Indigenous foster children removed from brothel worker, hexy enraged on multiple levels.

I've been wanting to post on this for a while now. It went out on a mailing list I'm on a week or so ago, and each time I've tried to write something about it I've just found myself... overwhelmed.

The summary: Four Indigenous foster children in Western Australia were removed from their foster carer after reports she was working in a brothel. Sex work is not illegal in Western Australia. The children have apparently been handed back once she managed to prove she was not currently engaged in sex work, but they never should have been removed in the first place.

That's the bit that enrages me as a sex worker. This notion that even when our work is decriminalised, even when it's recognised that what we do is work, we're still stigmatised and held as second class citizens to the point where we're deemed inappropriate parents or carers because of our job.

Then there's the bit that enrages me as an Indigenous Australian. Foster care policy in this country states that Indigenous foster children are placed with an Indigenous relative or, failing that, a non-relative member of the Indigenous community. That whole Stolen Generation thing? Yeah. We want to avoid anything that looks like that again. Of course, the point is now being made that this case somehow proves that that entire system should be dismantled, that Indigenous foster carers for Indigenous children is an inherently flawed concept.

Because white foster carers never fail in their duties, never abuse their wards or engage in morally worrisome behaviour. FFS. Of course, when that happens, it's never considered that their race plays a part.

Do I even need to point out why it pisses me off further that a white, male archbishop of the Catholic Church is invoking the Stolen Generation as an argument for why the goal of placing Indigenous Children with Indigenous carers should be avoided?

And, again, I'm all out of words. I just can't do the 101 rant on this. I find it incredible to believe that everyone doesn't see the inherent bullshit in both of those presumptions (that a woman doing legal work is unfit to parent or care for children, and that this already questionable removal of her wards justifies dismantling the entire Indigenous foster system) on first glance.

Reassure me, people. Please.

To clarify: I do believe there are issues with Australian foster care. I do think children are placed with unsuitable carers, and have met many people who have horrible stories of their time in foster care. I do not believe these issues are restricted to Indigenous Australian foster care, and to imply otherwise is not only racist, but deliberately obtuse. Race, and this woman's potential status as a sex worker, should both be irrelevant in determining her suitability as a carer, and in determining the best placement for these children.

The same applies to any other foster child in the country.

It is inexcusable that sex work status is presumed to invalidate a person's ability to parent or to provide a safe and stable home for a child, to the point where even entering a brothel is enough to have foster children taken away from you.