Transcript for
Responding to shame and stigma in child protection and reunification
Narrator (00:02):
Welcome to the Emerging Minds Families Podcast.
Nadia Rossi (00:06):
Hi, I’m Nadia Rossi, and you’re listening to an Emerging Minds Families podcast. We would like to pay respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We also pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their ancestors and elders past, present, and emerging from the different First Nations across Australia.
(00:30):
In today’s episode, we’ll be discussing the complex topic of child removal, child protection, and reunification. If you feel this topic may bring up difficult feelings for you, perhaps give this week a miss or join us next fortnight, or you can find resources for support in our show notes.
(00:48):
When stigma happens to our families, it can be really hard to know how to respond, but there are many ways that families can and do respond to stigma, discrimination, and injustice to hold onto their family’s dignity and support their children’s wellbeing.
(01:03):
This podcast is part of a series where we explore some of the ways families do this. Maybe you will connect with some of their stories and skills, or maybe they will spark some ideas for facing stigma in your own family. In this episode, my co-host Alicia Ranford is talking with Sam Carpenter and Katherine Flavel.
(01:22):
Sam is the senior manager and Katherine the senior practitioner at Centacare’s Unify Reunification Services. They are here to talk about parents working towards reunification, and what it can be like for parents and children who have been separated by child protection, including the shame and stigma they can experience.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (01:43):
Welcome, Sam and Kathy. It’s great to speak with you today. I wondered if we could start by hearing a little bit about you and the families that you work with. Kathy, I wondered if you wanted to kick start us off today.
Kathy (Guest) (01:55):
Thank you. So I’ve been working in our reunification program for … I’ve almost lost count. I think it’s about eight and a half years. Before that, I worked as a family and relationship counsellor. I really, really believe in this work. I believe that children need to be with their families if it’s safe. It’s a bit of a passion of mine, and I’ve worked in this program firstly as an on-the-ground caseworker and then as a senior practitioner. Now I’m more in the therapeutic role.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (02:34):
Fantastic. And Sam?
Sam (Guest) (02:36):
Yeah. Hi, my name’s Sam. So I’ve been working at Centacare for about six years now, and I’ve worked, I guess, in the field of child protection for, I don’t know, probably about 25 years now. All of my working life, really. So it’s always been, yeah, part of what I do and a passion of mine.
(02:55):
But since working at Centacare, I’ve really feel like I’ve found the way that I like to work and the way that I think is really useful for families. So that the service that we both work at is called Unify. We’re a reunification service, which for people that don’t know what that is, that’s a term that we use in child protection for after a child is removed, the process of hopefully them returning to live with their family again, sometimes that’s successful and sometimes it isn’t, and we are not the decision-makers in that regard.
(03:28):
Obviously there’s a government party involved. That’s DCP, Department for Child Protection. So they are both the funders of our service and also the decision-makers generally for children. When we work with children, we work with a whole range of different families and situations. We work with children and young people who have just been removed from their family and might be on a short-term court order or might be just not even on a court order at all.
(03:55):
We also work with children and young people who’ve been in care for a really long time and who may not have experienced safety and stability and care, might be coming back home to their parent in some cases without the approval of DCP and in some cases where DCP have decided that’s probably the best option for them.
(04:14):
So the focus of our service really is working with parents, parents are our main client, and working towards that parent, I guess, building their parenting skills, building their parenting knowledge, understanding of themselves and their children so that they can parent safely again, which is, yeah, really important for us to be able to do that.
(04:38):
It’s a privilege to be able to do that as well. It’s great that we have a government decision-maker involved, because that means that we can really focus on what a parent needs to meet their goals.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (04:51):
I’m imagining that it’s what the parents and children need to meet their goals.
Sam (Guest) (04:55):
Yeah. So I guess there’s lots of different ways of looking at child protection and lots of different strong opinions about it. There’s often this kind of, I guess, a competitive dynamic between being child-focused and being parent-focused. We see them as the same thing. When you’re focusing on a parent, you are actually focusing on what a child needs. If you’re unable to work respectfully with a parent and not able to give them what they need, then ultimately that’s cutting to the core of the child’s identity and the meaning that they make about themselves in the world. I guess the way we look at the term child-focused is that being parent-focused is part of that.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (05:40):
Thanks, Sam. That’s a really lovely way to be thinking about this. What are some of the things you notice about the parents that you interact with during your working day?
