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Building Integrated Connections for Children, their Families and Communities
Research and practice shows that many vulnerable children and families face more than one challenge and require more than one intervention. However our service system has evolved historically to deal with one thing at a time or to provide services from multiple sources. This lack of integration can have a devastating effect on some families where key information or warning signs are missed. Coronial and judicial inquiries constantly stress the negative impact of a 'siloed' approach to services. Many researchers, practitioners and policy makers have struggled to address this issue. This book has been compiled from a series of presentations given at the 2010 Children Communities Connections conference in Adelaide. Over 300 professionals from NGOs, state and federal departments and academics from all states in Australia attended and focused on three key what do we know about these families and children, what are we doing to help them and what could we do better. Papers covered a range of topics from neurobiology, to service redesign and family engagement. Here we have a snapshot of some of the most promising programs and research being undertaken in Australia. It provides a platform for starting conversations on the need to focus on the child and family in the context of their whole life, the need to cross service and professional boundaries and the need to change the way we as professionals do things to improve outcomes for families. It is a book that captures the challenges, the opportunities and the hope for the future. It includes contributions from more than 40 practitioners, policy makers and researchers who work in community services, education and health for state, federal government and non government sectors.
244 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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January 7, 2017
The programs outlined in the book are worthwhile programs, I know it for a fact. I am saddened that many of them have had their funding cut. The idea of integration has much merit as has a "no wrong door" policy. One or two of the authors kept some complexity in their thinking when seeking which families don't get a say and seeing value in enjoyment and enrichment without a narrow outcomes focus.
Flaws with the book included the following
-Too many authors weighing in just to promote their particular sector, program or job. In the 3-4 pages managing only to give us some dry dot points that are not adequately explained or contextualised, assertions that tend to be over-simple and not backed up a fair amount of unexplored contradiction and repetition between chapeters and at times even poor grammar. This made for wearisome reading
- Deficit models of clients. Some authors made some effort to move us beyond this and to discuss it in the small amount of space they had but the majority simply saw the work as fixing bad families and bad parenting (or that was how they presented it). One author seemed determined to throw them all into the job market and seemed to naively think that would make better outcome for the children. There was for the most part no discussion of the political environment that is both the biggest challenge in "helping" people and the biggest obstacle to families and communities. One or two authors briefly considered this but more of that was necessary.
-Neoliberal paradigm "third sector", "investment", "customers" etc, etc. Brettig in the final chapter (which had some merit although still many problems) partially addressed this in looking at the negative impact of forcing agencies to compete for funding. Nevertheless he was still deeply entrenched in capitalist language (perhaps this is unavoidable considering who he has to convince, however I think therein lie the seeds of the failure of the system to "help" anyone much).
-Passive racism (uncritical taking up of "closing the gap" rhetoric) and sexism (recuperative masculinity politics and an overfocus on mollycoddling dads without even a nod to feminist or pro-feminist perspectives and a trivialisation of the labour of women in the family). This seems bland and well-meaning on the outside but I have seen how it pans out in some of those very agencies and it can do a lot of harm. I suspect part of the problem is that even though most workers in the fields represented in the book are female, a proportionately high number of the authors were male - meaning men's voices and preoccupations get over-represented.
-Romanticising of other countries where poor communities have things harder by one author- ignoring cultural contexts and other interfering variables to suggest that hardship per-se is good for people. This is easy to say when you are not suffering the hardship yourself and these damaging stereotypes go against much of the real evidence about human well-being (also rights is an issue) Human rights were entirely absent in the discussion in all chapters which surprised me. Most authors also made great demands of the workers in each of these programs without any acknowledgement of the human cost of intensification of already draining work or any clear call to remediate that.
There was the odd excellent point such as this quote from Slee in the chapter by Hetzel, Watts and Owers:
"...in order to achieve important outcomes for families at risk a paradigm shift is required so that unequal outcomes for families and children are seen as social injustices, rather than as products of individual dysfunction or deficit." Indeed! I was left puzzled why this paradigm shift was not attempted within the book!
Flaws with the book included the following
-Too many authors weighing in just to promote their particular sector, program or job. In the 3-4 pages managing only to give us some dry dot points that are not adequately explained or contextualised, assertions that tend to be over-simple and not backed up a fair amount of unexplored contradiction and repetition between chapeters and at times even poor grammar. This made for wearisome reading
- Deficit models of clients. Some authors made some effort to move us beyond this and to discuss it in the small amount of space they had but the majority simply saw the work as fixing bad families and bad parenting (or that was how they presented it). One author seemed determined to throw them all into the job market and seemed to naively think that would make better outcome for the children. There was for the most part no discussion of the political environment that is both the biggest challenge in "helping" people and the biggest obstacle to families and communities. One or two authors briefly considered this but more of that was necessary.
-Neoliberal paradigm "third sector", "investment", "customers" etc, etc. Brettig in the final chapter (which had some merit although still many problems) partially addressed this in looking at the negative impact of forcing agencies to compete for funding. Nevertheless he was still deeply entrenched in capitalist language (perhaps this is unavoidable considering who he has to convince, however I think therein lie the seeds of the failure of the system to "help" anyone much).
-Passive racism (uncritical taking up of "closing the gap" rhetoric) and sexism (recuperative masculinity politics and an overfocus on mollycoddling dads without even a nod to feminist or pro-feminist perspectives and a trivialisation of the labour of women in the family). This seems bland and well-meaning on the outside but I have seen how it pans out in some of those very agencies and it can do a lot of harm. I suspect part of the problem is that even though most workers in the fields represented in the book are female, a proportionately high number of the authors were male - meaning men's voices and preoccupations get over-represented.
-Romanticising of other countries where poor communities have things harder by one author- ignoring cultural contexts and other interfering variables to suggest that hardship per-se is good for people. This is easy to say when you are not suffering the hardship yourself and these damaging stereotypes go against much of the real evidence about human well-being (also rights is an issue) Human rights were entirely absent in the discussion in all chapters which surprised me. Most authors also made great demands of the workers in each of these programs without any acknowledgement of the human cost of intensification of already draining work or any clear call to remediate that.
There was the odd excellent point such as this quote from Slee in the chapter by Hetzel, Watts and Owers:
"...in order to achieve important outcomes for families at risk a paradigm shift is required so that unequal outcomes for families and children are seen as social injustices, rather than as products of individual dysfunction or deficit." Indeed! I was left puzzled why this paradigm shift was not attempted within the book!
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