SAANZ Conference 2019

Chair: John Darroch

Nigel Pizzini and Susan Crozier: Centering Matauranga Māori in a Social Practitioner Training Programme

This presentation is an account of the rationale behind the authors’ efforts to create a Masters in Narrative Practice programme, geared toward social practitioners, that might be deserving of the designation “bicultural”. We set out to create a programme that would bring Māori knowledge, language and values alongside and into dialogue with international, Eurocentric, non-Māori social practice models and theories. Our intention was to create a programme with Matauranga Māori at its heart, in contrast to programmes that confine Māori content to the beginning or end of a degree. We hope that our account might prove a useful contribution to social practitioner training, particularly with respect to promoting meaningful treaty-based practice. Beyond the question of how Tauiwi social practitioners are to engage respectfully with Māori clients, which risks falling into essentialising models of diversity, we argue that engagement with biculturalism, as suggested by the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi), provides a powerful lens for developing culturally responsive social practitioners more generally, within the context of Aotearoa New Zealand.


Sophia de Fossard: Children in Care and Protection: The relationship to their social worker and the quality of social worker supervision

A robust literature reports that the quality of the child’s relationship with their social worker is a mediating factor in facilitating the decision making about their future. However, the role of supervisors in shaping the extent to which social worker practices enhance or undermine children’s meaningful participation has been less explored. This presentation focuses on a review of the literature relevant to this question. Child participation in decisions surrounding their care has to be carefully balanced with between many aspects of involvement with government agencies. Given the constraints on the role of social workers within these contexts, this review explores the relationship between the child and their social worker, and how supervision is constructed in this process. This review will use the Treaty of Waitangi as the foundation for engaging in culturally appropriate care for children in Aotearoa New Zealand.


Irene Ayallo: The Advantages and Challenges of S4.5 Residence Category for victims of domestic violence policy

This presentation will focus on S4.5 Residence Category for victims of domestic violence (Operational Manual – Immigration New Zealand), in the context of intimate partner violence experienced by women of migrant and refugee background. Research shows that migrant and refugee background women face multiple challenges, including intimate partner violence. The lives of these women are compounded by factors tied to ethnic minority status, immigration status and processes, gender inequality and class marginalisation. The policy was introduced in response to a finding that legal issues connected to immigration status frequently extend migrant and refugee background women’s vulnerability once in violent relationships. It is argued in the presentation that while the policy ensures that the women can have greater legal protection from the perpetrators of violence, it is still problematic. Specifically, not all refugee and migrant background women are aware of this policy, will see themselves to be in a position to make best use of it, and/or cannot provide the required evidence. The challenges are discussed in the presentation.


Kiminori Fukuda: Trends in Social Welfare Reform for Out-of-Home Care in Japan

Currently social welfare reform for out-of-home care is underway in Japan. The direction is from Residential Care Institutions for Children (RCIC) to foster family care. While the foster parent placement rate rises, there are discussions about various problems that will occur. The turning point of social care in Japan was 2011 government report ‘Challenges and the Future Vision of Social Foster Care’. Since then, the Japanese government has built on this vision, including revising the law to achieve this direction. Based on an extensive review of Japanese government-issued policy documents and related literatures, this presentation introduces the new direction of social foster care system in Japan, and also the factors influencing the direction of policy change in Japan. We will discuss the future of out-of-home care in Japan, and the social work challenges we anticipate in providing support to a new generation of foster care families.


Each presentation will be allocated 20 minutes. Additional time for questions and discussion will be available in each stream.