Deanne
Content Warning: These stories are about violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation and may include references to suicide or self-harming behaviours. They may contain graphic descriptions and strong language and may be distressing. Some narratives may be about First Nations people who have passed away. If you need support, please see Contact & support.
Deanne is a First Nations disability support worker in her 60s. She has worked for more than two decades in youth detention centres, mostly with First Nations youth.
‘Children with disabilities and in particular First Nations people shouldn’t be placed in a general correction centre,’ she told the Royal Commission. ‘They can’t cope with the environment.’
Instead, there needs to be a solution that ‘fits those young people’.
‘Not just take kids out of their home, chuck them into detention and tell them now you behave yourself.’
Deanne said their problems just get worse in these facilities.
‘Especially when it comes to self-harm or health issues. Cultural separation. A lot of the young people that come in can’t understand what people are asking them, particularly those with things like autism.’
The punitive approach ‘doesn’t help those poor young people try and make the changes that we are all asking them to make’.
‘You do something wrong, the first thing they do is cancel your visits, cancel your contact with family. They know how much they are looking forward to that.’
Once she saw staff treating a girl ‘with severe brain damage’ like that.
‘All she would get is consequences and consequences. They stopped her phoning Mum, took away her family contact. Those things should not happen to people with disabilities. You should never use their family as a consequence.’
Prison staff are ‘combating negative behaviour with negative behaviour’.
‘I don’t see the understanding that’s helping these kids. How is it deterring them from recommitting crime?’
On top of that, she said children get no mental health care in detention.
‘They don’t dare use any of that therapeutic stuff anymore. There’s no time. It’s get here, get there, do this, do that, and if you don’t, lock them up on their own.’
Deanne has seen many children with disability put in prison ‘then just released into the general populace’.
‘Those young people get lost, and they are vulnerable. Other people take advantage of them. And hence, we lose them.’
The supports that once existed have gone.
‘I used to be able to do things like doing reintegration into community. Taking boys out of the youth detention centre, whether it’s meeting family, setting them up in flats.’
Without the supports, these kids end up ‘continuously incarcerated’ – and it’s very hard to ‘break that cycle’. ‘They get out, and then they’re back again for something … They really don’t have a chance.’
Deanne wants to see early intervention.
‘I know one young person who told people for years that he heard voices, but because he was young they wouldn’t diagnose him, they wouldn’t help him. And he is now no longer with us.’
‘We need to start helping children when they say they need help. We don’t listen to them. It hurts me that we lose young people, particularly with disability. And it could have been avoided.’
Disclaimer: This is the story of a person who shared their personal experience with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability through a submission or private session. The names in this story are pseudonyms. The person who shared this experience was not a witness and their account is not evidence. They did not take an oath or affirmation before providing the story. Nothing in this story constitutes a finding of the Royal Commission. Any views expressed are those of the person who shared their experience, not of the Royal Commission.