Sam (Guest) (05:48):
I think the most important thing, the most central topic to parents and their children being removed and the child protection system is trauma, and particularly intergenerational trauma is really central to this. When I talk to people about what we do, I would say that’s our core business is responding to intergenerational trauma.
(06:07):
When we deal with families who’ve experienced trauma in their lives, one of the things that we notice is that people that experience trauma often don’t experience it just once. They often need to experience it or have to experience it again and again and again. For many people with trauma, I think sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between the past and the present. So child removal itself is a trauma.
(06:35):
People who have their children removed by and large are people that have experienced intergenerational trauma. I’d say almost 100% of the people that we work with have experienced trauma in their own lives, generally in their own childhood. When you have those experiences in your life and then you experience a child being removed, often that feels very, very similar to the trauma that you may have experienced in the past.
(07:00):
People that have had those experiences of trauma often have what we call creative adaptions, so ways that they have learnt to keep themselves safe in the world that were really effective for people in childhood or at the time when they experienced that trauma, but might not be serving them so well now or in the present. So that’s one of the things that we come across a lot. Often what I say is our main client is not necessarily the parent as an adult, but that parent as a child.
(07:33):
The other thing that we notice about our work is about parenting identity. So parenting is not like a job. It’s not like going and working at Bunnings or whatever. It’s actually something that really when people become a parent, that’s actually part of who they are. That’s part of their identity.
(07:52):
And so, being a good parent obviously is an important thing for all of us who are parents. If we’re not a good parent, what does that say about us? And so, when people have children removed, particularly people who have had their own childhood trauma for whom being a good parent is extra, extra important, that actually cuts to the core of who they are. I think because of that, their self-worth, their purpose in life, all is impacted by child removal. I think, therefore, shame and stigma are some of the most important themes that we come across in our work with families.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (08:30):
Yes, that’s a good reminder, isn’t it? When we talk about shame and stigma, I’m certain there’s probably a lot of people listening today who have perhaps preconceived ideas about families, who’ve had their children removed. What might those preconceptions miss and what might people not know about the families that you support?
Kathy (Guest) (08:50):
A really important thing that I think about 100% of the families that I work with, and I’ve been doing this for many, many years now, is that I have never ever met a parent that does not love their child. I have never ever met a child that does not love their parent. But I have met many families, many parents, and many children that are doing it really, really tough, that things like poverty, homelessness, not having enough resources, being misunderstood, being judged instead of people thinking about the pain that they’re feeling and coming alongside them and thinking about what resources they might need and what help they might need.
(09:43):
These are the things that people may not know about these families, that these families that we work with work so hard. Parents turn up and feel uncomfortable before the love of their children. It’s such a privilege for me to go in and sit in these family homes, and sometimes not in family homes because they don’t even act one, and to say, “How can we help you? What is your dream?” and their dream is not million-dollar castles or overseas holidays, it’s to be with their children. I wonder if people can see that, yeah, from the outside.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (10:25):
And to think about all those external factors that have contributed to them being where they are and experiencing what they are in that moment.
Kathy (Guest) (10:33):
Yes. I truly believe that people do the best they can with the resources they have and the knowledge that they have at the time. When we can understand that and come alongside them and support them, they can learn new ways of being. They can work towards supporting their children.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (10:53):
Absolutely. Sam, you mentioned before about stigma and shame. Could you explain to our listeners what is stigma and what kinds of stigma are the families you work with facing?
Sam (Guest) (11:06):
The textbook definition of stigma is really … The key term is having a single story to describe someone, and that single story can sometimes mean that we ignore all of the depth of experience that a person might have or all of the other things that might be going on for that person. When we think about stigma in child protection, I think one of the things, probably the most important, to bear in mind is that child protection is a government. It’s a system that is influenced by politics.
(11:37):
If you go and ask the majority of people on the street, like if you were to walk out on the street today and say, “Hey, what do you think about people who abuse their children?” most of them probably would say, “Well, they deserve to have their rights taken away,” or, “They deserve to have their children removed and never returned.” That’s what, I guess, the average voter thinks and that’s what generally the government then is responding to in how they set policy and how they treat those people.
