024, and March 2025. These are powerful spaces where parents can share their common experiences, seek advice from one another, contribute their feedback and expertise to planning research impact strategies, and continue to contribute to the research as a form of data collection.

An additional 39 individual and small group interviews were conducted with practitioners and professionals working in OOHC, reunification, and legal roles in the Illawarra Shoalhaven region. These participants were from a range of services, including our partner ACCOs, NGOs, the NSW Children’s Court, and the NSW Aboriginal Legal Service. Overall, 19 of these participants were Aboriginal. Many participants also attended one or more of the Community Forums.

2.2.3. State-Wide Practitioner Forums

The research had initially proposed to have three community-based sites for the research in different parts of NSW. For a few reasons particularly the inability for regional and rural communities to commit to the research at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to pivot our approach for capturing perspectives across the state. With the support of our Aboriginal Advisory Panel, we held 9 online practitioner forums in February and March 2023, including one with the NSW DCJ State Aboriginal Reference Group (in June 2023) comprising Aboriginal caseworkers across the state. In total 84 practitioners attended the practitioner forums from a range of Aboriginal and non-government organisations delivering OOHC services to Aboriginal families. 46 participants across all practitioner forums were Aboriginal and between 6–17 participants attended each forum. Excluding the DCJ group, the practitioner forums were divided by region. These two-hour forums included an introduction to the research, an overview of OOHC and reunification statistics in the region, and a focused discussion to understand the needs and experiences of local Aboriginal families and practitioners interfacing with DCJ towards reunification.

2.3. Quantitative Methods

The quantitative component of Bring them home, keep them home, led by our epidemiologists, seeks to understand the scale and timing of child abduction system contact, the trajectory through intervention and OOHC, and reunification for Aboriginal children over their life-course using population-level linked data. This approach enables the analysis to centre the experiences of children over time, as opposed to centring service systems at a point in time. The qualitative findings, advice from the Aboriginal Advisory Panel and feedback from Community Forums has shaped the directions for analysis, so the statistics are most useful for the priorities and service needs of Aboriginal families.

3. Impact Initiatives

As with all social research, we expected to disseminate the research in a range of ways for maximum impact. We have written media and journal articles, and delivered many presentations at various conferences, roundtables, forums and workshops. A lot of our written work is in development. What was unexpected, are the following impact initiatives. None of these impact initiatives were preplanned but rather emerged organically through the research process. This highlights why it is critical for researchers to work alongside communities and key stakeholders every step of the way.

3.1. Know Your Rights Project

One aim of this research was to develop resources that our partners and local communities identified as useful for families and services when navigating child abduction systems. About a year into the research, Waminda approached us to develop Know Your Rights resources for parents to be better equipped and educated to understand the system when DCJ attempted to intervene in their family. At the time, a social work student was on her final field education placement with us, and it became her project to work closely with Waminda to develop the resources. This project was much bigger and more complex than ever anticipated and following her placement, our student joined the research team to continue working on the project.

The resources were initially a flowchart of the NSW child abduction system accompanied by more detailed documents covering all touchpoints of system intervention, from when DCJ first contacts the family, through to reunification and how families can challenge and hold DCJ to account. The resources were informed by the research findings and included quotes and stories of families we interviewed.

During a Parent Gathering, parents commented that this was a critical resource that would have immensely helped if available to them when they were going through the system. Their input helped us to refine the resources further, including the best format for accessibility. AbSec also recognised the importance of the resources and are now developing Know Your Rights as a website. We held four planning days with solicitors, our partner organisations, community experts, and during one session a parent expert and her teenage daughter attended to give feedback and work intensively with us on the different elements of the website. We tested the website in development with our third Community Forum and at one of the AbSec quarterly sector forums, and it is being fact checked with legal colleagues. Pending funding, we anticipate completing the website ready for launch in 2026.

3.2. Advocacy

Not long after starting interviews with families, it became clear that we were being called to extend our engagement with families beyond just the roles of researcher and participant; it was necessary that we could advocate for families involved in the research who were experiencing ongoing injustice. With permission from our Aboriginal Advisory Panel and research ethics committee, we developed an Advocacy Protocol. Advocacy was broad, and for example could include seeking parents’ permission to refer them to legal supports or discuss their case with employees at AbSec or DCJ who might be able to help. We also referred several families to the NSW Class Action against DCJ.

The Advocacy Protocol enabled us the flexibility to reach beyond the scope as traditional researchers and develop more meaningful and valuable relationships with families. The Parent Gatherings also became a site of advocacy, where parents would seek advice to a problem they were having with the system, and the group would share how they managed similar problems.

