Listen to this
I had the privilege of spending the entire month of June this year in Australia, participating in a range of activities related to child welfare. I brought along my wife and my daughter and together we embarked an adventure in Australia’s child welfare system. We were accompanied by several colleagues from the Association of Children’s Residential and Community Services (ACRC), based in the USA. Our stay here started with the Association of Child Welfare Agencies (ACWA) conference that pre-COVID took place bi-annually and was just relaunched this year in Sydney. I had been invited as one of several keynote speakers and the conference was well attended with over 800 registrants, most from the eastern coastline of Australia, but also some international participants. It was a wonderful conference, well organized and with a wide range of topics and themes covered by a series of excellent workshops and presentations. I noted that the conference started with a talk on the Aboriginal history of the country and some of the current tensions and issues within that context. All workshops and presentations thereafter started with a well-rehearsed ‘welcome to country’ opening, whereby speakers identify the ‘traditional inhabitants’ of the specific land where the conference took place and thank the ancestors, elders present, and elders of the future. I also noted that outside of the sessions and the one keynote that was specifically led by Aboriginal participants, there was minimal reference to any issues or themes related to Aboriginal peoples.
After the conference, we spent about ten days in Newcastle, where we facilitated and participated in a mini conference put on by a large service provider in the country for its staff and leaders. We also had a chance to tour some sights, ranging from residential care homes to education-related programs, all of which were quite impressive. I have to say that the host organization was incredible, fully transparent on their challenges, and eager to improve across all areas of activity. The level of commitment to child and youth centered service provision was apparent everywhere, as was a deep commitment to valuing staff at all levels of the organization. It was a very positive and hopeful experience to see a very large agency with about 1000 employees and an operating budget of over $100 million demonstrate a grassroots approach to ensuring quality care was real not only in rhetoric but also in action.
From there, most of my group went home, but my wife daughter and I went further north and had an opportunity to come together and have conversations with a smaller agency (that had recently been integrated into the larger agency mentioned above) operating in a mostly rural and small town area of the country. Again, I was deeply impressed with the stories I heard, all of which pointed to a relational approach to practice that aims to be with young people as they journey through out of home care. This smaller agency, similar to its larger parent agency, is committed to the concept of family, and aims to help families to reunify where possible or at the very least maintain strong relationships no matter what the circumstances.
On a brief stopover in Brisbane, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting up for dinner with Howard Bath and his wife Jenny. Howard, for those who may not know, has been a leader in many international conversations about trauma-informed practices. He also served as Children’s Commissioner in the Northern Territories of Australia, and he is connected to Circle of Courage work in relationship with the likes of Martin Brokenleg and Larry Brendtro, as well as the work coming out of Cornell University, including TCI and the CARE model of practice. Howard is a class act whose work I have admired for many years, and it turns out that Jenny has been a major contributor to reconciliation work with Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territories as well as in the broader context of working with people impacted by disability. It was enormously meaningful to me to be able to spend an evening together.
Finally, I moved from Brisbane to Melbourne, where I once again worked with a branch agency of the larger agency in Newcastle and again was deeply impressed by a work culture that centers young people and their families. In short, it was a wonderful experience working my way along the eastern shores of Australia and encountering child welfare systems and moments in action. It goes without saying that travelling along the shores of Australia, work aside, is an incredible experience. Few countries can match the beauty that is evident both at the ocean fronts and in the huge cities.
