“We Live and Breathe Through Culture”: Conceptualising Cultural Connection for Indigenous Australian Children in Out-of-home Care

Indigenous Australian children are overrepresented in the out-of-home care (OOHC) system, with numbers and rates on an upward trajectory. There is now serious concern that this overrepresentation is creating a second Stolen Generations in Australia, noted within policy campaigns such as Family Matters—Kids Safe in Culture, not in Care, and Grandmothers Against Removals. While placement in OOHC is designed to protect children’s long-term safety and wellbeing, it threatens cultural connection, which is fundamental to Indigenous identity and wellbeing. Some government policies that aim to foster cultural connection have not been effective, while others, such as the 2014 permanency legislation in Victoria, arguably threaten cultural connection. This article highlights the vital importance of cultural connection for Indigenous child development, arguing that for Indigenous children, family connection strengthens cultural connection. We argue that family needs to be recognised as a critical component of cultural connection that is equally as important as placement stability in OOHC. Consequently, statutory and community organisations responsible for Indigenous children in OOHC must focus on facilitating and strengthening family relationships, not only to foster cultural connection, but also to explore reunification possibilities.

IMPLICATIONS

• Cultural connection is fundamental to Indigenous identity and wellbeing, but requires family connection if it is to be fostered and strengthened.

• When Indigenous children live in out-of-home care, social workers in child and family welfare need to ensure that children are connected to culture.

     

Role of Relational Case Management in Transitioning from Poverty

One-off financial assistance through emergency relief provides a short-term intervention to immediate material crisis. However, recurrent instances of clients accessing this type of assistance points to the ineffectiveness of managing financial hardship without addressing the causes of long-term poverty. This article presents findings from an external process evaluation of the Salvation Army relational case management model known as Doorways. A mixed-method design was implemented, consisting of semistructured interviews, observations, and document analysis, as well as Client Satisfaction and Wellbeing Survey. Across the seven research sites semistructured interviews were conducted with 45 clients and nine case managers, and 30 client surveys were completed. Three themes will be discussed: the Doorways philosophy; the flexible service delivery approach; and client capacity building and continuity of care. Findings illustrated the effectiveness of a relational case management approach and reaffirm the central role of relationships in transforming the lives of people experiencing poverty.

IMPLICATIONS

• The quality of relationship between case managers and their clients plays an integral role in transforming the lives of people experiencing long-term or situational financial disadvantage.

• Service delivery requires a relational and flexible approach to adequately tailor support to the individual and contextual needs of clients.

     

Changing Relationships through Interactions: Preliminary Accounts of Parent–Child Interactions after Undertaking Individual Parent Training

Parent and child interaction training has been increasingly investigated over recent years. However, the mechanisms of change within individual training programmes are not well understood. To explore the factors that can facilitate or inhibit meaningful changes in interactions and ultimately relationships, the current study employed semi-structured interviews to obtain first person accounts from parents who had undertaken an individualised parent-training programme. Three participants provided accounts of the training programme and their perceived impact upon interactions with their children were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The analysis resulted in three themes, which illustrate how participants adjusted their interactional style with their child to varying degrees through enhanced personal awareness, increased understanding of their child’s emotional and interactional needs, and accepting the reciprocity of interactional accountability. Changes in interactional style enabled participants to alter their perceptions of their own behaviours, their child’s behaviours, and how they influenced one another through interactions. Recommendations for future research and therapeutic practice are discussed in the context of the findings and the existing evidence base.     

