Indigenous Education and Perspective

This document discusses the importance of understanding and valuing indigenous perspectives in the context of social work and social welfare. It explores the social, institutional, and historical factors that affect the indigenous Australian community and highlights the ethical issues in the field. The document also provides principles for building partnerships with indigenous groups to address the challenges faced by children in out-of-home care.

RUNNING HEAD: INDIFENOUS EDUCATION PERSPECTIVE
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Indigenous Education and Perspective
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Indigenous Education and Perspective
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Professional Standpoint
I decided to work as a lead project officer for Uniting. Uniting is a social welfare organization
which offers many facilities to children and young people that includes foster care, guardianship and
adoption. My work is to recruit carers for the western NSW in order to support the children in out of
home care. I personally believe that it is necessary to understand and value indigenous perspectives as it
will give positive spirit through which indigenous and non-indigenous might engage with mutual respect
and reconciliation.
In professional standpoint, I have seen that Australia is a multicultural nation with many of races
and cultures existence. To work for the indigenous group will help the people to accept their cultural
factors and make people aware about the different culture in Australia. I am as a project leader initiate
to recruit those people who voluntarily agree to work for the welfare of children who are out of home
care and need the support so that they will also be successful and contribute towards the society in
future. To direct the children or young people is essential for development of Australia.
In order to improve the cultural competences in near future in professional aspects I think an
effective policies and procedures , valuing and accepting different cultures and allocating the needed
resources to boost the culturally behavior in all the levels of the organization will help in managing the
cultural competence (Ranzijn, Connochie, & Nolan, 2009).
Some of the ethical issues are violated in balancing these problems like every person has right to
do what he wants to do so an individual have to respect others opinion and values in workplace. My
personal belief regarding supporting the children who are out of home care is that the facilities and
carers for them are also not that effective or useful. It is not necessary that all these children get good
care and safety, even I have seen many of the social organizations where staff or carers are not that
much bothered about and make differences in taking care of the children from different communities
and always biased in their works due to racism and religion.

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Social, Institutional and Historical Factors
There are various factors that affect the social work organization that is uniting. Social factors
include the lack of facilities by the parents to their children, stressful environment or trauma in their
lives, physical, sexual and emotional abuse by the society and lastly the domestic violence are the main
reasons or social factors that increase the need of out -of- home -care (Moran, 2009).
Many of this things happen in the indigenous Australian community where children does not get
a sense of stability and security or support by the families and they are not getting the right to live their
life safely and emotionally fit. Through the study it is known that the children from indigenous
Australian will be triple by 2036 (Evershed & Allam, 2019).
In view to historical factors, the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 9.8 times more
likely to come in the foster care in comparison to non-indigenous people. It is found that in 2016, 67%
of Indigenous children are placed with family. Kin or aboriginal carer and out of that only 50.5% placed
with the Indigenous carer and remaining were kept with the non- indigenous family members that
showed that how children are also not safe in the out of home care as due to cultural differences carers
will abuse them and all this contributed to inequality in Australia (Wahlquist, 2019).
In relation to the institutional factors, the institutions ranging from churches and schools to
orphanages and foster homes are failed to protect children from abuse. The reason behind this is the
lack or non-implications of child protection policies. It is important to consider all these aspects due to
widening gap in indigenous Australian groups, cultural competences and relating it with the professional
code of conduct. Looking insight into the concept , it is getting worsen for young people as the system
is less bothered about the social justice than they were with stopping children from growing up to
become criminals.
Many of the government institutes send these children for farm laborers, domestic servants and
to other low skilled works. In ethical perspective, it is not legal to violate the rights of children and to let
them suffer at the younger age as the cultural differences in workplace affecting the life of these
children. Carers are biased towards the indigenous and non-indigenous groups whereas it is their
responsibility to obliged to their duties without any biasness and treat all with respect and equality (DSS,
2019).

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Ethical issues in the social work organizations are; staff and people there have their own values
and norms in regards to their duties, they do not adhere to their professional duties rather follow their
instincts and believes . The main ethical issue is inequality, child abuse and labor and violating the
children protection law (Gambrill, 2016).
In conclusion it is known that social, institutional and historical factors are influential in each
segment of the society. In relation to cultural competences the, social factors are widening gap in the
indigenous and non-indigenous group, racism and ethnicity and the historical factors showed that these
differences created many challenges for the society in the development of Australia (Boza, 2016). These
forces are needed to be recognized so that necessary steps would be taken in professional manner.
Principles to apply for partnership with the indigenous groups
The indigenous Australian impacted the professional industry in the Australia. As it is necessary
to build the environment in the workplace that will protect and respect the rights of the indigenous
group. There are many facts and relevant information that showed that how this cultural differences
affected the organizations efficiency (Gale & Bolzan, 2013).
Working with the indigenous group is somehow challenging task but beneficial in order to
reduce the number of increasing children in the out of home care (Robertson & Mcdonald, 2019). Many
of the steps would be taken to improve the condition of children in the Australia. The indigenous group
helps in the project by contributing to social work and to knowing the value of protecting and providing
h safety and facilities to their children. If indigenous community favors in this the increasing number and
problems related to out of home care young people will be reduced. This partnership also helps in for
betterment of both the parties as many programs by the government will help this group, issues of
aboriginal people will be solved, participation of indigenous group will be more, and would help in
addressing the disproportionate number of aboriginal people in the institutions (Coates, 2016).
From the above analysis about the impact of indigenous group on Australian profession
approaches and polices it is known that this group rights and values are different and needed to be
protected for that many laws are introduced by the government. On other side the project objectives
will be achieved if the group contributed in the welfare of the society and when organizations tie ups
with them it will help reducing the cultural differences, more cooperation with the system and will prove
to be beneficial for protecting and safeguarding the children from unethical activities.

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References
Boza, T. G. (2016). A critical and comprehensive sociological theory of race and racism . Sociology of
Race and Ethnicity, 129-141.
Coates, J. (2016). Indigenous Social Work . Towards Culturally Relevant Education and Practice, 115-121.
DSS. (2019, May 29). National Standard for out of home care . Retrieved from Department of social
services : https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/families-and-children/publications-
articles/an-outline-of-national-standards-for-out-of-home-care-2011?HTML
Evershed, N., & Allam, L. (2019, May 29). Indigenous children's removal on the rise 21 years after
Bringing Them Home. Retrieved from TheGuardian: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2018/may/25/australia-fails-to-curb-childrens-removal-from-indigenous-families-figures-
show
Gale, F., & Bolzan, N. (2013). Social Resilience: chalengig neo colonial thinking and practices around risk.
Journal of Youth studies, 257-271.
Gambrill, E. (2016). Social Work Ethics. New York: Routledge.
Moran, A. (2009). What settler Australians talk about when they talk about Aborigines: reflections on an
in-depth interview study. Ethnic and Racial studies, 781-801.
Ranzijn, R., Connochie, M., & Nolan, W. (2009). Psychology and Indigenous Australians: Foundation of
Cultural Competence. UK: Macmillan.
Robertson, R. P., & Mcdonald, M. (2019, May 29). Working with Indigenous children, families, and
communities: Lessons from practice. Retrieved from AIFS:
https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/working-indigenous-children-families-and-communities
Wahlquist, C. (2019, May 29). Number of Indigenous children in care to triple unless spending changes .
Retrieved from TheGuardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/29/number-of-indigenous-children-in-
care-to-triple-unless-spending-changes-report