(12:03):
But that is a single story, and that single story causes stigma and it causes the parents that we work with to have a lot of their good intent and their resilience that we see a lot. That’s a really key term that we use a lot is resilience. Many parents that we work with have survived things that we couldn’t even imagine surviving, and to be that resilient and still be there and show up for your kids and be available and want to be the best parent that you can, and for many, they are excellent, excellent parents too. But some stuff has got in the way and that story gets ignored when we think about how the public would perceive, and even how the government might perceive, parents who have their children removed.
Kathy (Guest) (12:54):
For me too, I think that stigma actually does not serve children. That stigma about parents not deserving to get their children back actually comes in the way of children having loving parents. So while there is a temptation or it’s understandable, we all want to protect children, we all want what’s best for children, and it’s understandable that we might not show generosity to their parents, but I think when we don’t do that, when we don’t open up and think about all of the richness of their stories and look for their strengths and their resilience, we do not serve children. We do not serve children at all.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (13:43):
For our listeners today who might not understand what reunification means, could you explain a little bit about that?
Sam (Guest) (13:51):
So reunification, I mean it’s a term used by the system that … In other states, they use other terms like restoration. But generally it means the process of exploring the option of a child returning back home after being removed.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (14:05):
Is it always about a child going home? Is that the only type of reunification that you work with?
Sam (Guest) (14:12):
Yeah. In a strict sense, that is the case. That’s what we’re funded to provide a service while the department is making a decision about whether a child returns home. There will be some reunification services that would probably finish at the point that that decision is made, particularly if the decision is that the child goes into long-term care.
(14:33):
In many cases, parents will want to stop work at that point as well because it’s an extremely traumatising, painful kind of situation, and sometimes people aren’t up for continuing to work on themselves after that. But if they are up for continuing to work with us, we will certainly continue to work with families because we know that that work’s always going to be valuable for that child. A person’s identity is strongly linked with their family, and children need parents to be the best parents they can be no matter where they’re living.
Kathy (Guest) (15:04):
We give all children the chance. That’s the important thing. We give all children the chance to go home by working with their parents. If parents can’t make those changes within the time frames that the government agency decides, then the work is still valuable because then if those children do come home later, which many children do self-place, then the parents are more able to be there for them, because the children’s identity, who they are, the family that they were born into matters for the rest of their lives no matter where they live. This is important and this is important when they have children.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (15:46):
When we think about stigma in the systems with which our daily lives function like school system, the health and legal system, and even the child protection system, can you talk a little bit more about the way stigma can show up in the lives of the families you work with?
Sam (Guest) (16:01):
Yeah. So I guess I alluded to it before, but all of those systems that you talk about, they’re all political systems. They’re all things that are influenced by the government of the day, by voters, by what we think the majority of people think is okay, and I think that certainly leads to those systems sometimes being stigmatising.
(16:25):
I talked before about if you were to ask the majority of people on the street what they think of parents who abuse their kids, I guess the majority of people would give answers that reflect that they hold stigma about that population.
(16:38):
The other thing I think to note about that is that’s often a gendered thing, too. I think if we were to ask people about what they think about mums who abuse their children, generally their answer would be very different to what they would say about dads who abuse their children. I think we see that play out as well in the child protection system. Mums and dads, rightly or wrongly, are treated very differently in the system.
(17:02):
The other thing about that is it’s cultural. So it’s defined by the dominant culture. We have a huge problem all over the country of the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in our child protection system and in other systems too, like the justice system, which is something that I think the majority of people, everyone that works in the system will acknowledge that is a huge problem that we need to address. That is not okay, but why haven’t we been able to address that?
(17:31):
I think that’s about stigma and that’s about the way dominant culture or political systems have a particular way of looking at what is safe and what is not safe, and that’s a culturally defined idea. So I think that’s what causes the systemic racism that we do experience in the system.
Kathy (Guest) (17:54):
I think it’s really important to note there’s so much pressure on teachers and health professionals in those systems with their mandatory reporters. There’s a lot of pressure and accountability on those people that work in those systems that can sometimes overshadow being able to sit and look at the bigger picture. When we look at the bigger picture, then we can see what resources are missing, and bring those resources in to be able to really help the parents.
