Michelle Moss

The push to improve Indigenous student retention and completion rates in higher education programs is a strategic goal across Australian universities. Similarly, the notion of decolonizing education to allow for a more culturally relevant educational experience is being discussed in university curricula development. In this article, we highlight challenges within the current neoliberal political context influencing a decolonized approached to higher education. We will draw on experiences from a case study of a creative therapy course situated within a Social Work program at a regional university. A team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers will propose a framework for navigating pedagogical and administrative challenges to design a course that serves as a powerful tool to advocate for changes in higher education and social work systems. We suggest that this framework can be used to build valuable connections across Indigenous and Western knowledge systems and promote truth-telling in the social work context. Finally, we argue that our framework for decolonising education is inter-disciplinary and a useful tool in helping staff and students take back their knowledge from colonial power structures. In order to decolonise social work education, we need to deconstruct the whiteness embedded in pedagogy, theory and social work practice itself. We need to work in true partnership with Indigenous knowledge holders and community members to co-create new knowledge. This framework can be used to build valuable authentic connections across Indigenous and Western knowledge systems and promote truth-telling in the social work context. This framework works to both challenge current social work curricula in Australia and attract and retain Indigenous students in social work education, which arguably would help to ensure culturally relevant practice with and by Indigenous people.

Aboriginal children in Australia are over-represented in both the child protection and juvenile justice systems. Using Western therapeutic models of practice with Aboriginal people who live in remote communities can be highly problematic. Moreover, the historical legacy of past and present legislation, government interventions and racist service provision needs to be acknowledged and addressed prior to any service implementation. This paper presents a therapeutic model of practice that incorporates Aboriginal concepts of healing and spirit within a creative therapeutic framework. It will demonstrate how the model works through principles of community engagement and capacity building, enabling the provision of a culturally derived therapeutic intervention that involves a synergy of both Aboriginal- and Western-based healing practices. The findings from the implementation of the TeaH model affirm the need to incorporate Aboriginal concepts of healing, spirit and creative therapies into mainstream practice with Aboriginal people.

Child protection manuals and literature emphasize that developing a sense of identity is one of the most important elements in achieving good outcomes for children in out‐of‐home care. Yet, the very issue of identity raises questions that many child protection workers are ill‐equipped to answer. In practice, life story book work based on developmental theories has been utilized by child protection workers and foster carers as a response to a sense of ‘lost identity’ for children in out‐of‐home care. However, Indigenous and psychological concepts of identity may have little in common.Current theories of identity development in children lack evidence from the children and young people themselves in informing these notions, which have been criticized as adult‐centric. Developmental theories may also be problematic for children from non‐Western cultural groups. This research was undertaken in a regional area of Queensland, Australia where the majority of children in the child protection system who are identified as Indigenous, come from two or more cultural backgrounds. The research presented in this paper firstly explores identity issues for children and young people in foster care from their own perspective using narrative art therapy. Secondly, the research views identity from the perspective of professionals working in child protection and out‐of‐home care.