AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Welcome, everyone, to our webinar today on navigating cultural and ethical differences and dilemmas in our work with families. Welcome to our presenters today, Pshko Marden, Rhett McDonald, and Hala Abdelnour. My name is Amanda Kemperman and I’ll be your host today. My work is with Emerging Minds and their workforce development team, and my role is to develop resources for practitioners by sharing the knowledge and skills of practitioners and parents who are navigating cultural diversity and cultural differences whilst supporting children’s mental health.  

This webinar is a part of a suite of resources for practitioners that are available on our Emerging Minds website under the subject hearing Cultural Migration and Refugees. We’ve just recently released our latest course called Culturally Responsive Practice Strategies for Children’s Mental Health, which you might like to check out.  

I would like to recognise and pay respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the traditional owners of the land we work, play, and walk on throughout this country. We acknowledge and respect their traditional connections to their land and waters, culture, spirituality, family, and community for the wellbeing of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families.  

For today’s webinar we acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families as culturally and linguistically diverse, however we won’t be focusing specifically on these communities today.  

When we use the term CALD, or culturally and linguistically diverse, we’re referring to many different families who have migrated to and now call Australia home. We recognise the vast array of languages, ethnicities, nationalities, traditions, societal structures, and religions across many different communities. When we use the term today, we acknowledge its significant limitations and how it may homogenise vastly different communities. It’s the most commonly used term in Australia and is endorsed by the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council of Australia. We use it to recognise those affected by the impacts of dominant cultural systems.  

I’d like to accredit the generous parents and families we work with who share their knowledge and experience, and the invaluable contributions they make to our work for promoting children’s mental health and wellbeing also. And we recognise all of you who have joined here today, the vast array of knowledge and practice wisdom you each hold, and we appreciate your ongoing commitment to navigating culturally respectful and anti-racist practice in your work with parents, children, and families. Thank you for all of your questions. We’ll do our best to get to as many as we can, whilst aiming to deep-dive into the richness of this work.  

In terms of the GoTo webinar platform today, you can access a resource list that we’ve put together in the Handouts tab, and you can also ask questions via the questions box. We were inundated with questions from practitioners wanting to learn more about responding to family violence and child abuse, and although we touch on this briefly, our intention is to discuss navigating cultural differences in our work, acknowledging that we each have a culture that influences our thoughts and ideas, and the ways we do things. We acknowledge child abuse and violence across all cultures and are not specific to CALD communities. While these issues may exist within these communities, we find it more helpful to unpack dominant cultural ideas and systems that perpetuate racism, and marginalise and create the conditions for violence to occur.  

Today we explore what some of the cultural and ethical differences, dilemmas, and concerns are that arise in our work with families with a cultural background different to our own. How the intersectionality of gender, faith, and culture informs our ideas, beliefs, and behaviours. Explore how practitioners navigate their concerns whilst holding onto their values, and balancing safety, wellbeing, and cultural respect. How to apply a de-colonising and white centralising approach, whilst highlighting collaboratively and culturally humble and curious approaches throughout. So it’s just a light one for today. I reckon these guys are up to it though.  

Let’s start with inviting each of the presenters to share with us what stands out to them in their work with families with a culture different to their own. Pshko, what are you most drawn to in your work?  

PSHKO MARDEN: Hello Amanda, and a pleasure to be here today. Well, there are a lot that I’m drawn to but I’m just trying to condense into three main points. The first thing is that when I’m working with people from a culturally and linguistically diverse background, there is a unique experience of life that they have that has not been formulated yet into stories and told in a way that we can learn a great deal from them.  

Also, working in that space it's always a challenge to resist thinking and practicing in accordance to one of the dominant discourses of Western culture and Western society, which is the discourse that problematise and pathologise, and to some extent demonise, people from CALD backgrounds and CALD communities, and at the best turn them to passive bodies that have no sense of agency.  

The other thing that I am quite excited about is that when I work with people from CALD backgrounds, in particular young people, I can sense a multitude of possibilities, and emergence of new identities. And that identity doesn’t mean abnegating one’s own culture, nor ossified within that culture, or assimilate to the host culture. Yet it’s a creation of a new identity, and therefore a new sub-culture or a culture.  

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Thanks Pshko. Rhett, what’s one thing you’re drawn to in your work with families?

RHETT MCDONALD: > Thanks, Amanda. Certainly in the line that I’m currently involved with, I think I'm probably more drawn to the client, the people who we generally refer to as clients, the people that I work with, our CALD community, it’s really about their abilities in the face of such oppression. I think I’m drawn to that, and trying to understand that.  

And then secondly, I think I’m drawn to how that then informs and transforms me in how I do my work better. How I convert what I hear and what I experience into learning, which informs my work not just within the conversation I’m having at the moment but beyond. I think that’s largely what I’m drawn to.  

And so probably on the back of that I want to acknowledge the people and the CALD communities that I do work with because I don’t have the experience of walking amongst two cultures really. I don’t have a lot of lived experience in this area from my own background, so everything that I speak of and understand comes from the learning and the understandings of what’s shared with me. So I probably want to acknowledge those people and bring them into the room with me because I speak from that position really. I want to catch myself sometimes to not put my own understanding on things too much and really embrace where they’re coming from. So that’s generally what I’m drawn to.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, thanks Rhett. I take your point about it being a reciprocal sort of journey together. Hala, what stands out to you in your work with culturally diverse families?

HALA ABDELNOUR Thank you Amanda, thanks for having me here, it’s great to share the space with everybody and I’m loving listening to my colleagues talk. There is so much to say. Fundamentally for me, being a human being, which means you’re a child to somebody, you might be a sibling, you might be a parent, and all the relations that we have is so intimate. Within the family context, they’re the most intimate spaces we occupy, whether they’re positive spaces or not for us.  

