Key findings:

• Significant gains have been made in maternal and early childhood health and development, including kindergarten enrolments and infant health. However, Aboriginal children continue to be over-represented in the child protection and out-of-home care systems.
• Apparent retention rates to both Year 10 and Year 12 have increased for Aboriginal students over the past ten years. However, persistent gaps remain between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal student outcomes in reading, writing and numeracy, as well as attendance rates. The progress that has been made in kindergarten participation and retention are anticipated to have positive flow-on effects for reading, writing and numeracy outcomes for Aboriginal learners in coming years.
• This year the Victorian Government has met its target of increasing the proportion of Aboriginal staff in the state’s public service to 1%. However, Aboriginal people continue to be under-represented in the workforce and on boards and committees. Additionally, further work is required to bridge the income gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Victorians.
• Although there have been some improvements, recent statistics indicate that there is still a lot of work to be done to close the gap in health, housing and wellbeing outcomes for Aboriginal Victorians.
• The number of family incidents with an Aboriginal affected family member or other party has begun to decline in recent years. However, Aboriginal Victorians still face very unequal outcomes within the justice system, and are over-represented in both the adult and youth justice systems.
• The Victorian Government is dedicated to ensuring that the right processes and structures are in place to support Aboriginal Victorians as they maintain a strong connection to country, culture and community.
• The period covered by the Report is up to the most recently available data as at time of publication in 2018. In some cases, only 2014 data is available. The data come from a number of different administrative data sets and surveys. The main limitation in most of these data sets is that Aboriginal status is under-reported. Changes in the levels of Aboriginal identification over time have an impact on the accuracy of comparing outcomes overtime.