Integrating Indigenous Family Structures in Social Work Education
Episode Description
In this episode, we are joined by host Libby Hammond and guest Shirley Young, an Aboriginal social worker from South Australia. The conversation challenges Western frameworks that dominate social work education and practice. Shirley shares personal and professional insights on the long-standing colonial impacts on Aboriginal communities that highlight how assimilation policies, intergenerational trauma, and systemic distrust shape present-day interactions with social workers.
She also introduces the richness and resilience of Aboriginal kinship structures, illustrating how expansive and supportive extended family systems differ from Western nuclear models. The episode calls on future social workers to deeply listen, understand Indigenous perspectives, and value culturally grounded ways of knowing, being, and doing. Through stories and reflective dialogue, this episode is a call to action and a guide for integrating Indigenous knowledge into social work education. A reminder to shift from theory to practice in meaningful and respectful ways.
Tina Odu Hi, my name is Tina Odu
Eleanor Hogan My name is Eleanor Hogan. We're social work apprentices pursuing bachelors and social work in the United Kingdom. Welcome to the Decolonised and social work Field Education podcast.
Tina Odu Through this podcast, we invite you to think on how we can decolonize social work, field education, or placement as it's known in the UK.
Eleanor Hogan But wait, Tina, why do we need to do that? What exactly do we mean by decolonisation in this country?
Tina Odu Have you ever thought about how social education teaches us to understand and support indigenous families?
Tina Odu We are students in the UK and we've seen how socialization can sometimes.
Tina Odu Overlook.
Tina Odu The unique strengths and experiences of different global communities.
Eleanor Hogan Yeah, I've noticed we focus a lot on each other family model, parents of primary caregivers. Children are dependent on them. But that's a very western way of seeing things.
Eleanor Hogan Isn't.
Eleanor Hogan It and even in our academic training on decolonizing social work, education suggests how social work has historically ignored these kinship systems and instead imposed.
Eleanor Hogan Western family norms, and I believe that's led to policies that have harmed indigenous communities.
Tina Odu That's the thing, isn't it? I don't know. And if we as future social workers don't understand how indigenous kingship works, we might misinterpret family support networks and even disrupt them unintentionally.
Eleanor Hogan So the big question is how do we change social work education?
Eleanor Hogan To recognize and integrate these systems, how do we shift from just learning theories rooted in Western frameworks to approaches that actually reflect the communities?
Eleanor Hogan We work with.
Tina Odu And that's exactly what we'll explore today. It's a tough world, but hey, if we can figure out how to assess family dynamics in a classroom, we're halfway there, right?
Eleanor Hogan I think so, but let's hold on to those questions. We aim to answer those and many more in this episode today with our host, Libby Hammond and our guest, Shirley Young. We'll talk about how we can not just include.
Eleanor Hogan Also, value indigenous family structures and social work education.
Libby Hammond Hi, my name is Libby Hammond and I'm your host for today.
Libby Hammond I'm an Anglo Celtic australium with ancestral connections to Ireland, Britain, Germany and Scotland. As a social worker, I have a background in community development, child protection, academia and research, and I received my PhD in 2021. I want to begin our podcast by acknowledging the traditional custodians.
Libby Hammond The Garner peoples of the land where I live, work and recreate.
Libby Hammond Lands that were never seeded.
Libby Hammond I acknowledge the Ghana people as caretakers on behalf of our Creator, and I recognise that garner people's cultural, spiritual, physical and emotional connection with country. I share a responsibility to care for country, so I endeavour to walk softly and gently on this land.
Libby Hammond I pay my respects to elders, past and present, and I acknowledge all indigenous peoples listening today, and I especially want to acknowledge our guest, speaker Shirley, and the wisdom and knowledge that she brings to us today.
Libby Hammond So before we begin, Shelly, can you briefly introduce yourself to our listeners?
Shirley Young My name is.
Shirley Young Shirley Young, I am an Aboriginal woman descending from the Nocona peoples from SA in Australia. My people are located in the southern Flinders Ranges and surrounding areas. I am the oldest child of an Aboriginal father and a.