So the capacity to work with people around their family, family structures, family experiences is an honour really, it’s a privilege. It’s an invitation to enter into that space with other people, so I hold that quite sacred, that people invite us into their world. And as someone who migrated here as a kid with my parents, and we didn’t get services, I see the value, having worked in settlement services when I was younger, and with youth, with families, just seeing the value of that kind of support.  

But also seeing the damage that the sector itself can do by denying systems of oppression, and denying systems of power that underpin some of our institutional structures, and so really wanting to be involved in that. And appreciating what my colleagues have been saying as well about that. And even though I do have lived experience, I don’t have everybody else’s lived experience. So we only speak from our own perspective to some extent, and then we bring along all the stuff we’ve been taught by others just through their sharing of stories.  

So largely it’s holding this sacred, and trying to do justice as much as I can to the less positive side of lived experiences, whilst acknowledging that we are mostly doing our best around those things.  

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Thanks everyone. We had a bit of a conversation about sharing a snapshot of a practice conversation with our participants today, and then I’ll invite each of you to share your reflections. I’ll ask you a couple of questions to consider and we’ll spend about 15 minutes unpacking that, hopefully a bit of a deep-dive of some of the things that are standing out for you.  

So a snapshot in a conversation in practice, a practitioner meets with an 11 year old boy named Ezra. Ezra was meeting the practitioner, describing he had feelings of anxiety and being overwhelmed. One of the reasons he said was because his family are preparing him to take on the role of the primary decision maker and responsibilities for the family soon. The practitioner is curious about this practice and asks if he has a choice, and he tells her that he doesn’t have a choice, it’s cultural, and it’s something that the eldest son does at this age.  

At this point the practitioner is feeling conflicted. They’re concerned about the impact this will have on the child’s wellbeing and his schooling, but also want to be culturally sensitive and respectful.  

Later we’ll get on to practice responses and what you might do next, but first of all I really want to hear from you guys about what considerations you might have. What are you weighing up here, what stands out to you and why? Hala, can I start with you?

HALA ABDELNOUR Sure. The first thing that comes to mind is if I were in the practitioner role that I’d want to hold Ezra’s experience true as how they’re describing it, and factor in that Ezra is balancing more than one cultural framework in this context and is clearly conflicted about their positioning and what’s going on for them.  

I’d want to consider what my own cultural background is, and whether this is an experience I’m familiar with or not, and I’d want to just keep monitoring what comes up in me as I have this conversation based on that and ensure that I’m not projecting either way. And I think that's going to be a balance for the practitioner and Ezra throughout. So just wanting to create not just a safe space, but a constructive space for Ezra to unpack this experience.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, and you’d be weighing up a fair bit in your consideration of holding that space, Hala. What are some of the things that are coming to mind for you? You’re hearing him talk about he’s feeling overwhelmed and anxious, but it’s something culturally significant and important. What comes to mind for you in considering how to navigate this?

HALA ABDELNOUR First off, validating that he’s feeling anxious about it, and maybe just holding space for that and just acknowledging it so that it’s okay to be anxious, to the point of figuring out how much I need to do with that anxiety before moving forward into a conversation. So creating some kind of measures around Ezra being able to experience that anxiety, but also maybe not necessarily be in a state of anxiety in this conversation if possible. So we might do something around that.  

But then I would want to explore a little more about where Ezra is at with his understanding of his cultural background, the expectations of him. So what are Ezra’s primary concerns? So it says there, the practitioner is conflicted and concerned about the impact and his schooling, and I’d want to really make sure that I understand what Ezra’s concerns are. It might be around his capacity to carry out this role, how he goes about it.  

There could be more to the story that I don’t know just from what’s written there. There might be someone that Ezra has to work with in the family to get that kind of learning, and they might not feel comfortable with that person. They might have to go overseas for a period of time, and they might not want to do that. I’d want to unpack a lot more about what Ezra is really worried about so that I can formulate a clearer direction about what we need to focus on in that.  

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: And Pshko, I can see you nodding, there’s lots of things resonating for you?

PSHKO MARDEN: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, listening to Hala talking about we don’t know yet what else might be going on. I was just reading through that and thinking about respectful curiosity. It doesn’t need to stop there and feeling conflicted because we haven’t explored yet the family situation, what might be going on for them. So the context, we haven’t explored that yet to know what that entails, what that responsibility incudes.  

But also, I want to go back to the idea – not the idea, to the significant point of acknowledging and making, or creating, space to explore Ezra’s knowledge about this decision. Because if he is an 11 years old boy overwhelmed and feeling anxious about this decision, I wonder what he knows about this decision? I wonder what sort of knowledge he has about this decision.  

And we need to bring that knowledge into the therapeutic space for Ezra himself to be seeing what he knows about this decision, because I assume that if he didn’t know what that means, would he feel anxious? Would he feel overwhelmed with that? So there might be hidden or unexplored territories of Ezra’s knowledge and skills that has not been captured yet. So there might be space where we could actually work with Ezra hold the space for him, but also expand that and bring some knowledge and skills that Ezra has about his understanding of this decision in particular.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, and what about navigating the concern that you might have as a practitioner? This snapshot, and this practitioner’s concerned about the impact that it’s having on Ezra and maybe his ability to go to school, maybe the impact that it’s having on how he’s feeling, this anxiety and feeling overwhelmed. What about that, Pshko? How are you thinking about that?

PSHKO MARDEN: I think it’s okay to feel conflicted, I think what we do with that is what could be considered the next important step that we might take. But it’s also to be looking inwards, to be thinking about what it is that - we hear Ezra saying something, and as Hala said he is clearly holding on two cultures, is his anxiety coming from he’s influenced by the Western culture? And if that might be the case, what does that say about as a practitioner where we are standing? Are we curious about the other person’s culture, or we are getting conflicted based on our understanding of how the other culture should be adhering to the dominant culture?