(18:36):
I feel like the people that work in those systems really want to do that, but they’re under just so much pressure to be accountable for reporting that it’s really hard for them. But when you can look at the little person in your classroom and think about how could this child’s life change if we could help mum and dad a little bit more, or mum a little bit more, so that they could stay home, so that they could be safe. I think that’s a good way to think about it, too.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (19:10):
What are the effects of stigma the families you work with talk to you about?
Kathy (Guest) (19:15):
I think sometimes the effects of stigma on families that we work with, sometimes it almost comes in the way and denies them the ability to lean into help that is available because there’s a bit of a paradox, I guess, that when people feel shamed by the behaviour that might’ve led to child removal and the behaviour that might’ve led to children not being safe, they feel like that might impact on their chance to get their child back. And so, that also impacts their ability to open up and receive the help that they need.
(20:03):
And so, it’s really tricky when you work with these families. There’s a real difference between … Or the way that I think about it, there’s a real difference between accountability for their behaviour and really saturating people with responsibility and shame, because when we do that, we limit their capacity to change and grow. So it’s a really delicate balance to hold people in that way, that you did the best you could that you did at the time with the resources that you had, but that didn’t really work out so well. So how can we go back and think about that in a different way?
Sam (Guest) (20:43):
I guess the way the system sometimes operates, what it demands of parents in this situation is several things, that they acknowledge that harm has occurred, that they acknowledge and take responsibility for their role in the harm, and that they then take some actions to demonstrate change. They’re the three things that the system usually expects parents to be able to demonstrate, but it usually asks that of them very, very quickly after what’s been quite a traumatic event for them.
(21:13):
That’s really difficult for people to do, particularly when they don’t feel that their experience of trauma has been validated or that they have had empathy about what they have been through. I guess what we talk about when we talk about these situations, the idea of child focus or the child’s rights or the child’s voice, that’s usually seen as a bit of a slam dunk argument that no one can argue with that, the importance of those things. And so, if the parent is not seen to be child-focused in the way they talk about the experiences that they’ve had, that generally means that they’re not viewed favourably in terms of having their children returned.
(21:52):
What I think we see is that there’s actually an important step to take before you ask parents to do that, and that’s to validate and acknowledge the experiences that they have had and to acknowledge what Kathy said, that they’ve actually done the best that they could with the resources available to them. And so, rather than looking at that parent as a person, probably what we need to be looking at first is what resources did they have available to them at the time and what resources can we make available to them now?
Alicia Ranford (Host) (22:24):
As you said, that stigma doesn’t get in the way of them leaning in to get support, to reach their goals of reunification or getting the support that they require.
Sam (Guest) (22:36):
That’s right. I think the other thing that’s really important to us in our work that’s not necessarily always seen as positive is that we don’t assess. So when we go into work with a family, we often get asked, “What’s your assessment of this parent’s capacity?” and we really intentionally, and we have to hold on quite strongly to this principle, have to say, “That’s not our job. We’re not there to assess,” because when we do, we’re actually becoming then a barrier to them reaching out and receiving the support that they need to process their trauma, to make the changes that they need, and to have someone on their side, which is something that we’ve always often heard from parents as being really important.
Kathy (Guest) (23:21):
Yeah. I think because we do take that stance, parents do lean into our support, and we can go to places that they wouldn’t necessarily go if we were doing assessments. That’s where the real magic happens. That’s where the real change happens.
(23:38):
That doesn’t mean that we don’t work with the department and inform them of our observations so that they can make their assessments. But that’s always done with total transparency of the parent, unless there is a risk to a child, that by doing that, we would put a child at risk. We would never do that.
(24:01):
Of course we see the risk, but we would encourage parents to be able to sit with uncomfortable feelings and bring forward information to the department and support them to do that, because that’s part of their healing and that, I think, is really important.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (24:21):
Within those uncomfortable feelings that you speak about, can we talk about shame? In your experience, is shame helpful or harmful for families who are going through tough times and facing stigma?
Kathy (Guest) (24:34):
I feel like the whole range of human emotions are there for a reason. So I think a little bit of shame, if it is supported with empathy, can be useful, but we don’t want parents to drown in it, because I think … A way that I think about shame is that when we feel shame, we can sometimes feel like we’re a bad person. How do you grow and learn and do things differently if you’re just fundamentally bad? That’s really, really hard.
