Review of 2021 Census Topics

• NSW Association of Children’s Welfare Agencies, Sydney (permission granted).

Kinship care is defined as family-based care within the child’s extended family or with close friends of the family known to the child, whether formal or informal in nature (United Nations, 2010).
I am a researcher and advocate for policy and program development in the growing area of kinship care. There is now much evidence in the literature, as well as in the experience of social services staff working with vulnerable families, of significant levels of poverty and unmet need for financial and non-financial support among kinship care families. International evidence suggests that kinship carers as a cohort are older and poorer than foster carers.
I am frequently asked by policymakers and politicians how many children in Australia are living in kinship care, and how many kinship carers there are. I have been working with an ABS data analyst to obtain the best possible estimations of these numbers. Results have necessarily been very rough estimates, because the census does not include a suitable question about household member(s) who have primary 24/7 responsibility for children who are not that person’s biological, step or adopted children. We are also unable to determine the relationship between the person with caring responsibility and the child being cared for. For children under the age of 15 not living with a mother, father, foster carer or grandparent, another adult is reclassified as their ‘statistical parent’. This practice means that it is not possible to determine whether the relationship is that of aunt/uncle, older sister/brother, cousin, etc. I have been advised by the data analyst with whom I am working that changing the analysis algorithm to allow for these relationships to be reported would be possible within existing data processing fields available.
Another issue is that Census information about children is collected specifically for the age range 0-15. In current times, information about children is needed that embraces the full 17 years of legal minority, that is, age range 0-17 years. In our census analysis work we have been working around this by adding together data for children 0-14 and data about legal minors age 15-17 extracted from the ‘adult’ category 15-24 years.
We would like to see:
1) A small set of questions added to the Census 2021 that ask for information about which adults are responsible for the care of children whose parents are not co-resident, or who are co-resident but are not primary carers. (See draft question suggestions attached.)
2) A change to the process of analysis to remove the ‘statistical parent’ reclassification and allow details of family relationships to be reported and available for research and social planning purposes. (Please see Assessment Criteria 5.)
3) It would be wonderful to have the ‘child’ age category updated from 0-14 to 0-17 years, however we realise this may be impracticable within available resources.

There is growing awareness that Commonwealth government social policy does not take sufficient account of the existence and prevalence of kinship families, that is, family groups where children are being cared for by members of their extended family or by people in their community networks (‘family friends’), whether informally or formally (statutory placements). The National and State/Territory Children’s Commissioners are becoming increasingly concerned that such children are particularly vulnerable, and that they and they families have significant unmet needs for social support. There is also growing awareness among Members in both Houses of Parliament that changes to social policy are needed. These policy leaders are asking for accurate information about the dimensions of the issue. This information cannot yet be determined from the Census or any other administrative database (Kiraly, 2018).
Accurate data about the number of children in kinship care in Australia is also required for research purposes. While there have been research projects focusing on grandparent care in Australia, there is very limited Australian research about kinship care in the wider sense. There is a prevailing myth that kinship care is almost exclusively grandparent care, but no accurate data to determine what percentage of kinship carers are in fact grandparents. Even in the area of grandparent care, estimates of numbers are necessarily vague, as it is not possible to determine who are the primary carers of children in a multigenerational household (see for example, Brennan et al. (2013, Chapter 4).

Data about children in kinship care is needed to inform social planning for the Australian nation as a whole, and for individual States and Territories. It is also needed for specific populations such as:
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families.
• Children and families in culturally and linguistically diverse communities.
• Children in different age ranges: infants; young children; adolescents.
• Comparisons of the number of children in kinship care in higher and lower socioeconomic areas.

1) We have drafted a small set of linked questions as a starting point for ABS census question designers to consider. We consider that these questions are reasonably simple and would be easily understood, and that accurate answers can be readily provided by respondents.
2) The second change requested is a technical change to the process of data analysis; this would not affect respondents. Please see response to Assessment criteria 5.

Census respondents are currently asked detailed questions about who lives in their household and relationships between the individuals. These questions go little further in terms of intrusiveness into family life. The questions are likely to be easy to answer accurately.

Regarding our request for new questions:
 The information we seek can be gained through a short set of simple questions that will not require a great deal of explanation. We think these questions will be clear to respondents without lengthy instructions or explanation. As far as we can determine, the questions would not involve undue complexity in data coding and analysis.
Regarding our request for change to the reclassification of adults in a household as ‘statistical parents’:
 We have been advised by the data analyst with whom we are working that changing the data algorithm to allow for these relationships to be reported would be possible within existing data processing fields available.
NOTE
Given the presence in some households of various adults, the determination of a proxy measure for the number of kinship carers and associated specifications for data analysis has been quite challenging. We are also interested in knowing the specific relationships between kinship carers and children. Our data analyst has advised that it may be possible to identify actual relationships between adults and children in households from existing census data through a relatively minor modification to the current process of analysis. We understand that such a modification was made before the 2006 census to allow the grandparent care relationship to be identified. If another modification were possible along the lines of that relating to grandparents, we might be able to determine for the first time the actual numbers of kinship carers and children in kinship care in Australia.

Kinship care is an issue of considerable proportions in Australia as in other Western countries, and there is no indication that this will be different in the foreseeable future. Good social planning obviously depends on accurate data about prevalence of children and families in need, and about geographical areas of particular need. For example, Centrelink currently run a Grandparent Advisor service with eight Advisors for the whole country. This service is swamped by demand, yet is not officially even available to kinship carers other than grandparents. Accurate data would assist in reviewing the growing demand on this program with a view to its further development. It would also help in consideration regarding a wider range of Centrelink benefits and services to kinship carers in the future. Examples could be widening access to the Grandparent Child Care Benefit for all kinship carers, and giving kinship carers access to respite care services currently available to other designated Carers.
NOTE
The annual AIHW Child Protection Reports document the number of children in statutory kinship care (placements made by State/Territory child protection services) and the rapid rate of growth of these numbers (AIHW, 2010, 2018). It is generally believed that the total number of kinship care households (i.e. both informal and statutory care arrangements) is also growing, but there is no accurate data to determine the veracity of this belief. Time series data would thus be very useful both for research purposes and for social planning.

I have conducted extensive research of administrative data sets that may be relevant to obtaining information about the number of children in kinship care, their carers, and their circumstances (e.g. Aboriginality, ethnicity, income, housing, etc). My research has included communications with the experts and analysts who work on these data sets. The only data set that can potentially provide accurate data about the prevalence and characteristics of kinship care households in Australia is the Census. Please see Chapter 2 of attached 2018 research report Fairy godparents and fake kin for details of the search of administrative data sets.

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