HALA ABDELNOUR Can I add to, sorry, just with what Pshko’s saying, and I think you’ve definitely alluded to, Pshko, just with that last thing, and from my experience growing up here with two cultures and having worked with so many young people in the same position, when you’re younger, and at this age particularly, peer relations are so important to children. And it can be the case that young people are trying to fit in with their peers, and the best way to do that is to act as Australian as possible, which would be a dominant Anglo-Celtic cultural framework. But you have families that pull you into a cultural framework that is often frowned upon by the dominant culture, and so there could be that.  

It’s really worth exploring whether that’s going on for Ezra. Whether he’s actually seriously concerned about the role he has to play, or is seriously concerned about the relational implications of being too not Australian, what his peers might say. So again, exploring where all the – and there will be lots of different areas of pressure, but really trying to get to the point of where is the pressure coming from for Ezra, and how he’s responding to this?  

And actually just being aware of what’s coming up for us as workers and just parking it to the side for a second, and not jumping to conclusions that just because Ezra is experiencing anxiety, this whole situation is wrong or unworkable. Or that we can’t come to something with Ezra, we don’t have to throw something out completely.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, yep, and you really highlighted there the practitioner’s concern and centring Ezra’s concerns. Is the schooling the top of his priority list at the moment, or is it navigating one of the other many things that might be happening for him? So really understanding Ezra’s experience and his concerns. Yeah, I take your point.  

Rhett, I’ll let you jump in. What stands out to you from this scenario and what you’d be thinking?

RHETT MCDONALD: > I was enjoying listening to Hala and Pshko actually, that was lovely. I agree with everything that’s been said actually. What’s got to stand out for me is what Ezra says and it’s what Ezra thinks, and it’s what Ezra’s interpretation is on things, because we can’t assume that his feelings of anxiety and overwhelmed are associated with taking on responsibility necessarily. It might be completely something else, as Hala has just pointed out.  

So the big thing for me is not to assume, be interested in what Ezra says, try to understand it from his perspective. And I think if I can somehow get close to that, I think that does have an impact on my own - what might be coming up for me as a concern or a worry for him. That’s how it can be alleviated sometimes, is to find the right questions to understand how he’s associating everything that’s going on with him to what’s presented as the problem.  

So I want to prioritise being as culturally sensitive as I can, to be as respectful as I can, to be as curious as I can. And I want to think about what is it, what is there in his culture that exists that makes the path safe for him stepping towards responsibility? What exists in his family that supports him that makes that step towards that safe? Because that might be different from what the culture says. There must be plenty of other boys who have done this before, and what experience and knowledge exists already out there for him? So I think all of that comes up a little bit for me.  

But what I absolutely do have to do is resist any urge, because I’ve done this in the past and I hope I don’t do it anymore, but is to resist any urge to perhaps explain or share with him what I understand about his culture. Because as a white settler here, what I can do is after working with people for a long period of time, I can believe that I’m understanding things, I assume that knowledge, and then I can share that, to say, “I know something too about your culture.” And that in the past has probably been the biggest error, mistake, I’ve ever made because it’s silenced them, it’s exerted power, it’s diminished their ideas of themselves and what their culture is, and it’s incredibly dangerous. So mostly I’ve got to learn to shut up more, and listen and understand more.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yes, I think we could all do a little more listening in our work. Sometimes our concern might get dialled up and our eagerness to understand might be prioritised. What I’m hearing is self-reflection is also a real key part of each of how you would approach this in being aware of what’s going on for yourself. Can I invite you to just maybe talk a little bit more to that? Maybe Rhett, how do you maintain that self-reflective practice, and what difference does that make in your work with families similar to Ezra’s?

RHETT MCDONALD: > Probably the best way to answer it is that I just have to continually work on it and I have to remind myself constantly to, when I sit down and I reflect on a session - often we have this default position of reflecting on their situation, what they said, what’s going on. And I’m forgetting all about me, I’m forgetting all about the reflection on how did I respond in that moment? How did I impact what was going on? What parts of me perhaps exerted some sort of privilege and power that wasn’t useful to the situation? And I think that I generally probably remind myself that in my reflective notes and things there has to be a place reserved for me, there’s got to be. And I think that’s probably largely how I try to remind myself to do it.  

And then if I ever, and sometimes it's not always possible, but if I ever get a chance to do that also with a client or a person I’m working with, I will do that, I will do that because if I’ve been able to structure enough safety and real understanding with people from CALD communities I need to be able to ask the questions about how am I actually presenting? How am I coming across? What am I doing that’s violating something, or stepping on something, or stuffing up somewhere? And I understand that I need to have a good, safe relationship to be able to have those questions, but if I can ever get there, that stuff’s really valuable to me.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, yeah. And, Pshko, how does that resonate with the way you work and reflect on your practice?

PSHKO MARDEN: I absolutely agree with what Rhett said earlier. And for me, self-reflection is an ongoing journey, it should happen all the time, because once I stop self-reflecting, that is when I am in this dangerous territory of seeing myself as the expert in people’s lives.  

But for me, the self-reflection is always reflecting inwardly and thinking about what sort of thoughts and ideas, and perhaps cultural beliefs and practices, underpins my thinking about the other person’s culture? How I come to see this particular thing as something that could be admired, or is it something that is problematic? So it’s scrutinising and questioning our own way of thinking, both about ourself but also about the other. And that’s the most important part of it because if we’re not paying attention, this is when we think that we might be self-reflecting but we still enter that dangerous territory of making assumptions about other people’s beliefs and cultures and ideas.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yes, and I know you’ve spoken with me before about that, about this double listening process that you do where you’re – did you want to speak just briefly to that? And then I really want to get Hala’s thoughts on this.

