The Importance of Analysis Social Work with the Main Focus on Indigenous People in Australia - Research Paper Example

1.0 Table of content 2.0 Introduction 2 2.1 Research question: 2 3.0 Background information 3 3.1 Literature review 3 4.1 Methods 5 4.2 Result 6 5.0 Synthesis 7 5.1 Discussion 7 6.0 Conclusion 8 References 9 7.0 Appendix 10 2.0 Introduction 2.1 Research question: The aim of this research report is to understand the importance of studying social work by focusing on indigenous people in Australia. Social work is and will always be an important profession for promotion of social change, solving human relationship problems, liberation and empowerment of people in order to enhance wellbeing. With the fundamental principles of human rights and social justice, social work and its values are based on respect for the dignity, worth and equality of all people. Since its inception, the main focus of social work has been meeting the needs of human as well as developing the potential of human. Thus, the justification and motivation of social action is based on social justice and human rights (Ronnau, 1994). According to Saunders & Naidoo, (2009, p.425), the indigenous people in Australia are experiencing among the highest rates of poverty. This has been attributed by low life expectancy, mortality rates, lack of early childhood education, low achievements in schools, and unemployment among other factors, thus increasing the gap between the indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. In order to close the gap and overcome this indigenous disadvantage, social work is important to ensure fundamental principles of social justice and human rights prevail. Through this research, the profession provides us with the knowledge to strive in poverty alleviation and liberation of the vulnerable and oppressed people in order to enhance and promote social inclusion. This report will cover the literature review on the importance of studying social work with the main focus on indigenous people in Australia, the methodology which involve structured interview, the results which will explain the uncovered evidence, the discussion in order to answer our question. Finally, the conclusion will focus on the gained knowledge and future research. 3.0 Background information 3.1 Literature review According to Hayes, Gray, and Edwards (2008), social work in the society has been of significant impact especially in addressing the existing injustices, barriers and inequalities. This has been achieved by intervention with a range of person-focused psychological processes to social policy, development and planning involvement. These include efforts that help people access resources and services in the community, clinical social work, counseling, and social pedagogical work among others. In addition, such intervention includes community organization, agency administration as well as engaging in political and social action in order to impact economic development and social policy. Lee (2003), argues that social work is crucial for improvement of the life of disadvantaged in the society. Various circumstances have made people to fail to function better in the environment, to deal with the relationships as well as challenges in solving personal or family problems. He observed that social work is very important especially in marginalized groups who are vulnerable to various challenges such as inadequate housing, financial distress, unemployment, chronic illnesses, lack of adequate job skills, anti-social behavior as well as substance abuse. Although the government may be willing to provide more opportunities in order to address these challenges, social work will be very crucial in order to change the already developed negative social attitude. In Australia, the indigenous people make more than 2.6% of the Australian population. In the Northern territories, the indigenous group consists of more than 33% while in the rest of states; the percentage is spread evenly at around 2-4%. The rate of unemployment for indigenous people in Australia is around 16%. This value is three times more than the rate of unemployment for non-indigenous Australians. In addition, the median age for an indigenous Australian is 21 years while that of non-indigenous Australian is 37 years. 32% of indigenous population lives in Australian cities while 25% of the indigenous live in remote areas (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). Saunders & Naidoo (2009) noted that the indigenous Australians are people living with the highest rate of poverty. There are various challenges that have led to the current condition of the indigenous people in Australia. These include social attitude, land ownership, remoteness, health, education and employment. Such disadvantage has led to a great gap between the indigenous Australian and non-indigenous Australians in terms of mortality rates, education, and employment among others. Although the Australian government is taking various steps such as indigenous economic development in order to close the gaps (Australian Government, 2009, p.5), there is a lot that need to be done. The number of disadvantaged indigenous people in Australia is still high (Marks, 2007). According to Briskman (2008), indigenous people in Australia have remained the lowest grouped when ranked in