Shirley Young Then in my.
Shirley Young I've been a social worker for several years and been working on the field for a very long time in areas such as child protection, child mental health, child well-being, and a variety of other. Thank you so much for having me today, Libby. It's an absolute honor. I just also want to acknowledge that although I'm in your new woman, I'm actually living and working on that.
Shirley Young Down a country and I too want to pay my respects to the Ghana people.
Speaker 5 Thanks, Shirley. So before we discuss integrating Indigenous family structures and social work field education.
Speaker 5 Sherry, can you give us a brief introduction to the relationship or roles that social workers have historically played in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait on with the families, just to provide us with an understanding of the colonial legacies that continue to influence social work and food education?
Shirley Young So yeah, that's a really good question and historically.
Shirley Young Aboriginal people have been coming into contact with Colony.
Shirley Young Or structures that have actually at times been very traumatising, but we have seen our families assimilated and what that does mean is mean is that churches and other institutions have played roles where our family structures.
Shirley Young Have been broken down and we've seen our children removed and there have been policies that have been very harmful and continue to have devastating impacts on our families.
Shirley Young Social workers have actually come into spaces where Aboriginal families have at times been asking for support, and what we've actually seen as families not necessarily getting the support that they need. I know that social workers want to play a role where they can be feeling supportive and and doing the right things.
Shirley Young But over time, it's been shown that policies of the day have actually in fact created greater trauma for our families.
Shirley Young Unfortunately, our Aboriginal families feel very nervous when they come into contact with social workers and so for our families and communities to actually trust social workers is actually a really big thing and particularly if they are connected, organizations like child protection, our hospital and.
Shirley Young Other places like that, our prisons and places that are charged to provide services to our children and families where there's been serious trauma occurred for them once been in those systems and it's hard for Aboriginal people to even reach out.
Shirley Young And get help because.
Shirley Young Of the type.
Shirley Young Of support they've received previously and their great.
Shirley Young Fear and distrust of the.
Shirley Young Type of service that they may actually receive, despite the fact that they.
Shirley Young May really be.
Shirley Young Looking for and needing support. Given the history that Aboriginal people have previously faced, there has been huge amounts of intergenerational trauma.
Shirley Young That has occurred for our.
Shirley Young Families and what it actually means is that when social workers actually come in.
Shirley Young To work with.
Shirley Young Families, they need to be very aware of the experiences that families have had in terms of stolen generation, invasion, assimilation and serious levels of racism that still occurs within Australia.
Shirley Young And in our institutions, for the fear level of being judged and maybe having a child removed or feeling like there are eyes on constantly on our Aboriginal.
Shirley Young Creates ongoing levels of distrust. For example, you look at the stolen generation, the generation where our children were stolen from their families based on the color of their skin. Our children are told stories. We have people who are still alive, that have who have lived through both.
Shirley Young Rumors and are parenting from those traumas themselves. Our children grow up knowing the history of our people because that's what we do. We actually share from one generation and to another our stories of resistance and stories of care for.
Shirley Young Another and those stories of having to look after one another continue to come up and sit in the hearts and minds of our people, and our children are knowing the struggles that have actually occurred for our people.
Libby Hammond I agree, Shirley. I saw this first hand when I worked in child protection, so I know through my own experience as a social worker working alongside Aboriginal families, how important it is for me to have a deep understanding of the impact that history has had on Aboriginal people and how that impact continues.
Libby Hammond Today.
Libby Hammond So another key aspect in my work has been to understand family kinship structure. Shelly, can you explain these kinship structures, including some of the values that underpin kinship?
Shirley Young Basically, our families have very rich and interconnected family structures. Our structures actually help us, establishing people to understand where we fit into our family. It helps us to understand who we actually have a responsibility for respect to it.
Shirley Young Helps others to understand who they are in relation to us. So if I'm saying to somebody, I'm a.
