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Newsletters
In this issue you will find:
Our membership drive continues. ISS Australia wants to encourage more individuals and organisations to join ISS Australia, as a way of showing your support for the important work we do.
Membership is inexpensive, with different levels of membership available to suit your circumstances. The membership fees quoted in our last e-mail were incorrect, so here are the correct fees for the 2007/08 financial year:
To become a member of ISS Australia, please click here to download the membership form. Please complete your details and fax the form to 03 9614 8766 or mail it to:
International Social Service - Australia Branch
2nd Floor, 313 - 315 Flinders Lane
Melbourne VIC 3000
For further details about becoming a member, please click here to visit our website.
Something quite new and exciting has been happening at ISS Australia in recent months. We have been hosting a student research project that Feray Ergun, a social work student from Victoria University, is undertaking for her final year student placement.
The project involves a quality assurance exercise that aims to review current casework practice by auditing a sample of our casework files. Current casework practice is being compared with the requirements of the ISS Manual, developed by the General Secretariat’s Casework Division in 2000.
So far the findings have been interesting, showing the many ways in which ISS Australia is successfully meeting the standards set by the ISS Manual, as well as identifying areas for improvement. Findings are currently being collated and reported using a customised computer application designed by Ugur Oztopcu from UITS, a local Information Technology solution provider that has given its services pro bono. ISS Australia extends our thanks to Ugur Oztopcu for his valuable contribution and to Feray Ergun for her work on the research project.
The findings of the project include recommendations to ISS Australia aimed at strengthening and improving our current casework practice. Some of these may be of interest to ISS branches and correspondents around the world. Recommendations include:
Further quality assurance exercises will be conducted on a regular basis for monitoring and continuous improvement purposes.
For details of the research findings, please contact Maria Brett, Executive Director, on 1300 657 843 or email her at maria@iss.org.au.
Since the resignation of Anjali Prabhu after many years of service at ISS Australia, Liz Forsyth has been the Acting NSW Service Coordinator; recruitment decisions for the NSW Office are currently being finalised. In NSW, we have also recruited Ellen Mara as a locum inter-country caseworker and Tara Harvey as a part-time inter-country caseworker. We are very happy to welcome Ellen and Tara to the ISS family.
ISS Australia is also pleased to welcome three new social work students currently on placement at the national office off ISS Australia - Simangaliso Brenda Nyoni from Latrobe University, Lauren Power from Melbourne University and Alex Connelly from RMIT University. This brings our student numbers up to four social work students, which means we are now a “Student Unit”. We believe ISS Australia provides an excellent learning environment for social work students and we also greatly value the contribution students make to our casework services.
Developing and facilitating the recent ISS Asia-Pacific training seminar, Children in Cross-Border Family Conflict, has significantly changed the practice of ISS Australia, particularly within the IPCA Service, where international family dispute cases dominate.
We now seek opportunities to work with the children who are caught in the middle of abduction and parental contact cases. Depending on the country where the child is located, the ISS inter-country approach means that we may work directly with the child in Australia, or indirectly, through our ISS counterparts overseas. We are now also more pro-active in working with both parents, either directly, or through our counterparts, wherever this is possible and appropriate.
Our unique mediation-based approach to family work commonly has two ISS workers collaborating across two countries and consistently focusing each parent on their child. This fully complements the recent changes to Australian family law and is a significant change from previous practice, where the ISS worker in each country pre-dominantly focused on the referred parent.
Although this child-focused approach is slower and more labour-intensive, by definition, it increases the likelihood of better outcomes for children. The approach separates the partner-partner relationship from the parent-child relationships, and reduces parental hostility over custody/residence issues and contact arrangements by supporting parents to support the child. This, in turn, increases parental capacity to hear the voice and opinion of their child, and make decisions and compromises that are child-focussed.
Once a month, social workers and social work students at ISS Australia meet for a “Learning Circle” where they discuss articles relevant to their casework practice. These meetings aim to support the continuing education of our staff and provide time for reflection and debate on current literature on social work practice. The Learning Circle also ensures that we are kept up to date on current trends in the field and helps us provide the best possible service to our clients.
Earlier this month, an article was presented titled “Make No Assumptions” by Julia Feast.* The article was based on a study which looked at the experiences and outcomes for people involved in post adoption tracing - an area of work that is highly relevant to many ISS Units and correspondents around the world. The article looked at the feelings that birth parents and adoptees may face when tracing birth relatives, as well as the experiences of adoptive parents. There is a great deal of expertise within ISS about the experiences of adopted children and their birth parents - who we typically work with - but much less is known about the experiences of adoptive parents.
The article presented a succinct overview of some of the common feelings experienced by people involved in post-adoption tracing, especially fear of rejection which was very common; there were also fears on the part of adoptive parents that they might lose their special relationship with their adopted child if the birth parent resumes a relationship with him/her. People had differing ideas about who should initiate the reunification process; but it was clear from the research that there is not really a set way to proceed – each family reunification is quite unique.
The article also looked at the outcomes that are common amongst people tracing their birth families; this provided ISS staff with new insights into developing trends in the area of post-adoption tracing. ISS staff concluded that post-adoption tracing is likely to change over time as inter-country adoption becomes more prevalent amongst Australian families. In the research, most people got the sort of reunification and ongoing contact they were hoping for from the post-adoption tracing but for a smaller number, things did not work out as they had hoped and their experience of post-adoption tracing was less positive.
* Community Care, 30.6.2005 Issue 1579 p36-37
by Sally Szmerling, IPCA Social Worker
2007 is a federal election year in Australia and the election date may be called any day. What does this election mean for children and young people in Australia? Policies such as industrial relations, education, health, national security, immigration and environmental all affect children’s lives. Given that children cannot vote, it is important that voters consider the implications for children of the policy platforms of each party. When considering the policies of different parties and deciding your vote, ask these questions:
Browsing the websites of political parties is an easy way to consider these issues. And if you have further questions, why not write to your local MP and ask? Let them know their constituents care about this issue. Promote children’s rights by evaluating and questioning political party’s commitments to them, and reflect your own commitment through your vote!
A 10-year old boy living with his Australian mother in Western Australia had not seen his Dad for 2 years because his father had returned to his country of origin when the marriage broke down. When the couple separated, no court order had been made about the boy's contact with his father. The boy's school teacher contacted ISS Australia because of concerns about the boy's difficult behaviour and his wish to have some contact with his father. ISS Australia made a referral to our ISS counterpart overseas in order to negotiate contact arrangements for the boy. ISS Australia worked with the boy and his mother, whilst our ISS partner overseas located and worked with the father. With the assistance of ISS, the boy and his father successfully re-established their relationship and contact continues 3 years on with regular phone calls and overseas visits.
* Please note that all identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of ISS clients.
The ISS newsletter is now produced every two months. We appreciate all feedback, so if you would like to contribute to the newsletter, please contact Maria Brett on 1300 657 843 or email her at maria@iss.org.au.