PSHKO MARDEN: Yes, so that is a practice that I hold dearly in my conversation with people, is there always needs to be double listening. Because one listening is to the conversation that I’m having with a person, but when I am thinking about asking a particular question I am having this conversation with myself, asking where is this question coming from? What is my intention behind that question? What sort of ideas and thoughts are behind these particular questions? Are they neutral in themselves, or there is power and politics behind that particular question?  

And that is something that I’ve done a lot of mistakes, and I’ve learnt from those mistakes. And when I’m becoming aware of that, not knowing where my question’s going and just thinking that, ‘Oh God, this particular important question that I need to ask the client’, and I see how that question unfold in the conversation where I may get into that cultural mis-step, then I need to do a lot of reverse damaging, I need to apologise.  

So for me, it’s quite important to hold onto that double listening, and having that eternal conversation with myself while I’m having a conversation with the person that I’m working with.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: And Hala, I know you’ve spoken about your lived experience of migrating to Australia, and lots of work you’ve done with migrants and refugees, and so no doubt self-reflection also you’re thinking about, although you’ve got all this wealth of experience. You’re meeting with somebody, talk me through your considerations with making sure that you’re not imposing your ideas and cultural understandings on people that you’re meeting with.

HALA ABDELNOUR Yeah, thank you. I love everything that Rhett and Pshko are saying and I don’t want to repeat it, if I can add anything.  Just as you were asking me the question, I was thinking I could have 10 degrees and – I don’t have 10 degrees, I could have 10 degrees, and I could have decades of experience of working with people, and none of that would guarantee that I’m a reflective practitioner. The only thing that guarantees that is actually doing reflection. And it’s like a muscle you have to exercise, we’re not just automatically reflective, we have to practice being reflective.  

And unfortunately in the welfare services sector where we’re doing a lot of clinical work and crisis management sometimes, and as I said working with people in their most intimate setting, we often do that without supervision. There's no mandated supervision for our practice. And I feel like that’s one opportunity to exercise that skill of reflection, is with someone else who helps us to do it, like a coach. And to find someone, as Rhett said, that I feel safe and comfortable with where I can actually come along and say, “Look, this situation presented, it was really complex, I don’t know if I did it well. I said these things, I think I might have caused damage, what do you think?” And actually really have those conversations. Or just say, “I’m struggling to balance my cultural frameworks with this other person’s.”  

So I would just add that, that I can’t just trust myself to be doing self-reflection really well on my own. Sometimes our best measure is what somebody else thinks. And if I can find someone that I trust, and we can have that mentoring supervision or coaching relationship, that would be really powerful.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, thanks for your consideration of that little snapshot of a conversation. As I mentioned before, we’ve got so many questions, lots of great questions coming through as well. So Hala, I might start with you with one of the questions that has come -

HALA ABDELNOUR Sorry, I just have someone outside, I just have to do something really quickly.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Oh dear.

HALA ABDELNOUR I’ll be back in two seconds but don’t start with me, if that’s okay? I will literally be two seconds. I’m so sorry about this, it’s just inevitable.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: It’s inevitable, 100%, that’s okay. I don’t have dogs barking in the background today so that’s a nice thing.  

PSHKO MARDEN: Amanda?

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah?

PSHKO MARDEN: I was just wondering before moving to the questions, there is something about when we talked about cultural differences, and it’s always being portrayed as these differences are just differences and they are neutral. I think this is where we get into a place where it could be damaging to our practice because the differences are not neutral, it’s more there is a power differential and there is politics behind those differences that cast one particular culture in a way that is superior to the rest of the other cultures, and portrays them as inferior. So when we talk about the cultural differences, we also need to see behind that that it’s not the same power dynamic and power position, it is always one being seen or believed as having the superiority over the other.  

So if we are thinking about it as it’s just neutral cultural differences, we’re not seeing the point behind that that could actually sneak up into our practice and could create a lot of damage.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, so we’re not neutral, we can’t be neutral. And so through self-reflection we’re aware of what those assumptions are, those biases are, so that then we can actually minimise the effect and translate how they come out.  

Hala and Rhett, any final comments on the case study, or the snapshot in practice that we shared?

RHETT MCDONALD: > Pshko just reminded me of the power in the room actually, and I have to be so conscious of that and make it visible sometimes where I can. And thanks for saying that, Pshko, because it’s a really good reminder for people like myself, I think. You’ve got to make it visible, and you’ve got to make it known in the room to be able to work with it, because just by me turning up I bring it.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, yep. And Hala?

HALA ABDELNOUR I think everything we’re saying sounds really great, and I just want to acknowledge that it’s not that easy to do. There’s a lot of confronting elements to it, and it’s just about figuring out where we’re at on that journey and just what I want to develop in myself as a practitioner next. Do I want to develop my capacity to be culturally safer? Do I want to develop my capacity to be more youth-focused? And do I want to develop my capacity to really see my power and how I exert it, or something else in the practice?  

So I feel like acknowledging that this is hard work, this is some of the hardest part of our work. Because again, I could be armed with so much intellectual knowledge, but if I don’t have the interpersonal skills developed as well then it could be damaging, it could actually not be useful.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, yeah. We will move on, there’s been a question come through just about causing offence. I know, Pshko, that you and I have spoken about that before, about when we might have an inkling that something that we’ve said, or something that we’ve done, has just not landed right. Pshko, just briefly, what do you do with that?

PSHKO MARDEN: So where is it in the process? Is it in our thinking, or is it that we have actually said it and it came out and landed and we are seeing the aftermath of it? I think in the whole process, so the double listening for me is to avoid going there.  

But if that’s happened, I think one of the practices that I do is I check in with the person, and I will take responsibility for the things that I’ve said and the way that I’ve said it that might have ended up causing offence. And to just address this power imbalance I might say something, and I might be transparent with them and I say, “Look”, I start with a conversation with that, acknowledging that, “I don’t know a lot of things so please hold me accountable if I said something that you feel like it doesn’t fit with your culture.”  

