CHANNEL 7 GRANT

This project seeks the voices of Aboriginal families, who have experienced trauma, to engage in codesign of outcome measures of well-being. By working together, the project will develop Aboriginal informed outcome measures of capabilities required for family wellbeing and children’s safety.

Aboriginal yarning circles will be used to privilege the voices and experiences of Aboriginal children and families and community. The knowledge created will help identify suitable child protection outcomes for Aboriginal children and families that reflect their knowledge and experience of wellbeing.

This project celebrates engagement with Aboriginal children, families and practitioners to identify conditions for the development of innovative and culturally responsive services for the wellbeing and protection of children.

This research is a partnership between Kornar Winmil Yunti Aboriginal Family Services and SWIRLS. This research hopes to support Child Protection practitioners in valuing the strengths that Aboriginal culture offers for the wellbeing and safety of Aboriginal children and families.

with AnglicareSA

We are working with AnglicareSA to co-design, implement, and evaluate a practice framework that guides the work of supporting young people leaving the formal care system and in family restoration practices. Together we will draw on existing evidence and research, incorporating the expertise and practice wisdom of practitioners in AnglicareSA, to form and underpin the framework with the tools required to sustain it. The co-design process will include inviting, facilitating and hearing the experiences of young people and families in determining outcomes. The evaluation will ensure an evidence base that supports young people and families and measures the effectiveness of the framework long term. Together we aim to improve the experience and outcomes for South Australian children and families engaged with AnglicareSA services and build the evidence base for improved service design and practice in the area of leaving formal care and family restoration work. 

With Australian Research Council and Lutheran Church of Australia

We are working with the Lutheran Church of Australia we are generating new knowledge about how religious beliefs and practices are used by men to perpetrate domestic violence. Using a qualitative design this project will gain insights into how churches understand and respond to domestic violence, and identify and analyse the perpetration of spiritual abuse as a form of domestic violence. The significant innovation and benefit are interviewing Australian men about their understandings and use of violence through an ecclesiastical lens. The outcomes will enhance the knowledge base of domestic violence theory, serving as a platform to develop more effective policies and practice inside and outside religious settings to prevent domestic violence. 

with Department for Child Protection, Women’s Safety Services SA, KWY Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Family Services, and the Department of Human Service’s Early Intervention Research Directorate

We seek to understand the intersections between domestic and family violence, child abuse and neglect. With that goal in mind, we’ve brought together research, policy and practice with our many partners across child protection, women’s domestic violence services, and Aboriginal family violence services. We’re not afraid of having ‘too many cooks in the kitchen.’ We’re sharing ideas, observations, knowledge, and results to find a better way to support practitioners in their everyday work to recognise and respond to domestic and family violence in the context of child protection.

Privileging Aboriginal ways of knowing

The research agenda informing the building of collaboration at the intersection of domestic and family violence and child protection includes the privileging of Aboriginal ways of knowing. In partnership with EIRD,  we are proactively enabling the privileging of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural knowledge by employing Aboriginal researchers and supporting Aboriginal PhD candidates to build capacity in improving social work outcomes for Aboriginal children, their families and communities. Through our postdoctoral program we will create an Aboriginal Research Circle whereby Aboriginal PhD candidates will be supported during their research journey by other Aboriginal colleagues. Candidates will receive group supervision by academics in SWIRLS and be supported culturally during their research by Aboriginal leaders.  SWIRLS members will work alongside Aboriginal leaders to reflect and document such learnings from the Circles to privilege Aboriginal and Torres Islander cultural knowledge development.

Culturally Informed Practice Tool and Aboriginal Outcomes Framework

We are working in partnership with EIRD and the Aboriginal Leadership Group on two projects.  We are informing and supporting the development of an Aboriginal Outcomes Framework for Aboriginal children and families in South Australia.   We are also facilitating the development a culturally informed practice tool to guide assessment and evaluate intervention outcomes for Aboriginal children and their families and to strengthen the culturally informed evidence base that supports culturally responsive practice for Aboriginal children and family’s wellbeing. The Aboriginal Outcomes Framework will provide a context for working with Aboriginal children and families and the practice tool will be designed to operationalise and assess Aboriginal children’s safety and wellbeing outcomes and broader family level change to sustain children’s safety and wellbeing. Both the Aboriginal Outcomes Framework and the tool will be informed by evidence and research, existing culturally responsive frameworks and practice tools, the knowledge, experience, and wisdom of Aboriginal people, including practitioners and community.

with Emerging Minds and Parenting Research Centre

We’re focused on child mental health and wellbeing in our work with Emerging Minds and Parenting Research Centre. This project identifies and assesses the professional educational tools which can better equip families experiencing domestic and family violence. We collaborate and co-design with multidisciplinary practitioners and educators to help them deliver improved services to children and their caregivers where domestic and family violence exists in the home.

with ANROWS and Uniting Communities

We collaborate with family violence counsellors to speak to men about their use of violence in their intimate partner relationships. We explore the invitational narrative approach which aims to build greater understandings of how to engage men who are perpetrators of domestic and family violence. This project is funded by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) and conducted in partnership with Uniting Communities and ANROWS.

with Housing SA and the Department of Human Services

We work with Housing SA’s Supporting Young Peoples Program to understand the way young women experience violence and how these experiences shape their housing circumstances and needs. We also explore how housing support can be used to increase these women’s sense of safety. We form evidence-based knowledge, conclusions and recommendations through appreciative inquiry and participatory research. Our project is co-designed with Housing SA staff and the young women in their programs.