Enhancing family and relationship service accessibility and delivery to culturally and linguistically diverse families in Australia
Enhancing family and relationship service accessibility and delivery to culturally and linguistically diverse families in Australia
Pooja Sawrikar and Ilan Katz
Family relationship services span a diverse and extensive range of interventions that aim to support and nurture family relationships, and so provide an important source of support to families in Australia. However, there is a dearth of research and information on service accessibility and the effectiveness of interventions in the family relationship services sector across different cultural groups in Australia. That "the needs of ethnic minority people have often been neglected or marginalised in the provision of social care services" (Butt, 2006, p. v) has led to a gap in the literature is widely acknowledged among researchers and practitioners in the field of family relationship and other related service delivery (e.g. Box, Bignall, & Butt, 2001; Katz & Pinkerton, 2003). Therefore, examining how to improve access to and delivery of family relationship services for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities is an important line of critical inquiry, given Australia's multicultural milieu.
Research into the needs of CALD families has only recently garnered attention. Butt (2006) and Page, Whitting, and McLean (2007), in particular, have offered comprehensive frameworks for understanding the barriers CALD families experience. However, their research focused on ethnic minority families in the UK. This paper builds on and synthesises the emerging international and national literature to develop a practice and policy framework that can be used to help overcome inequities in access to or culturally inappropriate service delivery of family relationship services for CALD families in Australia.
Authors and Acknowledgements
Professor Ilan Katz is the Director and Dr Pooja Sawrikar is a Research Associate at the Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, tel: 02 9385 5504
We would like to thank Muktesh Chibber and Fiona Arney for their valuable insights and constructive feedback.
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Further reading
A brief overview of mental health problems and causes, and the impact of mental health problems on family relationships and dynamics.
A summary of developments addressing challenges and directions for the field of marriage and relationship education.
A discussion of grandparents' roles in caring for children and ways in which service providers can support them.
An overview about synchronising parenting methods and child characteristics, and ways in which parenting can be attuned to "fit" the child.
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