Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children face greater risks to their safety-including higher rates of child abuse and neglect, sexual assault, and hospitalisation and death from injury than non-Indigenous children, according to a paper released last week by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
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The paper shows that during 2011-12, Indigenous children aged 0-17 were nearly eight times as likely as non-Indigenous children to be the subject of substantiated child abuse or neglect (42 per 1000 children, compared with 5 per 1000).
In NSW, Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory in 2012, rates of sexual assault reported to police among Indigenous children aged 0-9 were two to four times the rates among non-Indigenous children in these jurisdictions.
"Between July 2010 and June 2012, the rate of injury hospitalisations among Indigenous children aged 0-17 was 1.3 times that of non-Indigenous children," said AIHW spokesperson Dr Fadwa Al-Yaman.
The most common causes of these hospitalisations were accidental falls, followed by transport accidents and assault.
The hospitalisation rate for assault for Indigenous children was more than five times the rate for non-Indigenous children.
In 2007-2011, more than one-quarter (26 per cent) of all deaths among Indigenous children aged 0-17 were due to injury, and the death rate due to injury was more than twice the rate for non-Indigenous children (80 deaths per 100,000 children, compared with 34 per 100,000).
The report also shows that Indigenous children are over- represented among specialist homelessness services clients and in the youth justice system.