(25:15):
Whereas if parents can understand that they were born a beautiful innocent little baby once, and then they had some really tough stuff that happened to them that they developed these creative adaptions to survive, and that might have caused them to act in a way that maybe served them when they’re a child, but it doesn’t serve them now as a parent. And so, when we can separate out the behaviour, when we can say, “You were born a good person once, but you did this thing that didn’t align with your values. It didn’t serve your child. It didn’t serve who you wanted to be as a parent,” then we shift shame to guilt. It’s more about the behaviour.
(26:05):
That is where we have this beautiful growth environment that we can change. “I’m a good parent and I’m a good person that did something that hurt my child, and I don’t ever want to do that again.” How amazing for children not to have … If you think about children’s identity, if their parent is bad and they come from that parent, what does that mean for them?
(26:33):
Whereas if they are exposed to this idea that my parent did the best that they could at the time, but it didn’t work out so well and they’re working really hard, but my parent is a good person that made a mistake and now is fixing it, what does that mean for that child? What template does that give them that I’m a good person too and I can make good choices? It’s just so much better. It’s just so much healthier. It’s just such an environment for healing and growth and to break that intergenerational cycle.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (27:12):
And to lead to such better outcomes for children.
Kathy (Guest) (27:14):
Yes, to lead to such better outcomes for children. It doesn’t have to be picture perfect, it has to be safe. And it’s so worth it.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (27:24):
What are some of the ways you have seen parents responding to the shame and stigma they experienced?
Kathy (Guest) (27:30):
I’m thinking about a particular example. Lots of people flood to me actually when I think about this. I think the first automatic response, and we talk a lot about sometimes when we’re triggered, we have a backseat driver. We have an automatic default that we go to in behaviour. I think often it’s a self-protection thing. We think about it like a shame shield. So that’s often projection. That’s often, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
(28:05):
When we understand that and can sit alongside that and try and show empathy, then people will have the power to put that down and to be able to take accountability and to think about, “Oh, this feels really bad. This feels really bad. I feel really bad that I did this thing.” We can sit alongside them and they don’t have to sit in that alone, because people can do really hard things if they don’t have to do it on their own. Shame is so isolating. They feel like they’re on their own.
(28:39):
So when we can come alongside and say, “Yeah, that does feel really bad, hey. That does feel really bad,” and you can tolerate this feeling so that you can make a better choice and have a better life and be the parent you always dreamed to be.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (28:55):
And to not feel that isolation. I think that’s something that strikes me from what you’ve said is that it can be so isolating. To not feel that isolation anymore must be really empowering.
Kathy (Guest) (29:06):
It’s so empowering, and then that where they don’t feel like they’re on their own, parents can then lean into the supports that they desperately need. But it’s hard for all of us, hey, to do stuff on our own. It’s so much. We use the phrase a lot in our program, that we walk alongside the families that we work with. We walk alongside children. We walk alongside parents. Sometimes, towards the end of our intervention, we even walk a step behind, but we try not to walk too much in front of them because that’s disempowering.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (29:48):
What about children and young people? What are some of the ways you’ve seen children respond to the shame and stigma that they have experienced?
Kathy (Guest) (29:56):
We worked with a family where three little children were returned to their dad. It was a lot of work. They were in foster care and there were some care concerns in the foster care placement. So then DCP looked again and decided, “Oh, maybe dad has made the changes.”
(30:24):
I remember going out and being in this home, and this little girl came up to me and said, “Why are you still here?” I said, “Well, we’re here to make sure that you feel safe coming home with your daddy.” She was like, “I’m safe with my daddy.”
(30:46):
The experience that I had, the meaning that I took from this interaction was that she really needed us to be on her side and to be on dad’s side. She didn’t need the stigma that her daddy wasn’t safe. She needed the opposite, actually. She needed us to believe in her dad and to believe in her and to believe in her family and to believe … And not blindly believe. Of course we see risk. But we don’t want that stigma to get in the way of her being able to trust her dad anymore.