So it’s creating that space where a person feels that they have the power to hold me accountable. But my preference first is to hold myself accountable before being held accountable because I don’t want to put that burden on them as well.  

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, yeah, thanks. Now, moving to another question. Hala, let’s go to you with how you navigate different, and sometimes competing, understandings of gender norms and gender roles in some of your conversations?

HALA ABDELNOUR That’s a big one, and a great one. As an assigned female at birth, identify as a woman, cis person, with the lived experience of that, and with my own cultural background in terms of how I was raised, but also the awareness I have of the diversity of understandings around gender within my own cultural framework, let alone then the cultural frameworks I’ve been exposed to since coming to Australia, primarily I think that we live in a misogynistic world. It is run by patriarchal ideology and certainly that exists to oppress women. It exists to keep women as second to men, and as subservient to men too in so many ways.  

We see statistics around the world around the violence against women and girls by men who are known to them. So men are far more likely to be murdered, so that’s when you include war-related murders and stuff. So the amount of people dying at the hands of largely men is 80% male. But when you count how many people are dying at the hands of men who are related to them in some way, or in some kind of intimate relationship with them, then it’s 80% female.  

I’m aware of those statistics, it’s part of the work that I do. I’m aware of what I battle through as a woman growing up to want to be a certain way in the world, to not want to play all the roles that were expected of me, and I hold that to a great importance. I’m also aware of, and okay with, other women wanting to be different, and how women navigate their journey through that in different ways.  

So for me, again, it comes back to how well do we understand misogyny and its impact on all of us? In the same way that I feel just as strongly about understanding racist ideology. We’re all born into a misogynistic, racist world and it impacts all of us, and we’ve all internalised those ideologies in different ways. And then we all navigate that as we grow up, and what we want to do with it. So I have the right to navigate it however I want to navigate it, and so does somebody else.  

So for me, I have had lots of experiences and probably the most challenging for me would be working with – and not challenging in a difficult way, but challenging in a way that excites me in what I can develop in myself, is working with, particularly when I was younger, working with young women from the same cultural background as me who had a very different experience in life that I would have called oppressed. And even just actually them saying to me, “I wish I had the freedom you had.” And that’s in private, that’s not something they’d say publicly. And how we navigated that sister to sister sort of thing, me going, “I want to support you as much as I can, but I know we can’t change the circumstances around you drastically.” And how I can then turn that into an empowering dynamic as opposed to let’s just sit in disempowerment and helplessness. So that’s something I’m passionate about.  

Just quickly too, because I work with men, I’ve done a lot of work with men over the last 20 years, and where men want to justify and excuse their behaviours and they’ll say things to me like, “Oh, that’s our cultural background.” Or, “You know, you come from there, you know what it’s like.” And how I navigate that because there’s a male asking me to accept the oppression of females as a female and I can’t do that. But I don’t want to disrespect what they’re saying.  

So it’s always for me about, “How did you arrive at that? Where does that idea come from? What do you think it’s like for someone else? If you could go back in time and choose to be born male or female, which would you choose? Why did you say that? What do you think your life would be like if you’d been born female?” For me empathy is huge, we don’t change our behaviour without empathy, no matter what it is we’re doing.  

So that’s probably  my greatest struggle, to not impose or project and that’s how I do it, is like, “Let’s have a chat about it. I’m okay with you thinking what you think, and I understand it’s come from however you’ve grown up.” I don’t say this out loud,  I just accept that all perspectives are valid because they come from lived experience. And then I just want to talk, like, “What do you think it’s like? Is there another way? If there were another way, what would it be? What leadership can you play in that?” So I don’t know, it’s a long answer, but I think it’s a big question and a great one.  

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: It’s a big question, so some questions that might invite some curiosity, some exploration, some understanding further.  

Hey Rhett, let me invite you into this. Understandings around gender norms and gender roles that might be different to your understanding in your family and culture. What are you weighing up and thinking through, and how are you navigating that?

RHETT MCDONALD: > Yeah, wow. Oh my goodness, how long have we got?

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: You’ve got one minute.

RHETT MCDONALD: > Right. It’s going to be a pretty – it’s not simple, but it’s going to sound like a simple answer. But it is this idea of me trying to be as silent as I can, and to listen and learn, and to try to get to a point where we can make visible in the conversation what impact I’m having. And I have to attend to that all the time, all the time, because I’m aware that my white Western ways are coming from a dominant culture and I have all the privileges of that. All the rules were made for me. And to try to break that power down in a relational way with a person from a CALD community who may already be a victim of oppression, it’s a big task to take on.  

But we’ve got to take it on, and it’s [audio glitch] and I’m going to make mistakes, and I’m going to stumble, and I’m going to fall, and I’m going to have to make repair. But if I don’t attend to that, nothing changes. And if nothing changes, then what am I doing in the work?

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Pshko, I know you want to jump in.

PSHKO MARDEN: Yeah, well, that’s a question that cannot be respond in a minute. I think that Hala and Rhett, they just smashed it, in an affirmative way.  

For me, just adding to what’s been said, the question always is how to be an ally? How to make a stance against these patriarchal ideas that is damaging. And it also causes pain to the men themselves, because a man ends up alone and thinking why I’m here?  

And I feel like sometimes in a therapeutic context where I’ve been, Hala mentioned that, like I’ve been recruited into that idea. “You are from that place, you know what I’m talking about.” Then I have to take a curious approach, and make a clear stand that actually this is not my way of thinking about life, and this is not my way of thinking about myself as a man, or as a male in society.  

But also while making that clear, inviting this man, having the counter-invitation and inviting him to think about his own ethics. If this way of being or thinking, is it helping him to have a better relationship with people that he claims that he loves them? So that kind of trying to engage them in that sort of conversations where it’s more inviting them into a more ethical space.  

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: And so then to another similar but different question, and we had lots of questions come through around family violence and harm against children. Pshko, let me start with you about responding to where there is a cultural difference, and there's family violence and children are being harmed. Talk me through your thinking processes there.  