Shirley Young New woman the new sack. That woman looking new woman and that I am the child of Eric provides Banfield places me within a structure and it also tells somebody else if I am related to them. And it also tells me, do they have a sense of responsibility to me? And do I have a sense of responsibility to them?
Shirley Young And generally what happens is Aboriginal people will very quickly introduce themselves by their name and who their Aboriginal language group is, so that very quickly gets us right down to business almost and tells us who's who. Now, what that means for a social worker.
Shirley Young Is that it means that we have very large kinship structure. It means that they are very detailed and it means that our kinship and the types of relationships that we actually have are very extended where a Anglo-Saxon family might introduce themselves as here's Mum dad.
Shirley Young And two children. And I'm being very stereotypical there.
Shirley Young And then people can.
Shirley Young Actually place a.
Shirley Young Whole bunch of people who are connected to us, and often we will name names of people that we know to see whether or not they are linked anywhere, so they're in our hearts and minds. We know very quickly where we are placed in it.
Shirley Young So for social workers, they need to understand that the relationship that Aboriginal people may describe may have a different meaning to what a mainstream family may be described.
Shirley Young For instance, an auntie and uncle will be our mother and father, and so therefore they have a responsibility which is in fact mother and father.
Shirley Young And what that?
Shirley Young Means from a caring.
Shirley Young Perspective is that it will take more than one person to actually care for a child and to make sure.
Shirley Young A child is.
Shirley Young Grown up well and whole.
Shirley Young We have our cousins become our brothers and sisters and therefore we have a very large structure of people that are around.
Shirley Young And us who form our support system and of course our kinship structure is our strength, because if we.
Shirley Young Need support and.
Shirley Young Help. We are set within a very large structure that is designed to provide support, to provide knowledge and understanding and to provide us with ways of.
Shirley Young Knowing being and doing from Aboriginal frameworks.
Libby Hammond So what does that mean for social work?
Speaker 5 Yes.
Shirley Young What this also means for social workers is that if the child is unable to be in their direct family, there are many people that sit around their children that are in a place to provide support, care, and if for whatever reason, they're not able to be.
Shirley Young Home with their their big.
Shirley Young Mother and father.
Shirley Young Then they're able to actually easily.
Tina Odu Go to other.
Shirley Young Places what social workers need to understand is that the change in those relationship means that they must look more broadly than than what they might do in other circumstances. They must hear and listen for a family describing a relationship, even if they don't use the word.
Shirley Young For the mother.
Shirley Young And other father, that sounds like a mother father relationship and understand that the responsibility is as a mother and father would be. And so therefore it would be very natural for a child to move from one property to another.
Shirley Young The direct mother and father, the big mother, and.
Shirley Young Father.
Shirley Young May have a role of doing particular things, and they may actually have a caring role and the other mothers and fathers might do more of the directing it they might do more of the disciplining and they might be providing support and knowledge to children in different ways.
Libby Hammond I remember as a social worker fresh out of university, and before I had my own children, how my views of parenting was very limited, and I often use this narrow lens to assess families.
Libby Hammond Since having my own children, I understand how extremely important it is to have support beyond just my husband and I.
Shirley Young Also, what we find is that Aboriginal people will often tell me we don't have to have a big friendship structure because our kinship structure is so big that we have all of our natural support sitting right there and that the natural.
Shirley Young Place for us.
Shirley Young To go to, seek out support and live and care and guidance.
Shirley Young Is actually within our system. The social workers have this huge big body of strength and knowledge and support that can actually be supporting Aboriginal families.
Shirley Young And what we must do is hear from families and know that they have ways of dealing with their own issues. And so therefore, if we know as social workers that we can do something, like have a family group conference, then we can actually pull families together to hear directly from them of what would be supportive.
Shirley Young For the family and how, as a family, they can actually respond to their own concerns.
Shirley Young That self determination for Aboriginal people is about asking them how do you think this needs to be solved? What could you do as a family to keep your family safe and working as an Aboriginal person? What would bring you better social, emotional well-being? All of those things that social workers are doing? But if they're listening?
