Victorian Safer Children CCOPMM Review: Holding our children at the centre

September 2026

Speaking about the deaths of Aboriginal women, babies, children and young people asks something of everyone in the room. On 24 September 2026, on Wurundjeri Country, the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO) hosted a gathering with the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity (CCOPMM) and Safer Care Victoria to talk about how an Aboriginal Advisory Group could guide the Council’s work. Aunty Dr Jill Gallagher AO chaired the day and I had the honour of facilitating.

CCOPMM reviews the deaths of mothers, babies and children across Victoria, and its statewide data shows that Aboriginal families carry an unfair share of that grief. The people who came together that day held this knowledge with great care, and brought with them deep experience in Aboriginal community controlled health, in paediatrics and child health, in maternity care and in community leadership. They came to imagine a way of working where Aboriginal people hold authority in how these deaths are understood, and where the lessons from each loss return to communities and services as action.

We began with a cultural safety protocol agreed by everyone present, so that the conversation could hold sorrow and hope together. A social and cultural determinants checklist, grounded in the cultural determinants domains I set out in Country Can’t Hear English (Arabena, 2020), gave the group a way of asking what connection to family, community, culture and Country meant in a child’s life, and how the systems around that child strengthened those connections or let them fall away.

The direction that emerged was Aboriginal-led solutions, self-determination, accountability and meaningful action. Participants proposed a working group that will meet online with support from the CCOPMM secretariat, so the design of the Advisory Group can keep moving between formal meetings, and a report from the day is being prepared with VACCHO.

I am grateful to VACCHO for hosting, to Aunty Jill for her steady and generous leadership in the chair, to CCOPMM Chair Professor Mark Umstad AM and the Council members who made space for this work, and to every Aboriginal leader who shared their knowledge and vision so freely. There is much work ahead, and this felt like a step taken together toward a future where every Aboriginal child grows up safe in community and strong in culture.

Key words

Maternal and child health, perinatal and paediatric mortality review, Aboriginal advisory group, cultural governance, cultural safety, cultural determinants of health, Aboriginal community controlled health, facilitation, Safer Care Victoria, VACCHO