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Date: 2008-10-22 10:27:04
ISS Australia Newsletter - June 2008  [ back ]

ISS June 2008 Newsletter

In this issue you will find:


NEWS

International students within the ISS network
By Maria Brett, Executive Director, ISS Australia

This year ISS Australia was pleased to welcome Christina Moelholm, a social work student from Denmark, for a 3 month student placement. The placement was organised through Victoria University, which now regularly places students with us. Christina assisted with our Victorian Kinship Placement Project, undertaking research on this subject and helping to identify key partners in the Victorian Department of Human Services. The project is ongoing.

At the May Executive Committee (ExCo) meeting of ISS, held in Geneva in May, there were discussions about international students. I attended this meeting along with Directors of other ISS Units around the world. Stories were exchanged of our positive experiences of international students on placement and it was agreed that this should be promoted more widely within ISS. A more formal system for international students to undertake placements or internships with ISS is to be investigated in the next year.

My student experience at ISS Australia
By Christina Moelholm, School of Social Work, Odense – University College Lillebaelt

Being an international student at ISS was very relevant to my training since ISS works internationally. The team is quite multi-cultural so I fitted right in. Everyone was open toward me and my background, and everyone understood and accepted English to be my second language. What was really interesting is that ISS didn’t have any information about possible correspondents in Denmark. I liaised with the General Secretariat in Geneva an identified two correspondents in Denmark, creating opportunities for future collaboration.

ISS is very different from any organisations we would have in Denmark. A lot of the social work in Denmark happens within local authorities and on the government level. About 85% of all social workers in Denmark work within government. So understanding the protocols and principles of ISS took me quite some time. But eventually I got the hang of it!

ISS really values and appreciates students and that was a great experience. There has been time and room for me here, and I have had a great supervisor and friendly and helpful colleagues. I know that my work here is ‘real’ and appreciated (i.e. not just work that was made up to give me something to do), which is a great feeling.Thank you ISS Australia for the openness and kindness shown to me from day one. As a student you can’t ask for more.

European ISS training seminar
By Sandra De Silva, IPCA Coordinator, ISS Australia

In late April this year ISS Switzerland facilitated the third in a global series of regional training seminars titled ‘Children in Cross-Border Family Conflict’. The seminar was originally developed in 2007 by ISS Australia, in partnership with overseas ISS colleagues.

Forty-one delegates, representing sixteen European countries came together for three days to increase their professional knowledge and skills in international social work. Stephane Auerbach and Kristine Reynaud from ISS Switzerland led a training team including Julie Capewell from the General Secretariat, Ursula Rolke from ISS Germany, Sir William Duncan from the Hague Conference and Lisa Parkinson, a mediation expert from the UK. As one of the original trainers who developed the seminar, I was invited to participate as a trainer.

On day one, delegates learnt first-hand about the work of their ISS partners in other countries and then explored the legal framework of the 1980 Hague Convention on International Child Abduction and the 1996 Hague Convention on International Child Protection, as the basis for much of our ISS work. Day 2 centred on the ISS inter-country casework methodology and day 3 looked at the skills required in a mediation-based approach to working with family conflict, adapting this to the unique needs of ISS inter-country work.

ISS Switzerland hosted a highly professional and productive training seminar that strengthened the ISS global network and improved our skills in mediation-based approaches to family conflict. The impact of the seminar for ISS and for our clients should not be under-estimated. We all hope that this series of training is continued in other regions and ISS Australia particularly hopes to see the seminar return to the Asia-Pacific region soon.

WHO’S WHO at ISS Australia

Staff movements

This month ISS Australia said good-bye to Sally Szmerling who left us to take up a position with another NGO. Sally first came to ISS Australia as a student and a high calibre student she was. We were therefore fortunate to be able to employ Sally after completion of her studies and Sally has since worked as a caseworker within our International Parental Child Abduction (IPCA) Service.

Sally has supported many families affected by abduction to resolve conflicts around parenting arrangements, always maintaining a strong focus on the needs of the child in these situations. ISS Australia wishes Sally well for the future. We will be recruiting a new social worker in July. During her time with us, Sally authored numerous articles for our Child Rights Corner, often giving us food for thought about forgotten issues affecting children. Other members of the ISS Australia team will now pick up the challenging task of reflecting on and advocating for child rights through the Child Rights Corner.

