Effective Social Work Practices For Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Communities
Skill Audit for Social and Community Welfare Workers
Discuss about the Social Workers and Community Welfare Workers Making a Difference.
The focus of social and community welfare workers of Australia have always been on the development of the countrymen who are in need of their services. It is the prime responsibility of social and community welfare workers to help the countrymen achieve wellness through intensive study on their background and analysis of their current situation (Townsend et al. 2018). Finding of the analysis helps the social and community welfare workers to assess the particular type of service user, their traits on the basis of their race and culture, the problems they are facing, ways to combat those problems effectively and provide a safer environment to the service user.Working with refugees: When it comes to working with refugees, the social and community welfare workers need to be well-equipped with certain skills and knowledge in order to ensure effective result. There are two distinct indigenous groups in Australia; aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people. Both of them belong to a community which has a specific belief system that allows them to stay spiritually connected with land, sky and sea (Coffin and Green, 2016). These people have a lot of language groups; they can speak 260 different languages with 500 dialects (Somerville et al. 2017). Since fifty thousand years aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are living as a part of Australia, they are termed as the first Australian, whose land is now being shared with people from different other races and cultures. These people were the part of British colonised Australia, with 700,000 aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Having sophisticated family and kinship structures, they are rich in culture and possess scientific knowledge traditions which are long-lasting as well (Bennett, 2015). To handle people belonging from aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, social and community welfare workers must be aware about their activities. The actions of the social and community welfare workers must not hurt the rich culture and values of the people of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This community is facing certain problems in different social fields. The problems are hereby-
- Increasing unemployment rate
- Degraded mental health
- More number of prisoners
- Lack of education
- Higher suicidal rate
- Decreased life expectancy rate
- Lack of child protection (Hunter et al. 2016)
All the above mentioned factors have deeply affected the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, slowing down their overall growth rate. In the meantime, social and community welfare workers are focused to provide sufficient support to these communities so that they are able to attain ultimate wellness. The prime concern of the support workers is upgrading the condition of the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through well-structured work process. Social well-being is the key to lead a satisfying life and the condition of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be upgraded (Gwynn et al. 2015).
Skills Required for Providing Proper Social and Welfare Services
To provide best services to the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, a skills audit is required so that the skill set of the social and community welfare workers can be tallied with the skills required to ensure better services for the refugees in Australia (Boyle, 2016). In the given context of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, certain things should be kept in mind as they are culturally rich and possess a different type of thought process. As a beginner in the field of human and service related work, I need to perform a skill audit so that I am equipped with needful skills which are required to produce effective social and welfare services for the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
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Skills which I possess |
Skills which are required for the betterment of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people |
Skills which I need to acquire |
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Listening skills |
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Empathy |
Tolerance |
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Emotional intelligence |
Social perceptiveness |
Decision making |
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Co-ordination |
Co-ordination |
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Self-awareness |
Decision making |
Skills can be of different types on the basis of the particular context where the skills will be applied. In the given context of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, there are several skills which should be effective to provide needful social services to the people of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. To provide relief to these communities by enhancing their capabilities and talents, I must assess their history and present condition first. After going through their brief history and current condition, I have identified certain skills which can be beneficial in my work with aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Those skills are social perceptiveness, tolerance, empathy, coordination and decision making. Social perceptiveness is important in order to sense the reaction of the service user in prior basis to avoid unfortunate situations. Empathy is needful to understand the emotional turmoil of the individual concerned so that it can be responded quickly and positively. Tolerance is the key to serve people from aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities as their actions or words might sometime be negative. Hence, I must be calm enough to handle the situation by eliminating the aggression from the process. Coordination is important as in social work one must work in a group to ensure better services to the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Coordination among the workers is a must in order to ensure that best kind of service is being provided. With effective decision-making skills the social workers would be able to determine accurate support for the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
I am having empathy and coordination skills, but I need to pursue the social perceptiveness, tolerance and decision-making skills to provide proper social and welfare services to the people belonging from aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Relevant policies should be implemented for aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. There was no proper and unified approach to legislation regarding aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. After thoroughly studying their condition, both federal and state Government apologised to aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities between the years of 1997 and 2001 (Carey et al. 2017). But till now these people are struggling to join the normal flow of lifestyle due to some reasons. Social and welfare groups must take these reasons into account and work closely for the betterment of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The employment rate among them should be increased with well-defined employment policies. Employment being one of the major reasons for suicide among youths, higher employment rate will ensure lesser number of suicides in the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities (Day et al. 2016). A greater part of educated population will be from aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities with the help of motivational programs to drive the people concerned towards education system. Increased rate of education will simultaneously decrease the crime rate among aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Children of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities should be provided with protection through newly implemented policies (Funston and Herring, 2016). As a social worker, I must be able to provide education to the people belong from aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities so that their overall position is uplifted. Mental health condition of the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities will be improved with the help of proper counselling and therapies from the end of social welfare workers (Parker and Milroy, 2014). I am focused on making them aware about factors related to child protection. Child protection should be the primary concern as they are the most vulnerable ones in the community (Ralph et al. 2016).
