(Image: Poster by Craig Hammond from the Family Action Centre)
The following are various articles I’ve come across relating to working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities. Some of them directly relate to engagement and some are more general, addressing issues we should consider.
Articles available on the web.
Armstrong, S., Buckley, S., Lonsdale, M., Milgate, G., Bennetts Kneebone, L., Cook, L., & Skelton, F. (2012). Starting school: A strengths-based approach towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. Camberwell, Vic: Australian Council for Educational Research. Available from http://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=indigenous_education
Here is the powerful speech given by 15 year-old Alexa Stuart (yes I’m her proud father) at the Newcastle Global Climate Strike attended by around 10,000 people.
Dear Mr Prime Minister,
396 days ago, Greta Thunberg was a lone voice
sitting out the front of the Swedish Parliament refusing to go to school,
striking for climate action. In 396 days that single voice has turned into
millions united with one simple plea: a right to a safe earth and a safe
future.
Just 396 days later halfway across the globe,
thousands here in Newcastle and over a million around the world have come to
tell you, Mr Prime Minister, that no longer will we stand for your denial, no
longer will we stand for your empty words, and no longer will we stand for your
total inaction on the biggest threat humanity has ever faced. The youth have risen,
and we will not rest until you have listened!
In March, 150 thousand of us took to the streets around Australia yet you did not listen to our fears and you told us “we need more learning in schools and less activism”. But we will not take that for an answer! So we have gathered all our parents, our grandparents, friends and neighbours, peers and colleagues to join us in solidarity. And we ask you Mr Prime Minister, NOW are you listening!?
The following is a reading list for an online elective (HLSC2241 – Family and community engagement: An introduction) I offer to students at the University of Newcastle about family and community engagement. The students come from a range of disciplines so the course is a fairly broad introduction.
Recently the focus of the course (or subject) changed from just being about community engagement to also including family engagement. This has had more of an impact than I thought it would, and I plan to update the reading list next year again (e.g., to include more material on family centred approaches).
The readings with an asterisk (*) may not be freely available unless you have access via a library or something similar.
Module 1: What’s this course all about? Introduction to the course and family and community engagement
The brief introductory lecture covers most of the material in this post but also includes some discussion of family engagement. I need to do some blog posts with this focus.
Much of this material is covered in a short lecture.
1.3. Moore, T., McDonald, M., McHugh-Dillon, H., & West, S. (2016). Community engagement: A key strategy for improving outcomes for Australian families (Child Family Community Australia Paper No. 39). Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies. Pages 1-10. Available from https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/sites/default/files/cfca39-community-engagement.pdf
This reading by Tim Moore and his colleagues from the Centre for Community Child Health, provides a good introduction to community engagement. While the article is specifically in the context of improving outcomes for families, the material is also relevant in many other contexts. Pay particular attention to their discussion of the difficulties in defining community and community engagement (there is no widely accepted definition of community engagement), their introduction to levels of community engagement or public participation (which will be explored further in Module 3) and why community engagement is important. Continue reading →
I’m very pleased that my work place (the Family Action Centre) has endorsed the School Strikers and the Global Climate Strike on Friday 20 September. Here is our statement:
The Family Action Centre, University of Newcastle, recognises that families and children around the world are already being impacted by the effects of climate change, and research clearly shows the need for urgent action to avoid even more serious impacts on our health and wellbeing. We thus encourage everybody to support the Global Climate Strike on Friday 20 September organised by Student Strike 4 Climate and others.
Initiated by the international Student Strike 4 Climate movement, there will be strikes and rallies around the world in the week starting Friday 20 September. In Australia there are three demands:
No new coal, oil and gas projects, including the Adani mine.
100% renewable energy generation and exports by 2030
Fund a fair transition and job creation for fossil-fuel industry workers and communities.
I was invited a couple of weeks ago to teach Lactation classes for 3 days at the main maternity hospital while the Lactation Consultant was away. Normally you stand at the front of the class and talk about the anatomy and physiology of the breast and how the milk is made etc.
I started the class standing at the front and soon found that these new mums were yawning, dads were waiting outside, babies were crying… I stopped the class and grabbed a chair and asked the mums to sit around in a circle and also asked if the dads could come in. They all agreed so I invited the dads in. They picked up their babies and when it was calm, I asked each person ‘how are you feeling?’
The first mum burst into tears, the second mum said she was tired, then the next dad said he was so overwhelmed etc. I gave them tissues, water to drink and many couldn’t stop crying! We talked about the baby blues, having time out for themselves when they go home, and this tiredness and overwhelming feeling is normal the first few days after the birth of a baby.
I hugged them, they hugged each other and I think it was the best breastfeeding class that I’d ever taught even though we only talked about breast feeding for 10 minutes out of 30 minutes. I felt happy that everybody was so grateful when they left the class, but I also thought that I’d probably never be invited back again!
I returned two days later and was called into the bosses office… she told me that everybody was talking about my class and how the feedback forms were rated 5 stars, and they had all mentioned that the breast feeding class was the highlight!
I can only say that participating in ‘Engaging Families and Communities’ has changed the way that I teach new mums and dads…for the better! (Vanessa Linden, Master of Family Studies student)
I think her story is more a comment about her courage to try something new and her ability to see what was happening in the group, than it is a comment about the course. It demonstrates the importance of seeing the individuals behind our work.
If you find any
problems with the blog, (e.g., broken links or typos) I’d love to hear about
them. You can either add a comment below or contact me via the Contact page.