ISS CASEWORK

Correspondent Profile - Serbia
By Ms Ruza Petrovic – Tracing Officer, Red Cross of Serbia

As part of the ISS network the Red Cross of Serbia provides a tracing service. Tracing is undertaken when direct family members (mother, father, sister, brother) lose contact with one another in circumstances such as loss of contact resulting from a situation of armed conflict or internal disturbances and their direct consequences, loss of contact in the event of natural or other disasters and loss of contact in connection with other situations of humanitarian need.

The tracing service is also called into action on a compassionate basis, in situations not directly linked with conflict of natural disaster, such as search for natural parents, restoring family links for legal or illegal immigrants and when contact stopped due to illness or old age. There is no other agency or organisation in Serbia that provides a tracing service to those who have at some stage lost contact with their family abroad. As is the case with all members of the ISS network, success levels in a tracing case cannot be guaranteed.

Red Cross of Serbia is the largest humanitarian organisation in Serbia with a history of 132 years delivering services. Red Cross of Serbia has very strong network consisting of 150 local Red Cross branches. This actually means that every place/town and municipality in the country has the Red Cross office that can assist with tracing enquiries. During the Balkan Crisis, Red Cross proved once again to serve humanity, by distributing over 2.5 million Red Cross messages and helping families separated by war to restore contact.

CHILD RIGHTS CORNER

Children and participation
By Tara Harvey, Social Worker, NSW Office, ISS Australia

One of the guiding principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is article 12, which states that:

Respect for the views of the child: Children have the right to say what they think should happen and have their opinions taken into account in any matter or procedure affecting the child.

Examples of a child participating in decision making include:
These examples highlight programs around the world where children and youth have been given the opportunity to participate in decision making. But how does the concept of respecting the views of children apply to the work of ISS with children? Especially when the age and maturity of the children need to be taken into account, and the opinions of other stakeholders’ (parents and child protection agencies) also need to considered. ISS has to consider these questions when making decisions and consulting with children and families about the services they need and the most appropriate actions to be taken.

Giving children the opportunity to participate is especially important when children are separated from their parents and family as a result of child abduction, or where there a cross-border issues affecting the child such as child protection or adoption issues.

Children’s views can be taken into consideration when making decisions about the type of contact with a parent overseas, asking a young adopted person the information they would like from their birth parent overseas and talking with parents about the child’s views when assisting parents to mediate decisions around the contact a child has with each parent.

CASE STUDY

"By sheer incredible coincidence" - Reunification in the face of rejection

By Anna Marshall, Locum Social Worker, NSW Office, ISS Australia

In 1994 a woman from NSW, who was born and adopted in Switzerland (not the real country), approached ISS for help in the search for her birth mother. A referral was sent to ISS Switzerland and in 1999 the birth mother was located and contacted. Unfortunately for our client, the birth mother did not wish to have any contact with our client. On a more positive note our client was put in touch with her birth father and they began to communicate regularly. The case was closed in 2000, once they established independent communication.

In 2008, ISS USA (not the real country) had been assisting a lady, who was born and adopted in Switzerland and now resides in the USA, to trace her birth mother. ISS USA sent a referral to ISS Switzerland and the birth mother was found and contacted. The client in the USA was also rejected by her birth mother in the same way our NSW client had been, ten years earlier.

Also in 2008, our ISS colleagues in Switzerland had been reviewing a random selection of historic cases. It was by sheer coincidence that the Swiss worker who had been working on the USA enquiry was allocated to review the closed file of our NSW client from 1994. It became apparent that these two cases, one from NSW and one from the USA, had a striking similarity and that both clients had been searching for the same birth mother and that they were in fact half sisters. Our Swiss colleague reported that she felt like she had won the lottery with such a coincidental discovery.

ISS USA then made a referral to ISS Australia (NSW Office) in order to make contact with their client’s half sister in NSW. Searches were conducted and the client was located and contacted. With the combined efforts of the 3 ISS units, we were able to facilitate a successful reunification of the half sisters who have reportedly already found solace in the opportunity to share with each other their own journeys.

All identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of ISS clients.

Contributions and Feedback Welcome

The ISS newsletter is produced every two months. If you would like to contribute to the newsletter, either by writing an article or a letter to the editor, please contact Maria Brett at maria@iss.org.au.
We always appreciate your feedback. To respond to articles or give us feedback, please e-mail the editor.

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