Importance of Policies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities
Conclusion:
The condition of the people belonging from aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities can be improved by using the above mentioned practice framework. As a social care worker, I must say that aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are in need of well-structured policies which can help them accessing certain facilities provided by Government. Also, the Government must implement relevant employment and education policies to ensure better way of living and promote wellness among the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
References
Funston, L. and Herring, S., 2016. When Will the Stolen Generations End? A Qualitative Critical Exploration of Contemporary’Child Protection’Practices in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities. Sexual Abuse in Australia and New Zealand, 7(1), p.51.
Townsend, C., White, P., Cullen, J., Wright, C.J. and Zeeman, H., 2018. Making every Australian count: challenges for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and the equal inclusion of homeless Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples with neurocognitive disability. Australian Health Review, 42(2), pp.227-229.
Coffin, J. and Green, C., 2016. THIS CHAPTER’S CENTRAL focus is to demonstrate how Aboriginal constructs, such as the Coffin Cultural Security (CCS) Model and the Cultural Security Continuum (Coffin 2007), offer culturally secure ways forward for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people engaged in and affected by community development processes. We do this by focusing on two community development projects under-taken in the health and local government sectors in rural and regional Western Australia. The motivation for community …. Mia Mia Aboriginal Community Development: Fostering Cultural Security, p.73.
Carey, T.A., Dudgeon, P., Hammond, S.W., Hirvonen, T., Kyrios, M., Roufeil, L. and Smith, P., 2017. The Australian Psychological Society’s Apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People. Australian Psychologist, 52(4), pp.261-267.
Somerville, R., Cullen, J., McIntyre, M., Townsend, C. and Pope, S., 2017. Engaging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the ‘Proper Way’. Newparadigm: the Australian Journal on Psychosocial Rehabilitation, 14.
Hunter, K., Keay, L., Clapham, K., Brown, J., Bilston, L.E., Ralph, M., Byrne, J., Simpson, J.M. and Ivers, R.Q., 2016, September. Child restraint use among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in 12 communities in NSW. In Australasian Road Safety Conference, 2016, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
Parker, R. and Milroy, H., 2014. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health: an overview. Working together: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing principles and practice, 2, pp.25-38.
Gwynn, J., Lock, M., Turner, N., Dennison, R., Coleman, C., Kelly, B. and Wiggers, J., 2015. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community governance of health research: Turning principles into practice. Australian Journal of Rural Health, 23(4), pp.235-242.
Boyle, P., 2016. Sharlene Leroy-Dyer:’For a people’s movement to empower our community’. Green Left Weekly, (1088), p.7.
Day, A., Nakata, M. and Miller, K., 2016. Programs to improve the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities. Australian Social Work, 69(3), pp.373-380.
Ralph, M., Hunter, K., Keay, L., Clapham, K., Brown, J., Bilston, L.E., Byrne, J., Simpson, J.M. and Ivers, R.Q., 2016, September. Likely sustainability of a child restraint program among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in 12 communities in NSW. In Australasian Road Safety Conference, 2016, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
Bennett, B., 2015. “Stop deploying your white privilege on me!” Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander engagement with the Australian Association of Social Workers. Australian Social Work, 68(1), pp.19-31.