PSHKO MARDEN: I think one of the dangerous assumptions, and I’ve heard that a lot and that might be underpinning a lot of questions that come, and we’re being asked all the time, is that domestic violence is something that happens within CALD communities. Or it’s more dominant there. [The speaker would like to correct this statement, please see note for correction]. So to me to think about that, DV is a global pandemic. I don’t know whether you can say a global pandemic. It’s a global phenomena and it’s happened within every culture.  

So if we are focusing on that, oh well, actually this is happening with that culture, I wonder whether we’d be missing the point where it’s actually happening everywhere.  

And as Hala mentioned, it’s a patriarchy, it comes from patriarchal ideas, and so it’s a widespread and we need to go to the source of where is it actually coming from? Rather than picking up on a minority group and saying, “Well, this is actually happening only over there and it’s not happening elsewhere.” I’m not sure whether I’m responding to that question.  

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah. So you’d be quite clear around family violence and child abuse in your response in that. And it sounds to me like you’d be really clear that you couldn’t dismiss it as cultural, you wouldn’t excuse it away as cultural, that there would be some responses that you would have where there is family violence and child abuse?

PSHKO MARDEN: Yes, absolutely, and I think the issue goes beyond culture, it’s a global pandemic for me. Because it’s not just one culture exclusively doing it, although it might be more dominant in one culture over the other, but it’s not only a cultural thing that’s happening in one culture.  

And also with any culture, the culture could have a lot of binding and affirmative ideas and practices, but also any culture could also have some problematic ways of the members relating to one another. So to distil it down to say that is only cultural practice, I think there is a risk and there is a danger in that.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah. Hala, I want you to jump in here, I know you dedicate a lot of your time and thought and energy in this space. How do you respond when you’re working with a CALD family and there’s family violence and child abuse?

HALA ABDELNOUR I respond the same no matter who I’m working with, and I do work in that space. One of the things I point out to people, a couple of things I point out, is having worked in the men’s behaviour change space, there’s a lot of Anglo Australian men coming to those spaces. So it’s definitely not a cultural issue. Well, it is a cultural issue in every single culture, and it’s what ideologies are embedded in those cultures which are – any ideology about power over. So gender is identified globally as a big one, but I do think there’s space for us to talk about racial power imbalances, ability, ageism, gender heteronormativity, and cis heteronormativity, also come into play as well as other factors. So what power am I given by society that is associated with my personal traits, and how can I be abusing that power?  

So that’s one thing in my understanding of it, in how I work with people, it’s the same, it’s applying curiosity. A lot of what we’re talking about, ‘What’s going on, what do you want to work on, what are your goals?’ Building insight and awareness that actually this is the behaviour, and you have to do that really slowly over time.  

And then understanding the impact. So if I’m working with someone who’s using violence, it’s about understanding the impact they’ve had on others, and keep linking back to their goals as a partner and as a parent, and what they want to achieve. So there’s that.  

And whenever culture is mentioned, it’s sort of well, how is that relevant to you? I wouldn’t discount culture and throw it out of the room but I certainly wouldn’t allow it to be used as an excuse for violence because that’s avoidance behaviour really. There’s other dynamics going on. And that’s really in intimate partner violence and maybe other adult to adult violence.  

We have this other issue that’s come up throughout my career in Australia where child-rearing practices and disciplinary practices are considered child abuse in Australia by law as well, which reflects the cultural framework in Australia. And interestingly there’s a lot of people who migrate here, and observe and learn about the Anglo cultural framework of child-raising and family and think it’s beneath theirs. ‘What do you mean you throw your kids out when they’re 18?’ There’s all these things we hear, right?  

So some of those things about how do you raise kids, how do you talk to people, there’s so many nuances to culture that we’re raised within the framework of what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s actually how we teach our kids, that’s how we learn, that’s how we grow up. This is the right way to do it, this is the wrong way to do it.  

And so when we get exposed, as we have been through globalisation, to different cultural frameworks where ‘My wrong is your right, and your right is my wrong’, we get into a conflict. And what we have in Australia is a dominant culture that has set the laws, set the guidance, set everything, and so then you have the power to say, “That’s wrong.”

And I’m not condoning harm to any children, I know what psychologists would say is really good child-raising behaviour, but we have to be mindful that everybody holds onto these things as sacredly right or wrong. So we’re all in conflict with each other about this, and at the end of the day it’s the children that matter.  

So it’s not helpful – well, this is where reflection really comes in. What do I hold true? What do I hold to be actually incorrect? And then this is someone else’s correct way to do things, so how do I enter that conversation for the sake of the kids? So yeah, I could lock you up, I could send child protection over to your house, I could do all these things. None of that is useful in the long-term. What’s everyone learning?  

So we can certainly get a bit more sophisticated in how we have interventions where we feel like children might be harmed. And keep reminding ourselves that child protection laws, family violence laws, all the court systems, and all justice and legal practices existed here before all the CALD communities came here, so they exist also for the white Australia population.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, thanks Hala. I’ve just looked at the time and went whoa, that just flew, we’ve got a few minutes left together. We have so many questions, but we actually have a bonus recording where we will be answering more of your questions, and that will be available alongside this recording in a couple of weeks on both the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Emerging Minds website.  

I hope you’ve found today’s conversation generative of some new ways of approaching your work where there's cultural differences and there might be some concerns. Don’t forget to check out the latest course, Culturally Responsive Practice Strategies for Children’s Mental Health.  

I will offer each of you a final – I think we’ve got 30 seconds to just share one key takeaway message that maybe you just wanted to share again. Rhett, over to you.

RHETT MCDONALD: > Probably the biggest thing for me is trying to privilege the discovering of something for the first time as a clinician over the idea of knowing or defining something, and trying to understand things in the context of how they’re being presented. Because if you can understand the context, their behaviour will make sense to you. That’s it.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Powerful words. Hala?

