Supporting culturally reflective practice

Download printable PDF of Module 1: Culturally reflective practice

Some practitioners may find working with families across different cultural groups challenging. We all come with our own culture, beliefs and values that may impact on our ability to build connections and engagement when working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners are a rich source of information and know their communities best. However, being the go-to person for any questions regarding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures means they bear a significant cultural load and are often overloaded. It is important to be mindful of this burden and, wherever possible, try to be responsible for your own learning. As a leader, you are essential in developing and prioritising culturally responsive practices for both yourself and your team, as well as emphasising that this work is everyone’s business.

By adopting a decolonising approach in practice, your team can enhance their ability to build relationships and trust with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. As you engage with this series, we encourage you to explore how you can support this work as a leader.

We ask you to think about how you can encourage practitioners in your team to:

• consistently and continually reflect on their own values, beliefs and ideas
• consider how these values, beliefs and ideas might get in the way of communicating and engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities.

Watch the following video (1 minute, 38 seconds) and listen as Shirley Young, an Aboriginal woman descending from the Nukunu people and a cultural consultant, talks about the importance of culturally informed reflective practice.

Engaging in culturally reflective practice is crucial to ensure the ways you work with people across cultures is respectful, promotes cultural security and achieves improved mental health and social and emotional wellbeing outcomes.

We encourage you to explore the following principles as you engage with this series:

• Regularly examining your own thoughts, values and beliefs
• Understanding your own emotional responses in your engagements with families
• Understanding and defining roles
• Seeking knowledge and understanding context for families
• Expressing cultural curiosity in conversations and understanding your line of enquiry.

Strategies to support learning

• Build your team’s culturally reflective practice by being interested and prioritising conversations centred around these principles.

Download printable PDF of Module 2: Regularly examining your own thoughts, values and beliefs.

Everyone has a culture. Being human implies being embedded in a cultural matrix in which characteristics and identities interact and inform experiences of the world.¹

Unconscious bias, or the unintentional prejudices we all come with, tends to inform our judgements and decision-making processes. Even the most open-minded people can have underlying, unconscious beliefs or assumptions that trigger automatic judgements about other people or groups when left unchecked.²

Most practitioners and leaders working with children and families understand that there are injustices in the world. A good leader cannot ignore the fact that injustices in the world will equate to injustices in practice.

No one leaves their biases and assumptions at home when they come to work. While you cannot change people’s beliefs, as a leader you can reflect on their behaviour in practice. It demands a paradigm shift and openness to different ways of thinking and doing things; it also requires intentionality.³

It is important to understand the way your personal biases influence you and the impact they have on your attitudes. Personal biases affect the type of communication we have with others. As such, bias should be recognised as a determining factor in respectful interactions.

Watch the following video (2 minutes, 56 seconds) as Darryl Bingapore, a Ngarrindjeri Community member, and Uncle Clyde Rigney Senior, a Ngarrindjeri Elder, share some tips for practitioners.

Strategies to support learning

As a leader, consider how you can explore personal biases. It could be through:

• demonstrating the competencies that you would like to build in your team
• making space for conversations where you can explore the values, ideas and beliefs that your team come with
• noticing the nuances of difference between members of the team and developing a language to help navigate them.

Thinking about your own leadership and team, which of these activities do you currently engage in? How might you consider these ideas in your work in future?

Download printable PDF of Module 3: Being uncomfortable

When we are working with families from a different culture to our own there may be times that it feels uncomfortable, this may be due to language barriers, different ways being or expressing ourselves. Though you should always feel safe in your practice, it’s important to remember that this is both normal and OK to feel this way it is also important to be aware of this discomfort and understand what may be triggering your responses.

The more interactions and relationships you build with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, the more comfortable you will be, and it will not feel so different.

Watch the following video (4 minutes, 1 second) in which Dana Shen explores discomfort in practice.

Cultural competency starts by accepting these experiences and the discomfort that comes with them in order to learn something new. What you will learn in this process will enrich your ability to connect with all families.

Strategies to support learning

• Explore these reactions with your team, being patient with the feelings of not understanding and with the discomfort of not knowing.
• Listen deeply, look for direction and ask what is expected if you are interested and want to learn.
• Notice the circumstances which may have brought the place of resistance and be curious about why these might be triggering your team member.

Download printable PDF of Module 4: Understanding your role

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live their culture; they experience the world as an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person and know their communities best. Therefore, a good ally appreciates their need to make decisions about the things impacting them. An example of this could be asking parents if you are the right person to support them, rather than making this decision yourself.^{1, 2}

On a deeper level, non-Indigenous practitioners are part of a system that has left significant, lasting scars on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, causing many to feel wary of contact with government and community services. The resulting barrier is complex, difficult to navigate, and takes time to overcome.

Non-Indigenous practitioners providing care or support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families need to engage in a continuous process of self-reflection. They can engage in this process through learning, listening and building relationships, and by considering the role they play as an ally for National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Allyship requires non-Indigenous practitioners to constantly cast a critical eye on themselves.³

Self-awareness is an essential element of providing safety in a service, program or practice setting.

Self-reflective practice is vital to help practitioners understand how they might be perceived by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. This involves querying your role and relationship with the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person you are working with, as well as the way you view your own and others’ expertise.

The use of ‘expertise’ can be an obstacle when it comes to working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families. It can reinforce a history of marginalisation and can deny Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the opportunity to tell their stories. Without an understanding of the ways expertise can create barriers, it may not be possible for you to develop relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.

Strategies to support learning

• Know what space you are taking up and when to step back. Always remember that you are in community as a guest, in a supportive role.
• Always remember these histories come from hundreds of years of ongoing trauma and discrimination, so be mindful in your enquiry.
• When supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, parents or families, think of it like an ongoing self-check-in about the purpose and context for engagements.