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School attendance should therefore be a priority for all schools, and not just those with high rates of absence or low average achievement.
The emergence of Indigenous researchers into the public health research sector presents a challenge to what have traditionally been Western-based research...
Cultural Competence
The HEAL Network aims to strengthen the Australian health system and community resilience to climate change, extreme events, and environmental degradation.
Risk averse practice has dominated the child protection field for decades, with high-profile child deaths, ever-tightening surveillance, and regulation of families. In this context, the practice of social work as ‘risk work’ including the use of risk assessment tools has been subject to substantial scholarly investigation. Less attention has been paid to the community organisations that play a central role in supporting child protection-involved parents. Based on interviews with Australian community workers, we examine their negotiation of the parent support/parent risk dichotomy.
Australia’s history of negative child protection outcomes for children in state care highlights the sustained, systemic nature of serious harm. Situated in emerging conversations on structural challenges and state violence for parents involved in child protection systems, we trace the resources and barriers to responsive and ‘just’ child protection practice, highlighting how institutions can serve to compound disadvantage and injustice. We argue that addressing challenges such as access to advocacy at the level of the individual is to miss the underlying politics of oppression that serves to keep families marginalised.
This paper discusses the findings and the research process undertaken thus far for the Looking Forward Aboriginal Mental Health Project.