Officials discuss Child Endowment for grandparent carers
In a series of letters, officials discussed providing government payments to Aboriginal grandparents raising grandchildren.
It is safe to say that if the position in the two cases mentioned were to arise in the general white community ... additional pension and other allowances would be paid.
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In line with kinship arrangements, it was common practice for Aboriginal grandparents to care for their grandchildren. However, government officials didn’t widely recognise this practice.
In 1967, the Department of Social Services (DSS) discussed providing payments to Aboriginal grandparents. These grandparents were already receiving Old-age Pension payments and were caring for their grandchildren long term. In these letters, government officials made the decision that the pensioners were entitled to Child Endowment to help them raise their grandchildren.
Earlier in the file, the Perth DSS office had expressed the view that Aboriginal grandparents shouldn’t get a payment unless they formally adopted the child. They said mothers retained some custody of a child even if grandparents were the primary carers. The file also included comments about children being born outside of marriage, which reflected common negative views about family structures. These comments shouldn’t have been relevant to the Department's decisions, as marriage status didn’t affect eligibility for Child Endowment.
In the letter included here, A Sellwood, Canberra-based Assistant Director of DSS, disagreed with the Perth office. He said that the general rule was that the person a child lived with for a long time was accepted as the guardian for Child Endowment purposes. Sellwood cautioned against applying a different attitude and policy for Aboriginal people. However, he also suggested without evidence that it was possible that Aboriginal people might ‘collect children for the purpose of extending pension entitlements’.
Director-General of DSS, LB Hamilton, decided in favour of the pensioners in this case. He stated the children should be considered in their grandparents’ custody for ‘endowment and pension purposes’.
After 1966, officials weren’t meant to factor in people’s Aboriginality into their decisions about payments, however, these documents show this was still happening.
At the same time that Aboriginal caregivers within family were being questioned about their eligibility for payments, institutions and missions were being regularly paid Child Endowment on behalf of Aboriginal children, including children who had been removed from their families (Jebb 2002:248).
Access to appropriate government payments for Aboriginal grandparents who were caring for children came up as area of concern again in the 1980s.
This excerpt is of 2 letters. This internal correspondence was kept in a file by the Department of Social Services. The file was later transferred to the National Archives of Australia, which holds it as part of the national archival collection.
Access these letters through the National Archives of Australia online catalogue RecordSearch. Go to pages 57 and 58. As harmful views are expressed in other parts of the archival file, please take care if using the RecordSearch file viewer. This excerpt was selected to ensure there were no people or communities identified.
Citation
National Archives of Australia: Department of Social Services; A884, Correspondence files, 1909–1974; A2864, Reports of inspections of settlements, missions, stations, etc Western Australia at which social service payments to Aborigines are made, 1962–1967.