Today I’m giving a two minute “pitch” about research at the Family Action Centre (FAC) as part of a research day for the School of Health Sciences, University of Newcastle. Even though we are not a health science and you might expect us to be more aligned with social sciences or social work, we are part of the School of Health Sciences in the Faculty of Health. During a restructure many years ago (probably in the 90s) the FAC was placed in the Faculty of Health as an independent research centre. In a more recent restructure when we needed to join a school within the faculty, we joined Health Sciences because, like us, they had a real focus on professional practice.
The brief for the pitch is “Your challenge is to show how your discipline’s research contributes to a consumer, client or potential industry partner in 120 seconds aided by 1 slide and a prop.” The slide is above, and the prop is one of our FAC flags.
Here’s my pitch.
Since our beginning 1986, the Family Action Centre has focused on changing policy and practice. We do this through research, teaching and outreach. At these research days you only see a small part of our team, because most of them are in the field supporting local families and communities. Growing from a foundation in practice, our research is usually very closely related to practice. Rather than researching the extent of social disadvantage in the Hunter, you are more likely to find us researching strategies to address this social disadvantage, for example a collective impact project promoting health and wellbeing in Muswellbrook by leading the research and ensuring the initiative is data driven. It is this combination of research and practice that makes our approach special.
Because we often explore how to address wicked problems that are multifaceted and confusing, it’s essential we work in partnership with families and practitioners.
The FAC is probably best known for research relating to fathers. From humble beginnings supporting local community services to improve father engagement, the fathers and families research team now have an international reputation in creating innovative, 21st century approaches to supporting fathers. For example, the SMS4Dads project has led to a range of partnerships (including some in this room) to adapt the approach to other contexts.
But this is only one part of our research agenda. Our other research focus, Strong Families—Capable Communities, involves a range of projects with community partners include working with Uniting to explore best practice in post separation counselling and mediation, and a new partnership with Insurance and Care NSW (icare), and its network of practitioners, to trial digital, compassion-focused approaches to supporting the wellbeing of injured workers.
Through our research partnerships we are able to build on the strengths and aspirations of families and communities to create lasting change.
If you find any
problems with the blog, (e.g., broken links or typos) I’d love to hear about
them. You can either add a comment below or contact me via the Contact page.
I teach a number of online courses (or subjects) at the University of Newcastle about working with communities and families in the Graduate Certificate of Family Studies and the Master of Family Studies. At the heart of my teaching is strengths-based practice and the above is an introductory lecture introducing students to some of the ideas we will explore over the semester.
In it I suggest 8 principles underpinning strengths-based practice:
Recognise that individuals, families and communities have many strengths and the capacity to learn, grow and change
Focus on strengths and aspirations
Look for, and build on, the many resources that can be found in a wide range of social environments
Take care with the language you use because it changes how we see people, situations and possibilities
Collaborate and support self-determination
Work in ways that promote empowerment
See problems and challenges as the result of interactions between people rather than within people
Keep a commitment to social justice
It isn’t a highly polished recording but hopefully it will be useful to some people. I’d love to hear what you think.
Here is the script for the video and at the end, there are some other posts that are related and a list of the references and photo credits.
As you can tell from my last post, my 15-year old daughter is quite involved in the Student Strike 4 Climate movement and worked hard in the lead up to the election. On the day, she spent six hours at a polling booth trying to get people to think about climate change when they voted. My elder daughter also spent a couple of hours handing out how to vote cards.
Polls had consistently predicted a narrow win for Labor but,
once again, the polls were wrong, and the conservative coalition (who have
failed to take serious action on climate change) are back in power for another
three years.
Besides the lack of strong leadership on climate change and some of the policy implications, one of the things that worries me most about the result is the message it gives the students who had worked so hard to make it a climate election. Alexa, and I’m sure many of the other students, felt they were actually making a difference. Whenever there was a story about climate change and the election, there was usually vision of the student strikers, and there was a sense they were really helping to raise awareness about the impact of climate change on future generations.
The election results, however, suggest that adults weren’t listening and that they really don’t care: other issues were seen as more important. For the young people (and others) who understand the potential impact of climate change on their future; this is very hard to comprehend.
We are facing a climate emergency. Through the School Strike 4 Climate, children and young people, who will pay the greatest price for climate change inaction, are finding their voice and demanding that politicians start showing leadership in responding to this global crisis.
Alexa (my 15 year old daughter) is helping to organise Newcastle’s action as part of the next Australian school strike on the first Friday of Term 2 (3 May). The students are calling for the national election, 15 days later, to become a #ClimateElection and demanding that our politicians think beyond the next election and consider the impact of their decisions on future generations.
The student strikers may be too young to vote, but they are making themselves impossible to ignore and are ensuring climate change is kept in the spotlight as a major election issue.
The average age of the 2019 federal members of parliament is
52. In 50 years, most of them will be dead, but the consequences of their
inaction on climate change over the last few election cycles will continue to
impact the students of today.
The Alternatives to Violence Project in Newcastle has been exploring workshops on nonviolence and conflict resolution with parents and partners. The following is an exercise Gener Lapina and I have developed (with input from Anne Hoffman) to explore four parenting styles:
Authoritarian
Permissive
Uninvolved
Active (often called Authoritative).
The styles are based on a combination of two dimensions: how responsive (or warm) parents are and how demanding and controlling (or strict) they are. For the workshops, we are using the dimensions of warmth (from very warm to harsh) and expectations (from having high expectations in regards to your children’s behaviour to having very low expectations).
Before the workshop, we prepared a large compass (using four sheets of flip chart) with the labels Warm and Harsh on the vertical axis, and Expectations on the horizontal compass(see above).
Families, community engagement and environmental sustainability – for parents, students, practitioners and anyone who wants to make a difference. By Graeme Stuart from the Family Action Centre at the University of Newcastle. The views are my own.