(31:27):
We did a lot of work to support dad to be able to say, “What happened before you were removed was not okay and you didn’t feel safe. These are the things that I’ve done now so that you can be safe. Things are different now,” to help her believe that. Yeah, I think that’s the greatest gift, for her to feel like, “Yup, they understand. My dad understands that was not okay, and he’s changed. Things are different now and I can feel safe.” There’s this big leap of faith. It’s a big thing for kids to come back. And so, they need to work around that, not coming away at that.
Sam (Guest) (32:15):
I mean one of the things that we talk about a little bit is mistakes of meaning and blame. So for children that have been through these sorts of experiences, it’s often hard for them to see the whole dynamic of what’s gone on. Often for a child, their natural response to that is to blame themselves or to say, “This happened because of something I did or because of who I am.” And so, being able to correct those is an important way of helping children to be able to stand up to, I guess, the stigma and shame of being removed from your family, of being in care.
(32:48):
What we think is one of the most important ways of doing that is through the parent telling that narrative and telling it in a child-friendly way, of course. They need to be at a point where they’re not blaming everyone else for that. But that is one of the most healing ways of a child being able to overcome that stigma and shame, is hearing the story of their relationship with their parent from their parent’s point of view. Then all of those other things obviously happening as well.
(33:19):
The system around being able to reassure that child that things have changed. Mum or dad are safe now. Kids are pretty intuitive and they can tell if we don’t really think that. They can certainly tell when the department is still involved and when they’re still visiting a lot and when they’re visiting them at school to see them without their parent. Things like that really cut across that message of things have changed, you’re safe now, and that then can become a little bit self-fulfilling. So it can mean that children do feel unsafe even when maybe they’re not.
(33:57):
Those are really important things as well, correcting those mistakes of meaning and reassuring the child that they are, if indeed they are, safe, making sure that that message is given by everyone.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (34:08):
And really helping them to make meaning of the whole experience that they’ve gone through. It sounds like that’s very important as well.
Kathy (Guest) (34:16):
This family, the really magical thing was that this little girl could say, “I was scared, daddy. I was scared,” and that he could say, “I know you were. I’m sorry. I never want you to be scared again,” not dismissing her fear. That’s how we work, to tell the whole story, not just the good bits, the whole story, and then to repair that.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (34:47):
What I’m hearing from our whole conversation today is that working with parents to overcome that shame and stigma, and to allow them to have those conversations with their children through this reunification process, really helps the child to move through their own experience, make meaning, and help this family come back together without either of them feeling the shame and stigma that they did previously.
Kathy (Guest) (35:15):
As the parent … Yeah, the child can feel, “I love my parent. They love me. This was really hard. We both lost out, that parents lost out on having time with us. We lost time having time with our parents, but we can do hard things. We can work this out. We can make this better. This does not have to be our whole story.” We come back to the danger of the single story. Stories have so much richness to them, the good, the bad, the resilience, the disappointment.
(35:47):
When children can experience alongside the parents, when they can experience that, then that makes for really rich family identities that go on generation after generation, and particularly with our Aboriginal families, the importance of that identity. We think about colonisation and that story. We don’t want to keep doing that. We don’t want to keep doing that. We want to hear it from them, how they think they can come together and heal.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (36:21):
Unfortunately, how we approach keeping children safe often ends up placing a lot of blame and pressure on parents and carers and individual families rather than addressing those kinds of forces that mean families are going through tough times in the first place. What role do others have in standing alongside the families you work with to reduce their shame and stigma?
Kathy (Guest) (36:45):
I feel like it starts with … If we think about stigma and the single story, I feel like the antidote might have something to do with people, just the general public, opening their hearts, opening their minds, thinking about things from a really broad lens and thinking about what resources might be helpful.
(37:11):
How can they help in a small way rather than being focused on the deficit? Being able to sit with the uncomfortable feelings that come up for us when we see a child that might be doing it really tough and wanting to blame their parents, thinking about is there an opportunity for me to help here, even if it’s in a small way? Is there an opportunity to give a kind word to a parent that comes in that might look like they’re doing it really tough, rather than feeling uncomfortable and getting lost in our own discomfort and walking to the other side of the road?
