Target 12

Measures

• Number of First Nations children (0–17 years) in out-of-home care.


• Rate (per 1,000) of First Nations children (0–17 years) in out-of-home care, by sex and over time.


• Rate (per 1,000) of non-Indigenous children (0–17 years) in out-of-home care, over time.

Available by

• Sex: males, females, persons.


• Remoteness Area (AUS only): Major cities, Inner and Outer regional, Remote and Very remote.


• Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage (IRSAD) (AUS only): quintiles from most disadvantaged to least disadvantaged.

Data period

• AUS, STE (excluding data by sex): 2023


• STE data by sex: 2022


• Time trend data: 5-year period (2019 to 2023 for AUS), 4-year period (2019 to 2022 for STE).

Data source

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) Child Protection National Minimum Dataset (CP NMDS) via the Productivity Commission website (PC 2023; AIHW 2023e).

Region types

Main structures: Australia, states and territories.

Suppression

Measure based on publicly available data with no further suppression rules applied.

Notes

• Numerator includes children in out-of-home care including where a financial payment was offered but declined by the carer.


• Relevant population is calculated from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population estimates and projections at 30 June of the reference period.


• 2019 (to 30 June) was the first year that a single nationally consistent definition of out-of-home care has been applied across all states and territories. Prior to this, reporting of out-of-home care was not nationally consistent, and therefore historical data are not provided for this target.


• Data by Indigenous status are influenced by the quality of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identification of young people in the CP NMDS (not stated categories are reported separately in the data table).


• Remoteness Areas are defined by the Australian Statistical Geographical Standard (ASGS) and based on the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia which uses the road distance to goods and services (such as general practitioners, hospitals and specialist care) to measure relative accessibility of regions around Australia (ABS 2023f).


• IRSAD quintile analysis based on ABS IRSAD 2021 which focuses on both advantage and disadvantage, using SA1 as the building block. Data are reported by IRSAD quintile that are determined at the Australian level and exclude children with unknown or unavailable SEIFA score (ABS 2023i).