Introduction: mediating affect

ABSTRACT

This Special Issue brings together seven affective mediations on the theme of mediating affect. The articles were presented in an earlier form at the inaugural Affect Theory Conference, held in Millersville (USA) in October 2015. Responding to a Call for Papers, authors were invited to take on the question of ‘media’ and ‘mediation’ in the context of the blossoming field of affect studies. Each article in turn tackles a particular trajectory of concern examined as a multiplicity – the philosophy/study of living and feeling, fear and the amplification of affect, trauma and absence, detention and compassion, memorialization and shōjo (少女) (the girl trope in postwar Japanese cinema), and whiteness and the good life. The theoretical, disciplinary, and cultural lineages are many. Developed together within the context of the project of cultural studies, the resulting Special Issue provides an opportunity to consider more deeply how ‘media-world assemblages’ (Murphie, A., in press. The world as medium. In: E. Manning, A. Munster, S. Thomsen and B. Marie, eds. Immediations. Sydney: Open Humanities Press) give rise to certain political and ethical questions. In this Issue, we encounter six different media-world formations and learn how they shift as they pulsate with affective relations. As well as introducing these relations, this Introduction canvases some of the conceptual work that has gone into ‘mediating affect’, addressing the context that underpins this bringing together of terms and seeking out ways of provoking further research.     

The Development of a “Neighborhood in Solidarity” in Switzerland

ABSTRACT

This article presents a case study based on the “Neighborhood in Solidarity” (NS) methodology to illustrate its application in a locality of 8,000 inhabitants in Switzerland. This specific project is proposed to exemplify the global aim of the NS methodology. That aim is to increase the integration of elderly persons in societies in order to improve their quality of life. The case study demonstrates the enhancement of the capacity of the older people to remain actively engaged in their neighborhood. The article focuses on the creation of an autonomous community of empowered older people who can resolve their own problems after a 5-year project. The construction of the local community is presented throughout the six steps of the methodology: (1) preliminary analysis, (2) diagnostic, (3) construction, (4) project design, (5) project implementation, and (6) empowerment and with three degrees of involvement (community, participative, and integrative involvement). Performance and output indicators, quality indicators, and social determinants of health assess the development of the local project. The impacts of the projects which are illustrated in this specific example motivated this publication to inspire practitioners from other countries.     

Trial and error: attending to language barriers in child welfare service provision from the perspective of frontline workers

This paper reports on a qualitative study that used focus groups to gather data from the perspective of child protection workers on their experiences in providing services to clients with limited English proficiency (LEP). The goals of the study were to understand processes of relationship building and service provision that could contribute to improved practice. Focus groups are ideal in obtaining data on how a group deals with particular situations and for understanding their decision‐making processes. Measures to ensure rigour and trustworthiness were taken throughout the study. Findings provide rich and multilayered insights into the complexity of providing services for families with LEP showing that agencies use bilingual workers as well as interpreters for services. Participants noted, however, that services continued to be inconsistent with unclear guidelines and training about how and when to access interpreters. Lack of training for bilingual workers was also identified. Confidentiality issues, barriers to engaging with clients, problems with the quality of interpretation and role confusion together with benefits including interpreters being cultural and language ‘conduits’ and links to culturally specific services; enhanced communication decreasing the possibility of inaccurate assessments and lessening power differentials; and help with workload were noted.     

Tackling and Mitigating Health Inequalities – Policymakers and Practitioners ‘Talk and Draw’ their Theories

In the context of a long‐standing academic acceptance of the socially structured nature of health inequalities, there has been a growing literature that critically examines policies that aim to reduce them. This has demonstrated inadequate policy assessment of the nature of the problem of health inequalities and correspondingly partial solutions that privilege interventions that focus on individual lifestyle solutions over more structural approaches. Much of the research that has been undertaken in this field to explore competing theories of inequalities has analyzed national policy documents or the views of senior policy advisers rather than practitioners. This study uses Raphael’s ‘seven discourses of the social determinants of health’ to understand the implicit theories of health inequalities of both practitioners and policymakers working within a single health care system as they talk about different policy typologies. To help penetrate potentially well‐rehearsed discourses about health inequalities, it tests a visual method of stimulating discussion about how different types of policy might operate to narrow/widen existing gaps in outcomes. Building on Raphael, it finds that individuals’ theories of health inequalities contain co‐existing although not synthesized material and behavioural explanations and that, although the social patterning of material disadvantage was recognized, the role of power and politics is underplayed. Variations between participants did not align with role (policy/practice) and using visual methods to represent the impact of different policy types on health inequalities, though challenging for participants, stimulated reflection about a subject matter that has otherwise become rather stagnant.