Our advocacy work extended to the wider sector more publicly in May and July 2024 in the form of two truth-telling campaigns via LinkedIn. Here we shared quotes and stories of families’ accounts of systems abuse every day in May in the lead up to National Sorry Day on 26 May, and then in July we shared an Act of Resistance quote from families over NAIDOC8 week. This was a significant opportunity to educate and raise awareness about the ongoing experiences of systems abuses and injustices from child abduction systems. This advocacy strategy was extremely effective, resulting in significant engagement both nationally and internationally, from professionals and lived experience experts, both within and outside the child and family sector. It also led to more families reaching out for advocacy and wanting to share their story, and practitioners seeking our advice with current system barriers they are experiencing with clients. The truth-telling campaigns reinforced the importance of the Know Your Rights project as it is clearer than ever that families and service providers alike need access to knowledge and education to challenge the system.

3.3. The Aboriginal Authority for Restoring Children

The Aboriginal Authority for Restoring Children is our most daring impact initiative. If successful, it will completely transform the NSW child abduction system. Through the qualitative findings we identified that families with children on long-term orders were generally invisible to services. Many families in our research had younger children who had never been stolen, yet their older children remained in OOHC. We also found that many children self-placed with their parents as teenagers, forcing a reunification by default. This was a critical opportunity to bring many of these children home. With the support of our Aboriginal Advisory Panel, the research team began advocating for a restoration taskforce. We tested the idea of a restoration taskforce at the AbSec Conference in June 2023 and at our second Community Forum in July 2023. There was immediate recognition that this was an important idea, and while the language of ‘taskforce’ was not appropriate, it cultivated urgent action, which is what is needed.

In August 2023 I was invited by the NSW Minister for Children and Families to present our research at her Aboriginal Child Safety and Wellbeing Forum. Over 100 Aboriginal leaders from across NSW were invited to direct the Minister on her priorities for the child abduction system. I used this platform as the only Aboriginal academic presenting at that event to advocate for an independent, Aboriginal community-led restoration taskforce to reunify Aboriginal children on long-term orders. The idea was supported at the Minister’s Forum and the establishment of a Restoration Taskforce became one of her priorities for reform.

The remainder of 2023 and all of 2024 was spent designing the model and planning for the establishment of what is now officially named the Aboriginal Authority for Restoring Children, or visually invoking families’ experiences, the ‘AARC’. As a research team, we facilitated planning sessions at AbSec quarterly sector forums, our third Bring them home, keep them home Community Forum, and many discussions with a range of organisations and stakeholders. In its most ambitious and aspirational form, the AARC is a multi-year state-wide Aboriginal community-led restoration program aimed to reconnect and restore all Aboriginal children in long-term OOHC to their families. The AARC will be implemented through independent case reviews and casework by ACCO based restoration teams, with policy and practical support from AbSec as the peak. The restoration teams will work closely with the child’s current case managing agency and other providers and stakeholders in the care team across sectors. The AARC will be overseen by an Aboriginal Governance Group and lived experience parent experts. The AARC has a strong focus on family healing and restorative justice. It envisions additional benefits to system transformation that enables the bolstering of the ACCO sector, reframing the way child abduction and children’s court systems perceive and interact with Aboriginal families, and provides a mechanism for the NSW Government to adopt ways of working that recognise and respect Aboriginal authority, expertise and experience.

The research team works closely with a group of committed colleagues from peak bodies, ACCOs, and experts in the child and family sector to progress planning, troubleshoot barriers to the proposal, and seek sustainable funding. We collaborated with DCJ to bring the vision of AARC to fruition. In early 2024 DCJ advised of their intent to support us to seek funding from NSW Treasury, and in mid-2024 demonstrated their commitment to the AARC by funding an AARC Practice Lead and consultants to develop a Business Case for NSW Treasury. ACCOs most interested nominated themselves as early adopter sites and more broadly the NGO sector recognises the need for the AARC and are ready to support its commencement.

On the flip side, the sense of progress in AARC planning has also been met with substantial setbacks. Being an innovative proposal that promotes genuine self-determination within Aboriginal communities, DCJ struggled with this autonomous approach and sought to undermine the validity and feasibility of the model. This stalled much of our work for the first half of 2024. DCJ’s concerns were filtered up to the Minister, who remained committed to a restoration taskforce but refused to recognise the AARC, despite no other restoration taskforce proposed within or external to government. The terminology of ‘AARC’ vs ‘Taskforce’ continues to be a point of contention for the NSW Government. I believe this is because of the word authority and they are struggling to endorse a name that explicitly requires them to relinquish control of decision-making over Aboriginal children to Aboriginal communities.

