The new South Australia peak body for Aboriginal children and families will be called Wakwakurna Kanyini, which means ‘holding on to our children’.

According to the state government, Wakwakurna is the Kaurna word for children, while Kanyini is a Pitjantjatjara word with a complex meaning that loosely translates to interconnectedness, nurture and support for family, country and community.

Child Protection Minister Katrine Hildyard said the name reflected the peak body’s aim of caring for and nurturing children.

The formation of Wakwakurna Kanyini was announced in March last year and was backed by a $3.2 million investment from the state government.

Its creation followed a report from the SNAICC – the national peak body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people – which was engaged to identify a preferred model for the independent organisation in South Australia.

Wakwakurna Kanyini will be responsible for amplifying the voices of children and young people, partnering with the government to reduce the over-representation of Aboriginal children in the child protection system, and building the capacity of the community-controlled sector to provide services to Aboriginal children.

The organisation today also announced it was advertising for an inaugural CEO to drive the agenda and work with stakeholders to establish it as the “leading community voice for Aboriginal children and families in South Australia”.

Hildyard said she was looking forward to “walking together with Wakwakurna Kanyini to help ensure Aboriginal children and young people have the best opportunities to safely live their lives with family, loved, nurtured, supported to reach their potential and connected to culture, country and community”.

“We know that lasting change will only be advanced through partnership and through empowering the voices and leadership of Aboriginal people – Wakwakurna Kanyini will do just that and I am really proud of our Government’s investment in this crucial peak body,” she said.

Wakwakurna Kanyini interim board member Sandra Miller said the new name was “reflective of our aim, the culmination of decades of advocacy to strengthen the care, protection and rights of Aboriginal children”.

“We are looking forward to working closely with the appointed CEO to advance outcomes for Aboriginal children across South Australia and drive genuine reform in the child protection system,” she said.

The announcement comes a week after a scathing report from the Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young people was released, which found “systemic racism” was driving Aboriginal child removals in SA.

Commissioner April Lawrie called for state government action following the release of the Holding on to Our Future report.

There were six headline findings, including that there is “insufficient funding” for early intervention services and that the state is “unnecessarily removing disproportionate and growing numbers of Aboriginal children from their families and communities”.

“Systemic racism and cultural bias” contributed to Aboriginal child removals, the report found, driving “disproportionate” rates of placements of children into non-Aboriginal care.

One in 10 Aboriginal children in South Australia are in state care and that number would grow to 140 in every 1000 Aboriginal children by 2031 unless reforms were undertaken, the Commissioner said.

The report also said that the Department for Child Protection had “no defined strategy to improve outcomes for Aboriginal children and young people, or a culturally appropriate accountability and oversight mechanism for monitoring its performance”.