Shirley Young Deeply. If they're looking for the family's strengths and they're actively looking for their Aboriginal voice and understanding that Aboriginal children are sacred to Aboriginal.
Shirley Young People then they are a long way down the road to having really good connection and work happening with Aboriginal families that honour Aboriginal knowledge as Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing and also taking a place where rather than feeling like they having to provide all the answers, actually often exist within.
Shirley Young Our family kinship structure, we only need to look for it and we only need to ask for it and to allow Aboriginal people this place to be able to speak and say what it is they need and want.
Shirley Young For their families.
Libby Hammond That's such an important point as we know, Aboriginal people are the experts in their own.
Libby Hammond Lives, so it makes sense to listen deeply and to allow them the space to communicate what they need and want.
Libby Hammond Shirley, can you explain why it is important for social workers to understand mapping indigenous family kinship structures in social work education?
Shirley Young It is so important for social workers to understand.
Shirley Young Is that when we're actually drawing a genogram or mapping Aboriginal families that often people don't go back and redo genograms they often get drawn once and people just go back and look at them. The problem with that is that if you've actually got a genogram or a family map that doesn't resemble an extended kinship.
Shirley Young People don't realize that there are all these other options that they can be tapping into. For instance, if we were young adolescent boy that is struggling in adolescence and he's doing some things that we may not want him.
Shirley Young To do it's the.
Shirley Young A big father is not unable to have conversations with him about that. Then one of the other fathers will actually step up and provide guidance and discipline to actually maintain relationship for the child to the Big Father. Well, what that actually means, though, is that we must understand that the relationships that are actually drawn on the map.
Shirley Young Have different names like I was saying earlier. Well, if you understand that there are other fathers in that.
Shirley Young Genogram in that family structure, you can actually think, OK, so how am I going to go on approach this family to seek help for this young person? So we would be saying to the family, we have a genogram that looks like this. It looks like there are these other people there for anybody in this structure that we could actually bring in to support this young adolescent.
Shirley Young Voids and the father may well say yes.
Shirley Young There are all these other fathers here that we can actually tap into. So for me, when I get the family to describe them listening intently to hear what that relationship is, and if they say to me this is another mother or father, I would write there that this is.
Shirley Young Another mother or father?
Shirley Young But if they were describing the relationship, even as auntie.
Shirley Young Uncle. But I hear them describing that relationship as one that sounds like another. Then I will treat that relationship like it is another mother that when I write about that family, I try and make sure that I'm actually writing so that the next reader of my file can see that there is another cultural connection.
Shirley Young That is as important as another mother, and that the other reader knows that person is also available to utilise if the family chooses as a support structure. The other thing it does is that it allows me to actually talk about the strength and the diversity that happens within even a family.
So.
Shirley Young And again, it's really important to remember that as you're writing about family, it's not writing about strength or often not hearing about it. Unfortunately, when I look at files, I often see files that.
Shirley Young Don't actually describe kinship structures. They don't necessarily describe the strengths within that kinship structure, and therefore files are often problem saturated, and we don't see huge amounts of.
Shirley Young Opportunity where people have utilized culture as strengths and more as as opposed to something that we worry about and that is the purpose of social workers listening deeply, not just with your ears but with your eyes and with your heart and your mind and with what we call.
Shirley Young In our guts, what is our guts actually stealing and sensing from what the family are saying? And sometimes that takes a social worker to act.
Shirley Young Seek that information as opposed to sitting back and just listening to the triggers. We all do that, don't we? It's easy to hear a concern. It is takes way more skill as a social worker to locate something that is a strength and to be able to weave it into your formulation of what's really happening for a family.
Shirley Young It's something that it makes my heart sing when I see that stuff.
Libby Hammond I love that shirt.
Libby Hammond That it makes your heart sing to see a social worker focusing on a family strength in their work.
Shirley Young Thanks Lib.
Libby Hammond Listening deeply and listening for strength in families and not relying on what you've learned from a book is really important.
Libby Hammond Jenny, how can a student use this information to better understand the intergenerational effects of racism?