Nevertheless, I would not be true to my nature if I did not make some observations of a more troubling kind, none of which are to be associated directly with the people or agencies I encountered along the way. So here it goes …
First, like all neocolonial states, Australia struggles to deal with its abhorrent history of genocide and brutality against Aboriginal peoples, and just as it is in places like Canada where I live, this struggle is especially prevalent in carceral systems such as child welfare. Although Aboriginal people in Australia make up only about 3% of the population, they make up over 40% of young people in care, and the number of Aboriginal young people in care is increasing more rapidly than any other group in the country. There is talk about reconciliation in Australia, but I heard very little truth in that context, and for me at least, reconciliation without truth is not really a thing. I am no expert on the Australian context, but as a visitor I found virtually everything I encountered in the context of Settler-Aboriginal relations to be highly performative and mostly centered on narrative. To be fair, most of the manifestations of these relations I encountered were in urban contexts, where Aboriginal leadership and ownership of service systems and of policy approaches is limited. Things might be different in rural areas and especially in areas of the country where Aboriginal people have strong roots and much greater confidence in their rightful ownership of the land and social context associated with that land. Still, attending a child welfare conference that is, to the best of my knowledge, the largest of its kind in Australia, and noting that it literally featured no engagement at all with what everyone agreed to constitute a major concern (the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children and youth) struck me as disorienting. I did hear about policies emerging in some states, notably in New South Wales, that are meant to address some of the control issues embedded in this settler-dominated system of child welfare, but from what I heard, the policies too are largely performative and likely will cause a great deal of harm to Aboriginal communities as they aim to transfer care responsibilities for Aboriginal young people to Aboriginal-owned agencies without ensuring that the resources are in place for that care to unfold in line with Aboriginal practices and cultures. This approach has failed miserably in Canada, and Australian policymakers would be well advised to seek feedback from Indigenous leaders and community members (and youth in care) in Canada who bore witness to the implementation of similar policies there.
A second observation is related to youth voice and participation, which was scarcely evident across most of my encounters. Certainly, at the child welfare conference it was at best an afterthought, featuring one single young person who was given a few minutes in the last plenary session to say something. Thankfully that young person disregarded the instructions and spoke for a good 20 minutes, blowing the crowd away with her passion and wise words. Still, I was somewhat disturbed by the limited efforts to ensure that a conference of this nature is at least partially informed by the lived experiences of young people.
I was pleased to see the efforts made by the agency hosting us in Newcastle to ensure young people’s lived experiences were part of the learning and conversations. I met two brothers who had grown up in out of home care, mostly with that agency, who were simply phenomenal and inspiring in speaking to both the challenges and the opportunities that emerged from their experiences. Nevertheless, the main youth voice that was apparent throughout my time in Australia was that of a young person (now young adult) from the US who was part of my group and who successfully and very effectively inserted herself into just about every conversation, including an important conversation with the child welfare regulators in New South Wales. She served as a demonstration of how our work improves when we take care of ensuring varied forms of knowledge and expertise are represented. My only concern is that one voice representing lived experience cannot possibly represent the enormous diversity of such experiences, not to mention identities, encompassing young people in out of home care. Much more effort is required to ensure this part of child welfare evolution in Australia is strengthened.
Third, Australia is experiencing something that many countries in the global north are experiencing – a rapid increase in the delivery of child welfare services by private, for-profit organizations. This is deeply concerning to me, especially given that this privatization process is unfolding without any transparency and with limited public discussion. Like developments in Canada, the US, the UK, and elsewhere, many young people in out of home care are left without a meaningful placement, and as a result, are placed in hotels and other informal spaces where they are cared for by staff (often of questionable qualification) hired by for-profit businesses. A huge and increasing proportion of money designed to support young people and their families is being diverted to profit-seeking activity. Policymakers appear complacent toward this issue, in part because they are benefitting from the rapid and flexible ways in which private, for-profit operators can respond to delicate situations involving children and youth given that they are not subject to any of the (meaningful and important) constraints present in public and not for profit sectors. In the long term, however, this approach will destroy public and not for profit systems of care that have multiple accountabilities and that at the very least can be trusted to be trying to do the best thing possible for young people, even if that doesn’t always work out. Privatizing care is a bad move. Everyone knows this. And still it is happening and supported by governments. There is advocacy and resistance work to be done here!
Finally, I want to share that despite some significant concerns about what I encountered here, I leave on an optimistic note. The country has benefited enormously from the wisdom, integrity, and commitment of people like Howard Bath, who continues to work hard even post-retirement to ensure conversations are going in the right directions. I met an incredible researcher from Monash University who is critical, wise, activist in a constructive sense, a strong ally to Aboriginal communities, women involved in carceral systems and especially prisons, and other marginalized communities and likely the future of driving excellence and ethical practice in places like Australia. She gave me hope and inspired me to continue learning. And the agency that hosted me is one that serves as an example that despite challenges and adversity in terms of funding and policy, good people can form communities that make a difference in people’s lives. This organization exemplifies excellence through a culture of caring, generosity, and humility that is contagious.