HALA ABDELNOUR I am going to say perhaps consider, if you don’t already have one, consider a mentor, supervisor, or coach that you can continue to unpack this with, a companion on your professional journey, and thinking about areas that you’d like to develop as a professional so that we don’t spend our careers just reinforcing bad habits or staying stuck in the same loop. So I think we can together learn more and evolve in our practice.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah. And Pshko, a final comment?

PSHKO MARDEN: Yeah, this is an invitation, it’s a thinking practice that I’m doing myself, but I’m also inviting other practitioners and workers to join me in, which is that viewing culture as a living entity, as a living organism that is always changing and evolving, and not try to think about it as a rigid structure that never changes. So this is quite important because when we do that, this is where we again enter that dangerous territory. So thinking of culture as a living organism.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, thank you each of you, Hala, Pshko, and Rhett for your practice wisdom and insights. Thank you to all of you tuning in, and for all of your amazing questions, and your commitment towards culturally responsive practice and supporting children’s mental health. We’ll look forward to seeing you next time, bye for now.  

Welcome to our extended Q&A with our presenters Rhett McDonald, Pshko Marden, and Hala Abdelnour. We’ve got a couple more questions that we’ve got time to share with you. Let’s start with you, Rhett. How do you navigate families’ cultural preferences when they might be different to your understandings?

RHETT MCDONALD: > This question actually reminds me of the work of Vikki Reynolds, and I think she’s given some really valuable insights to the work in this area. She talks about this idea of structuring safety, rather than safety being something that’s just stated in a policy or a procedure, or handed out in a confidentiality leaflet to clients and people we work with. Structuring safety is the work we do, it’s not something you do and then get to the problem presented to you.  

So I think for me, it comes back to this idea of does where I’m meeting them create a sense of safety? I know with CALD communities, I’ve had more success running sessions outside my office than in, they’ve been far more successful to me, and hopefully them. How am I presenting myself? Does that foster some sort of sense of safety?  

I’m also sometimes aware of how I locate myself culturally in a session too. I think often we have this expectation that we meet clients and we have to find out where they’re from, what language they speak, their ethnic backgrounds, what religion, the whole gamut of that sort of thing, but we share nothing of that from our own perspective. And I sometimes feel that it's really important for me to say that, “You know what? I’m a white settler on land that was never ceded, and I’ve got ties to British and Scottish and German heritage, and I was christened Catholic as a young kid.” I’m bringing all this to the room as well and I sometimes think that it’s important to structure safety to talk about that sort of stuff. I think that’s important.  

I think we have to talk about what do I need to know about what’s sacred and valuable and precious to you so I don’t put my foot in it, from your perspective? What hopes do we have about how we’re going to behave in these meetings that we have? What, and really importantly actually, what history do they have of disagreeing with someone in power? With disagreeing with someone who’s perceived to be an expert, or a clinician, or someone of that nature? How would I know, how would we know if we stepped something on a session that’s violated something we agreed with?  

What responsibility am I going to take to be accountable to catch myself when I think I’ve crossed a barrier, or I’ve violated something? And if I’m not aware of that, how can I become aware of it? How can I get a subtle reminder from someone in the room perhaps that that’s what’s happened?  

So I think all that stuff around structuring safety is really, really important. And I have to try to understand my own blocks and my own obstacles, and understanding my own privilege in the room, because what we’re doing here is relational, it’s really relational. I remember there was a time when I was a clinician where I just stayed within what I knew, with what I was familiar with, and I responded from that position. And it took me a while to work out that that was not relational because if I’m not opening up to grow myself, to learn from them, to understand them and expand my own horizons, then I’m not being relational in that work.  

So that’s why I sometimes try to focus on privileging, like I said previously, privileging discovering something for the first time over knowing something or defining something. Because I think when we do that, if I’m able to do that, then I’m starting to do dignity, and I’m starting to be open to my own transformation, and I’m starting to become more aware of the context of what’s happening for the clients, and then I’m going to be able to understand their behaviour more. So that’s the sort of stuff that comes to my mind when you ask that question. Thank you.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, thanks Rhett. And Pshko and Hala, I know that you’ve talked about some of the ways that you navigate different cultural understandings, and maybe family practices. Any stand-out things you wanted to share in addition to what Rhett has said? Pshko, do you want to start?

PSHKO MARDEN: Okay. Well, just adding to what I’ve heard from Rhett, and it is beautiful, thank you Rhett, is the idea of structuring safety. And for me, it’s to think about what is it that I am actually bringing into the room? In conversation with colleagues, I’ve heard a lot that when we go to a therapy room we tend to leave our own biases, our own prejudice, our own ideas behind the door. And to me, the question is we will leave those prejudice and biases we know of, and what are some of the things that we don’t know of?  

So for me to acknowledge that there might be things that I am yet to discover about myself or my practice, that that could be useful but that also could be problematic. And so paying attention to the way I’m approaching conversations, the way I'm responding, how the conversation unfolds, the way I’m thinking about what is going on, and also thinking about the alternative ways of what might be going on for the person. So this is more broader, but specific in the therapeutic context.  

The other thing that I am embracing is the idea of not knowing. I think that is quite valuable because if we approach any work with the idea that we have a knowledge and we left nothing for curiosity, then we might get calcified in what we know. So as Rhett was saying, so there is not this urge to get out of what we know and learn things about the other, and learn things about ourself. So in that, not knowing is a valuable thing, it’s what drives the respectful curiosity for me.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, beautiful, thanks Pshko. And Hala, something else you wanted to add?