Libby Hammond And what this could mean in practice for black, Asian minority, ethnic social workers and service users?
Shirley Young I think maybe it's really interesting because if somebody's experiencing racism, it's actually not for what somebody else to say, whether or not they're experiencing racism. If somebody feels and is telling you that they feel like something is racist, I think the job that we have is to understand what that actually means.
Shirley Young And if the person and they are able to verbalize what that is, I think our job is to listen intently to that. Often what happens as our families feel so unsafe and they just won't return?
Shirley Young Then so if people are not returning to your service, you'd have to ask yourself what is that actually about? Racism sits in systems and institutions in particular in a whole range of ways that is not seen to people who are privileged. It's actually not seen, and it's very easy for somebody who's privileged to saying no, that's not.
Shirley Young Happening. So really, when I think about racism within the Organism.
Shirley Young I think about the trauma that is coming from other generations, the trauma that's being passed down, the trauma that exists in the way that our families function, their ability to have been able to parent after having their children stole or being the child that has been raised by a parent who was stolen.
Shirley Young And the trauma that is actually passed from one generation to another. Unfortunately, trauma actually changes.
Shirley Young The DNA of people and there are so many things that continually happen for people from other cultural backgrounds. For instance, Aboriginal people will continually find themselves explaining the person that they're working with, why the system doesn't work for them, continually explaining why a program.
Shirley Young Those wisest to them. And so I guess for social workers, it's really important to understand what they're bringing actually does.
Shirley Young It it's never fitted, it's often changed and moved and developed to try and fit, but it's never often written from an Aboriginal person's knowledge and values and perspectives, so therefore it often is racist, even though sometimes people may not have the words to even describe it.
Shirley Young And I'm sure that this would be the case. Some people, for people from other cultures who experience racism within workplaces, racism within systems that are designed to help them. And so.
Shirley Young For social workers from other cultures and from social workers, it's very hard to even connect to something that is not yours. And so we are always having to explain why we don't want to use something or why it doesn't sit well with us, or why our families are not accessing.
Shirley Young Particular types of support and content. Why should we be using Aboriginal framework? Because what actually happens when that happens is that we actually save time and we'll save.
Shirley Young Because there is a certain knowing and understanding of what the experiences of the other Aboriginal people are, we understand that there has been intergenerational trauma. We understand that there has been invasion and colonisation. We know that there have been historical events like the stolen generation and not being able to vote.
Shirley Young Us not being able.
Shirley Young To have wages and all of those things.
Shirley Young That are the context that actually underpin the things that happen for our Aboriginal people now, and I presume other cultures don't get the opportunity to dictate or to say very openly what it is that's actually happening for them. I strongly believe that where there is somebody, an aboriginal social worker or social worker from.
Shirley Young The culture that's working with their own people, that's the self determination and the work should.
Shirley Young Come from them.
Libby Hammond That's such a salient point, Shirley, that the work should come from Aboriginal people and their ways of knowing, being and doing.
Libby Hammond So how can we better promote knowledge sharing and application across countries and institutions?
Tina Odu Maybe that is such?
Shirley Young A beautiful question because in Australia we have people from a whole range of different countries come and do social work here and the one thing that I've noticed in working with student social workers.
Shirley Young Is that the people who understand Aboriginal culture?
Shirley Young In the room and connect can connect.
Shirley Young To it are.
Shirley Young Social workers from other cultural backgrounds and you know what? Even though there are some differences in the way that we go about business, there might be different words. There might be some different understanding. When I'm talking with people.
Shirley Young From other cultures in the room, they connect with our ideal ranking system. They connect with our ideas around paying honour and respect to our elders.
Shirley Young They're connecting with Aboriginal social workers in ways where you can see their understanding, and they're able to actually bring in their understanding from their own culture, which is just beautiful and what it actually does is provides a social worker from a non Aboriginal background or or a from from a different cultural perspective.
Shirley Young Really rich understanding of diversity. But purity and harmony that can exist within other cultures. And so the opportunity to be able to talk with social workers from another country via things like webinars.