(37:53):
To be curious about what’s happening for that family. Always holding onto our curiosity. Rather than focusing on deficit, focusing on an opportunity to come alongside. Saying anything is better than saying nothing, walking alongside and starting up a conversation. “Oh, Susie’s really good on the slippery dip.” Just something that you would say to somebody that isn’t doing it tough. Just opening up lines of communication. “Oh, I noticed that Jenny and Susie both like that swing. They both want to be on that swing at the same time,” and really finding moments of connection and sameness rather than how are we different?
(38:48):
I think stigma and shame really breeds an us and them mentality where, to remember, we are all parents. We have all struggled getting our children off the slippery dip and home for dinner, and to connect on those moments of sameness.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (39:05):
That’s a beautiful thing for all of our listeners to remember, and can be taken across so many different scenarios. I love that, finding connection of sameness. I think that’s something we can all remember to do. You both obviously work in a fairly specialised service. From your years of experience, what advice would you have for parents who are feeling shame and stigma about what’s happened or is going on in their lives?
Sam (Guest) (39:30):
Yeah, it’s a tricky one to answer because we can only answer it from the point of view of the work that we do. But I think the answer is probably captured in some of the ways that we work. One of the most important things is to have empathy for yourself, to know within yourself that you have done your best and you have done your best with the resources that are available to you at the time.
(39:53):
Remembering that is a way of actually, I guess, freeing yourself to actually look at doing things differently, to understand that trauma works in really interesting ways and it can make you make decisions that seem like they’re right at the time, because when you were a child, that probably was the only way of surviving was to behave in that way. But as you get older, you do sometimes need to adapt different ways of being in the world.
(40:21):
I think they’re important things to know, but also to know that you’re not alone. I think of the other important factors definitely. There are so many people going through this, so you’re not alone. It is possible to get help and it is possible to heal from past trauma. It can seem like an insurmountable thing, like a massive mountain that’s almost impossible to climb, but it’s not. There is help available.
(40:48):
That might look like firstly talking to your GP, getting a mental health care plan, exploring what some of the therapeutic services are in your area. They’re not all costly. Centacare has a family and relationship counselling service that we often refer families to. That is low cost or free. Obviously there are some … Not that many, but there are some therapists that will bill. Just getting out there and believing that there is something out there for you if you look hard enough, and starting with your GP is a good place to start.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (41:20):
In your experience with the families that you work with, what do you think they’d want our listeners to know today about child protection and the feelings of shame and stigma?
Kathy (Guest) (41:31):
We recently made a video actually of one of the families that we work with, and she wanted to tell her story because she had worked really hard and her little one was returned to her. The thing that she said was that, “When I first met you, I hated you. I didn’t want you here. I didn’t think that you had anything to offer me. I thought some of the things that you said were rubbish.” This is not a direct quote, but …
(42:10):
And she said, “When I met you,” this is a direct quote, “my heart was broken. There was no light at the end of the tunnel for me.” She said, “Now I’ve had so many aha moments, and I realised the things that I hated, that happened to me as a child, I had repeated, but I just didn’t realise that.” She said, “Now there’s nothing but light at the end of that tunnel for me.”
Alicia Ranford (Host) (42:42):
Isn’t that beautiful? Thank you for sharing that with us. Thank you so much to both of you for joining us today. It has been such a beautiful insight for our listeners about the effects of stigma and shame and what they can have on children and families who are navigating child protection. You’ve also provided some really wonderful ways that we can support those who may be feeling the effects of stigma and shame. So thank you for joining us today.
Kathy (Guest) (43:11):
Thank you.
Sam (Guest) (43:11):
Thank you.
Alicia Ranford (Host) (43:13):
And thank you to our listeners for joining us. If you would like to keep up to date with our latest conversations, we’d love it if you like and subscribe to our Emerging Minds Families Podcast channel. You can also find us on Instagram, @emergingmindsau, or on Facebook at Emerging Minds Families.
(43:30):
You have been listening to Emerging Minds Families Podcast. If anything spoken about in today’s episode has been distressing for you or you find yourself struggling, please reach out for help. You can call Lifeline on 13-11-14 or we’ll have more resources for support in our show notes.
Narrator (43:49):
Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au/families for a wide range of free information and resources to help support child and family mental health. Emerging Minds leads the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health.
(44:05):
The National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.