HALA ABDELNOUR Yes, sure. I’m just listening to Rhett and Pshko. I love Vikki Reynolds, I think she’s added so much value to this sector, and the idea of how we balance all the different things. One thing I’m thinking about just listening to this conversation, and I have thought about this growing up here, is as difficult as it is to be a migrant from a very different cultural background and being asked to assimilate - and even though we don’t use that word anymore, that’s actually what we’re being asked to do. We’re still being asked to assimilate into Australian society because the more Anglicised you can become, or the more Anglo you can act in Australia, the more you’ll thrive and be successful.  

And that’s not an easy thing to do because you have to understand a cultural framework that’s different to your own, you do have to balance conflicting right ways of doing things and you navigate your way around that. You’ve got to figure out different ways of how you talk. Do you challenge authority? Don’t you? Is it okay? All these things that we have to navigate. And we’re forced to do it so we get really good at it. Then I get good at adapting to other cultural frameworks when I come across them because I've had to.  

And it’s just dawned on me that a lot of the struggles that people that are represented by the dominant culture have when working with people from other cultural backgrounds is no one’s asking them to assimilate to anything in this country, and so they’re not well practiced at it. And there's no pressure to. You could actually very comfortably sit and say, “No, you just be more like me and then you’ll be fine.”  

But the truth is that’s never going to work, it’s not working. So it’s like, ‘How can I adapt to your cultural framework? How can I meet you halfway? What do I need to know about you and know about myself?’ And it starts with understanding. Somebody said this earlier, it starts with understanding that you’ve got a cultural background too, we all do. And that there’s just as many understandings of the world and cognitive constructs that I hold, that are embedded in my cultural framework that I was raised with, as anybody else. That’s just true for all human beings.  

And when the dominant culture represents me, it’s much harder for me to see that, and it’s much easier for me to just sit back and go, “No, you be more like me.” And that’s the problem that a lot of people have, is someone’s walking into their office and they’re going, “I don’t get you, be more like me.” And it’s like, “No, how can I meet you where you’re at?”  

And I have that, I meet people who are culturally different to me, but it’s not daunting anymore for me, it’s just easier because I’m well practiced at it. So it’s like anything in life, if you exercise it, you get better at it.  

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, thanks Hala. And I know we’ve only got a few minutes together so I want to get in as many questions, but you guys are doing such a great job at answering these huge questions. Hala, what does it mean to apply an intersectional feminist approach in your work? Just another little question for you.

HALA ABDELNOUR Sure, just a small one. But it ties in with what I was just saying and what we’ve been talking about. The fundamental thing I want to say is if you’re talking about intersectionality and you don’t know who Kimberlé Crenshaw is, then you’re not talking about intersectionality. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term and she was very specific in what she meant by it, and she was talking about systems and structures of oppression. She wasn’t saying, “Do you have different identities and lived experiences? Therefore you have intersectionality.”  

She was saying, “How are systems and processes structured in a way that are a vehicle for oppression or privilege for people based on their personality traits?” So if I’m just talking about gender, and skin colour, and religion, and all the other things without the context of systems of processes and systems of privilege and oppression, then I’m not actually talking about intersectionality, I’m talking about diversity. And diversity is a fact, but equity and inclusion is a choice. And equity and inclusion happens when we assess the systems we’ve got in place, and whether – Rhett, you said earlier, “The rules are made for me, it’s easy.” That’s what we’re talking about. And if they’re not made for you, then how are they oppressing you?  

And so when we get a client that comes in, and it’s whether we want to talk about how they’re raising their kids, or family relationships, or how they’re navigating the system in Australia, if I don’t understand that that system was designed by white men for white men, and later is now including white women and other white existences, and is favouring that above everything else, then I’m not going to acknowledge that this person might be experiencing oppression systemically.  

That’s what it means to apply an inspectional feminist framework, because feminism exists specifically to dismantle the patriarchy, and specifically to dismantle powers of inequities. So I’m looking at this from that perspective of what inequities exist, where do they sit in the system? And what’s my role in the system, what power have I got? And who are you, and what’s your life experience been? And then I go from there, in a nut shell.

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, and you did an amazing nutshell version of that, thank you so much. One last question, Pshko, I’ll start with you, about challenging a man choosing to use violence against his partner and claiming that it’s normal in his culture.

PSHKO MARDEN: Yep. Okay, so the way that I respond to that question is we’ve think that it’s in our authority to be challenging a man about his way of being, and again what gives us that power to be doing that? And is it actually going to do any good? Is us going and confronting a man and challenging them about their ways of being, is it going to achieve the desirable outcome? Or are they feeling that they will be more targeted, marginalised as a result of our approach? So to me, it’s not that.  

It doesn’t mean that we should leave it and we should do nothing about it, because as Hala mentioned earlier, and I’m getting that to be part of our conversation, is that we are resisting the binary. That it’s right and wrong, and always my way is right and your way is wrong. It’s always that division.  

So how can we meet half way? To me, and it’s a question, how we could invite, how we could create an ethical platform for this man to stand on and be able to reflect and critique their own ways of being? So how we could collaborate with the man, how we could create that ethical platform and invite this man to be looking into his own ways of being that is problematic. So it’s not challenging him, but it’s inviting him to be able to challenge his own ways of being. And that’s very different, that is more invitational, we do that regardless of is it a white man or a man from a CALD background.  

And the only difference is that white men, they know the language, they know the system, they know how to navigate themselves out of that trouble where those sort of ways might not be available for a man from a CALD background, so then the pressure would be way higher on them. So my way of engaging with people is how to work with them to create that ethical platform so they could critique their own ways of being and try to see the alternatives of being a different man.  

AMANDA KEMPERMAN: Yeah, and I know you’ve provided some great resources in the resource handout that we all put together on invitational approaches, and exploring curiously, and value-driven practice and so on. So I encourage all of our participants to follow up with some of those great resources.  

Thank you all for your contributions, your wisdom, your commitment to your work for children and families. And look forward to maybe having another chat, another webinar another time, hey? And look forward to seeing you all listening again another time as well. Bye for now.