In mid-2024, with changes in the DCJ executive team, our partnership with DCJ improved. In October 2024 DCJ posed two funding pathways for 2025/2026, one that was very high risk of receiving no funding through a national scheme, or the much more feasible option to include the AARC within a DCJ reform package. While the latter would mean a potentially smaller amount, DCJ assured us the AARC would be prioritised in the distribution of funds. After agreeing to this option, we were then informed that we would receive even less of the distribution of DCJ reform funds. I felt like we had been tricked into settling for scraps of funding for a program that ambitiously yet feasibly aspires to turn the tide of dismal reunification practices and rates in NSW. DCJ insisted this was not the intention and just the way government works. This felt like gaslighting, and the bottom line was that in the context of all the other reforms, Aboriginal child reunification was not DCJ’s priority after all.

This was a defining crossroads, and an opportunity to recalibrate. I found myself asking: how can we be leading an initiative on community control and self-determination, if we need to ask for it and rely on the government to fund it? Now that the Minister has made clear that she has not committed to the AARC we have licence to pursue our original intent: for Aboriginal families and communities to reclaim and exert authority and self-determination in the reconnection and reunification of their children.

The ultimate goal of the AARC is to liberate all Aboriginal children and families from the child abduction system. Reunification is our starting point because while there are children still trapped in OOHC liberation cannot be achieved. No child will be left behind. To do this effectively we must take the time to get it right. We continue to aspire to the AARC as a program, and alongside seeking funding possibilities, the next phase of our work will focus on preparing the sector for the AARC. This entails increasing sector-wide literacy and advocacy skills to challenge the system, unlearning parent deficit narratives, and working to address the range of DCJ, children’s court, and other systemic barriers to restoration.

These impact initiatives—the Know Your Rights project, advocacy, and the AARC—would not be needed if the system performed the way it claimed. Instead, it is performing in the way it was designed, to keep children. This is why Aboriginal families cannot trust and cannot rely on the system to emancipate their children. Only by taking back our own control and removing any interface between systems and Aboriginal children and families, can they be safe and free from child abduction systems oppression and abuse. I now turn to some lessons in alignment with this realisation and suggest a framework to achieve this aim, interweaved with some examples and reflections to illustrate strategies suggested in the framework.

4. Lessons and Reflections to Liberate Aboriginal Families from Child Abduction Systems

To address the problem of Aboriginal children not coming home from OOHC, a multifaceted approach is required. Liberating Aboriginal families from child abduction systems will take a very long time. I continue to grapple with the urgency of supporting families now and working towards long-term system transformation. I know I’m not alone in this frustration, all activists and communities of people fighting for change feel this way, which is pathetically comforting—that there are so many people despairing in the name of slow social justice (Hayes et al. 2023). What this means, is that it is important to diversify strategies for liberating families: when one strategy is stalled or not working, you can turn your efforts and attention to others.

Drawing on my insights and experiences through the Bring them home, keep them home research, I propose a framework for liberating Aboriginal children and families from child abduction systems comprising three interrelated and overlapping pillars: (1) through research and education, (2) Aboriginal-led from the grassroots, and (3) from within and with systems (

Table 1. A framework for liberating Aboriginal children and families from the child abduction system.

Through Research and Education	Aboriginal-Led from the Grassroots	From Within and with Systems
Build/use research evidence to expose systemic injustices, influence change, and empower Aboriginal communities	Initiatives conceived and led by Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) and Aboriginal Peak Bodies	Relinquish control and decision-making to Aboriginal organisations and communities
Build/use research to contribute to Aboriginal self-determination and data sovereignty	Broader sector support for the advocacy, activism and action led by Aboriginal communities	Challenge and transform current systems through working with allies within systems
Prepare the next generation of child and family professionals in advocacy and challenging systemic oppression	Develop and implement local initiatives and community driven models and approaches	Work across multiple sectors and systems to level the responsibility of child ‘protection’ across society
Support the advocacy work and needs of Aboriginal stakeholders	Celebrate and leverage resistance at the individual, family, and community levels	Resource, fund and support the work of ACCOs and Aboriginal Peak Bodies
Raise public awareness to dispel myths and erode stigmatising language.	Create space for safe and ongoing truth telling, healing and restorative justice.	Mandate transparency and accountability mechanisms and implement consequences when not honoured.