regard to social-economic ladder. This has been attributed to the legacy of the policies of oppression in Australia and they still have not gained any benefit in terms of health, economic status and education. Briskman add that high rates of substance use, unemployment, poor health, and inadequate infrastructure or housing as well as the fact that indigenous people in Australia live approximately twenty years less than non-indigenous Australians is an issue of interest. This is true especially when the indigenous people in Australia are compared with others fourth world settler nations. Briskman (2008) conclude that it is the dominance of western discourse since the beginning of social work in Australia that has led to a great harm in indigenous Australians. In addition, Green, Sue & Baldry (2008) argued that the indigenous knowledge present in indigenous people that could be crucial in assisting their peers has been ignored completely in the past. Thus, as the government tries to close the gap between the two, Briskman observes that there is failure to include indigenous culture, healing procedures on very obvious cases of ignorance of the culture of the indigenous people. From the literature review, Hayes, Gray, & Edwards (2008) notes that social work intervention is essential in addressing the existing injustices, barriers and inequalities. One of intervention is through a person-focused psychological process in order to ensure that the disadvantaged people get equal resources and services as others. However, although there may be efforts of ensuring that there are opportunities for indigenous people to get equal treatment as the non-indigenous ones, there is still a psychological gap existing between the two, particularly the negative social attitude in indigenous people. 4.1 Methods The information consisted of structured interview with the Australian indigenous people. We used locally resident indigenous research assistants in order to assist in identification, location and interviewing of participants. We chose this strategy because it can also be used to discover how the respondents (indigenous Australians) feel about the issues and to identify the views of the respondents that may requires discovering more details. Given that the indigenous Australians are many, this strategy was easier to apply for such a large and representative sample of indigenous people in order to make a fair and easy simplification of findings. In addition, it was easier for us to examine the level of understanding of the indigenous Australians in regard to this topic. Since we also used research assistants from the indigenous Australians, using the same questions ensured that the assistants get the required information. Thus, by offering the same questions in the same order, we were guaranteed that the answers were reliably collected and also it was easier to make comparison with confidence between various locations. 4.2 Result The results show that the indigenous people have overcome various significant hurdles to achieve a lot of things both for the community and the entire country. However, there are still a large number of indigenous Australians that are disadvantaged. Based on our research, indigenous people have poorer education opportunities, health, life expectancy, employment options and a big number still live in remote areas. Above all, many indigenous people in Australia have a great challenge of dealing with negative social attitudes health. In terms of land ownership, the indigenous people face a lot of challenges in order to claim a land with expensive court cases and a lot of proof and information that is difficult to obtain. There are still a large number of indigenous people living in remote areas and the remoteness limits their access to necessary services such as health and education and the opportunities for employment are very low causing high rate of unemployment. Negative attitude is the major challenge as it makes them lose trust with the provision of available services and service providers. 5.0 Synthesis 5.1 Discussion In terms of health, a lot of indigenous people are currently getting the same access to health care as the non-indigenous Australians. However, due to remoteness, lack of trust in regard to the medical industry as well as negative social attitude is the main reasons that can be associated with poor health. This shows that there is a lot that is required to be done in order to ensure that these problems are identified in order to help the indigenous Australian achieve better health. Land ownership is very important to indigenous people and they determine their economic worth within the community using land. In order to depict how challenging it is for indigenous people to prove their links to their ancestral lands, a court case on land claim by Yanyuwa people lasted for 30 years (from 1977- 2006) as they tried to look for evidence linking them to the land. Such struggles are potential to indigenous Australians as they wish to make claims on their ancestral lands. According to Gray, Hunter, Schwab (2000), there has been concerns for indigenous people in regard to the European system of education especially based on their past experience. There are still concerns about the indigenous education where as compared to non-indigenous Australians; they