Shirley Young Within university structures that allow us opportunity to be together, the opportunity to produce material together. Because here's what I've learned when I read research from other countries from other First Nations countries and things like that. I'm hearing similar stories, stories where you can see.
Shirley Young That there's been intergenerational trauma where stories have been about invasion and being cold.
Shirley Young And struggles. And so there are so many opportunities where there is strength within cultures that we could actually help educate everybody actually. And I often think about the way that we are granted in institutions. We have to write documents and all the rest of it. And and I think to myself.
Shirley Young It's really interesting that from cultural perspectives, we come into each other.
Shirley Young To think about opportunities to say, hey, we can actually do this. Why don't you listen to us? Why don't you listen to our collective voices around how we have had to walk, how we've had to survive and how we are still doing it, how we are, how we have strength within our culture.
Shirley Young And there is strength within other cultures that look different but the same. And I just think that's beautiful.
Libby Hammond Thank you, Shirley.
Libby Hammond Thank you for taking the time to Yam with us today. I really appreciated the insights and wisdom that you brought to us from your many years of experience as an Aboriginal person and as a social worker. You've taken us on an insightful journey and you've encouraged us to listen more deeply with our hearts and our minds. And I know that the students.
Libby Hammond And other professional social workers that will listen to this podcast will really appreciate.
Libby Hammond What you've shared today?
Tina Odu That was such an electrifying conversation. So even before we step out as students in practice.
Tina Odu The system is already set up in a way that we have to try to challenge these practices or policies that can create mistrust and.
Tina Odu Continuously marginalized the experiences of indigenous people and communities.
Eleanor Hogan Yeah, I was thinking about the generational trauma and the kind of mistrust of services and wondering how we can understand that in practice to help us build trust.
Tina Odu I agree, and that kind of links with what we've heard today about the kingship structures in these communities and these are complicated.
Tina Odu Or should I say much more complex kinship structures, so that was very key for me and I and that also links to my own experience of family growing up. My parents grew up in the kingship environment with families.
Tina Odu And myself or my siblings even refer to my maternal aunt as mummy or big mummy because she is older than my mother and we all have several mothers and several aunties and uncles who may or may not be biologically related to us, and they all have key roles. They'll play key roles in our upbringing.
Tina Odu And support whether socially, economically, if you will and lots of other areas.
Eleanor Hogan Yeah, I think it's really key to understand the language that is used to describe families as well. So for me, hearing another mother in kind of language.
Eleanor Hogan Like that it's.
Eleanor Hogan It does take some time to adjust and I think we need to know more about fully understanding the language that is used so we can use it to the family strengths.
Tina Odu That brings us to us even more questions about how can we continue to think about?
Tina Odu Decolonization and applying that within the UK context.
Tina Odu And another thing Shirley said, when you start to see things, you can choose to make a different.
Tina Odu And.
Tina Odu And that means us as students.
Tina Odu We will need to actively choose to continue to make a difference somehow.
Eleanor Hogan We always land in this profession and it's always learning and understanding and never stop asking questions and just.
Eleanor Hogan Better understanding how different families work.
You've been listening to the Decolonising social work Field Education podcast, global dialogues for change, and International participatory project with students, experts by experience, practitioners, and academics funded by the European Association of Schools of Social Work that by Associate Professor Henley.
And Lisa Chen at the University of Sussex and Co, produced by Mitali Kulkarni.
Visit dialogueswfse.org and follow us online.
Decolonize and social work starts with you. Stay tuned.
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CITE THE EPISODE
Hammond, L. (Host), Young, S. (Guest), Kulkarni, M. (Producer), Odu, T. and Hogan, E. (Student participants), and Chen, H.L. (Series lead) (2025) Integrating Indigenous Family Structures in Social Work Education. [Podcast]. Decolonising Social Work Field Education Podcast, 15 May. Available at: https://www.dialogueswfe.org/episode-5 (Accessed: 15 May 2025).
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