).

Using the Bring them home, keep them home research process and outcomes as an example, I will demonstrate how we have worked across this framework to support reunification for Aboriginal families. Firstly, the research and impact initiatives were conceived and championed by Aboriginal communities and organisations. This is a significant advantage for our work, because it is grounded in Aboriginal self-determination and control from the outset, enabling us to “speak what is otherwise silenced, make transparent what is otherwise concealed, and make meaningful what is otherwise forgotten or devalued” (Tuck and Guishard 2013, pp. 19–20). Without this approach, transformational initiatives led from the grassroots to liberate Aboriginal families, such as the AARC and Know Your Rights, may not have been conceptualised.

Further, our approach to the research has enabled ‘theorizing back’ to empower and restore dignity to Aboriginal families. Tuck and Guishard explain that theorizing back “engages everyday people in rejecting and reclaiming theories that have been used to disempower them … Theorizing back shifts the gaze of research onto the institutions and structures that maintain settler-colonialism” (Tuck and Guishard 2013, p. 20). Through the truth telling and resistance of Aboriginal families involved in the research we have challenged the misinformed assumptions of the parent-deficit ideology that dominates child abduction systems. Now that we have uncovered this lie, our efforts are focused on shifting this dominant narrative, and using our research to raise public awareness, contribute to enhancing the advocacy skills and knowledge across the sector, and educating future professionals and advocates about this truth. This was/is our aim with the social media campaigns, Know Your Rights project, and the AARC.

I am often confronted with the reality that while the current system exists and has parental responsibility for thousands of children, advocates cannot effectively work towards the end goal of liberation without engaging with the system. This is why working from within and with systems is a critical pillar of the framework. The system is made up of people. A few are activists working within the system to dismantle it, some are well-meaning allies that contribute to the cause, while many are jaded by the ritualism (Davis 2019) and culture of procedural busy work and parent-deficit thinking, or just complicit in their privilege as a public servant. Activists and allies working within the system are useful to help navigate the massive and siloed bureaucracy, to leverage their social capital in brokering relationships with other influential state agents, and to provide valuable information about developments regarding policies, practice and reforms. It is important to engage with the activists and allies but not rely on them; they are agents paid by the state to do a job answerable to the state, and while they may be valuable to support our work, our work cannot be accountable to them, or contingent on their approval.

Partnership with government is never going to be equal. They control state funding, wield greater influence, and ultimately have the power and control over decisions that Aboriginal communities do not. This has been a glaring realisation working with DCJ on the AARC. I have often felt powerless in this work. Most of my experience of 2024 was spent feeling like I was being subjected to DCJ stalling tactics and tricks, an experience that at the broader level mirrors that of Aboriginal families every day trying to get their children home (Newton et al. 2025). This is a good example of why it is important to use multiple strategies for liberation across the framework. When planning and action with government stalled, I focused my time and energy on other advocacy and impact work, such as mentoring students to challenge systems, the social media campaigns, and Know Your Rights.

When there are delays or setbacks, it is challenging to not feel the emotional rollercoaster of it in your body and spirit. This is what it means to be an Aboriginal researcher in this space—you are fighting for the survival and futures of your people and feel a deep sense of responsibility as a failure when things are not progressing. I know this is unfounded, as much of this is beyond my control. But some things I can control. I am in a privileged position as a researcher in that I am independent of government. I have the autonomy and freedom to use my platform and influence to expose systemic injustices and report on evidence in ways that Aboriginal communities and organisations cannot when they are reliant on DCJ funding, and worse, when DCJ have their children hostage. That is my power, and that is how I can be useful to this liberation movement.

This framework has been developed as an accessible way to articulate and guide the range of strategies that advocates, researchers, activists, practitioners and other stakeholders can use in the pursuit of liberating Aboriginal families from child abduction systems. While my focus is on reunification, this framework can also be used to organise and conceptualise approaches for Aboriginal liberation from systems in other ways, for example, to divert and prevent contact with the system.

5. Conclusions

This paper has provided a chronicle of the Bring them home, keep them home research process and impact initiatives, offering lessons and insight into conducting participatory research with Aboriginal communities that centres advocacy and challenges systemic injustice to reunify Aboriginal children with their families. In doing so, I have also highlighted some of the tensions of working with and around government, who remains unwilling to relinquish control of Aboriginal children to Aboriginal communities. Through a proposed framework, this paper has also demonstrated the diverse ways that research can support the critical work of liberating Aboriginal families from child abduction systems.