have the lowest statistics in terms of retention, attendance, and continuing of education. Low retention rates as well as high absence rates are still major concerns in indigenous Australians. According to Bennett, Bindi & Zubrzycki (2003), the older indigenous Australians also have negative views in regard to the European education because of the own experiences in the past. Hunter andTaylor (2001) argued that the negative attitude towards the education system among the indigenous people leads to unemployment. Unfortunately, due to negative views, the current system of education has resulted to high rates of unemployment among the indigenous Australians. Although there are efforts to fund employment programs for indigenous Australians, there is a need to teach skills, there is a need to change social attitudes and there is a need for more community effort to prevent a condition of continual passing of unemployment through generations. Thus, negative attitude is very significant in indigenous community and this has led to lack of trust and negative attitudes towards the services and opportunities offered by the government to indigenous Australians. This shows that there is more that need to be done in order to reconcile the indigenous Australians with the entire community. This calls for social work in order to promote social change, solve human relationships problems and liberation and empowerment of the indigenous people in order to enhance their wellbeing and build stronger relationships with the entire Australian community. 6.0 Conclusion From the research on the importance of social work on indigenous group in Australia, it is clear that there is a negative social attitude existing between the indigenous and non-indigenous people in Australia towards the services offered such as health and education among others. Although there are more opportunities offered to the indigenous people, the negative social attitude has led to poorer education opportunities, health, life expectancy, employment options and a big number still live in remote areas. Thus, there is a need for knowledge in social work in order to reconcile the indigenous people with the entire community. Social work will ensure poverty alleviation and liberation of the vulnerable and oppressed indigenous people in order to enhance and promote social inclusion. Although social workers are present in Australia, it is evident that there is dominance of western discourse which may have led to ignorance of the culture of indigenous people. This may be a great harm to the indigenous people which may be a great source of negative social attitude. In future, there is a need for a universal social work which will be equally sensitive to culture so that it will be able to address most social issues. References Australian Bureau of Statistics 2008, retrieved from: < http://abs.gov.au/> Australian Government (2009) Closing the Gap on Indigenous Disadvantage: The Challenge for Australia (Canberra: Australian Government). Bennett, Bindi & Zubrzycki 2003 Hearing the stories of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social workers: challenging and educating the system. Australian Social Work, vol. 56, 1 (page 61-70). Briskman, Linda (2008) “Decolonizing Social Work in Australia: Prospect or Illusion” in Gray, M. & Coates, J. & Yellow Bird, M. (red): Indigenous Social Work around the worldtowards culturally relevant education and practice. MPG Books Ltd. Surrey Gray, M C; Hunter, B; Schwab, R G. Trends in Indigenous educational participation and attainment, 1986-96, Australian Journal of Education v. 44 no. 2 Aug 2000: 101-117, Green, Sue & Baldry, Eileen (2008) Building Indigenous Australian Social Work. Australian Social Work, vol 61, 4 (page 389-402) Hayes, A., Gray, M. & Edwards, B. (2008) Social Inclusion: Origins, Concepts and Key Themes (Canberra:Commonwealth of Australia). Hunter, B; Taylor, J. Indigenous jobs growth and unemployment, 1996-2006: the impact of CDEP. Australian Journal of Labour Economics v.4 no.2 Jun 2000 - 2001: 65-7 Lee, M.Y. (2003) ‘A Solution-focused Approach to Cross-cultural Clinical Social Work Practice: Utilizing Cultural Strengths’, Families In Society – The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, 84(3), pp. 385–95. Marks, G. (2007) Income Poverty, Subjective Poverty and Financial Stress, Social Policy Research Paper No. 29(Canberra: Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs). Saunders, P. & Naidoo, Y. (2009) Poverty, deprivation and consistent poverty, The Economic Record, 85(271),pp. 417–432 7.0 Appendix Structured interview 1. How do you feel about the health services provided to your community? Are they the same as that of other communities? 2. It the land you are living in your ancestral land? Have you had problems with the government on ownership of land? If there is, how long did it take to solve? It this usually the case with other communities? 3. What is you highest level of education? Do you like the current system of education? If no, why? 4. Are you employed? If no, have you ever tried applying for a job? If yes, were you invited for interview? If yes, do you think it was fair? 5. What do you feel about the other communities (non-indigenous)? Do you have the same opportunities as them? Do you feel the government is being fair to all? Read More