John Lawrence first compiled the original national history of social work in Australia in the 1960s. Lawrence focused on the history of social work education, medical social work, and the evolution of AASW. According to Lawrence (2016), social workers began their training in the 1920s with US influence, with many early social workers acquiring education from US higher learning institutions.
Since the early 1880s, the Australian social debate surrounded two issues; women’s access to political and social power and the right to fair wages. The debates ushered in a novel era for Australian philanthropy and charity. Early 1900s developments such as the working-class movement had an outlasting impact upon provisions for those who were susceptible to material distress.
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Up until the 1920s, Australia’s history of health and welfare services had not been documented sufficiently. History of the nations’ social welfare guidelines and services focused on equality in economic growth, social impacts of industrialization and the sturdy of labor movements industrially (Lawrence, 2016). By the end of the 1920s, government social policy focused on achieving minimum material standards of well-being emphasized on the working conditions and wages in place of social services.
Most institutions that offer community services are not for profit. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, approximately 600,000 classified agencies have been categorized as non-profit. They enjoy a peculiar status under tax law, exclusion under some privileges of anti-discrimination policies, management comprising of volunteers, and various legal structures.
There are distinct ways of classifying these institutions. Some features distinguish them, such as; considering people as raw material, having blurred objectives such as helping people devoid specific target entities, moral ambiguities, and different methods of delivering services (Yeheskel, 1983).
Most workers specialize in a specific area of work under the following categorization; mental health, juvenile justice, child protection, and the health sector (Chenoweth & McAuliffe, 2015). Human service workers play different roles depending on three factors; the specific ambitions of the helper, the educational level of the helper and the particular job at hand (Alle-Corlis, 2016). Human service workers share the goal of serving people’s needs.
Organizations and community work
Community service work is often regarded in terms of the organizational context (Hawkins & Williams, 2011). The organizational contexts frame how employees operate and the repercussions of their efforts on disadvantaged service users who rely on the organization providing aid. It is vital to explore the nature of community services thoroughly. While it is important to discern the legal status of an agency, monitoring it from a sociological context would aid in creating an outlook on how to structure community organization.
A community organization may be categorizing by the type of service it offers. For instance, IWGIA is a non-profit organization that develops its own mission and vision statements and has participants who are accountable to their management hierarchies. The Indigenous Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) is a global human rights organization devoted to promoting, protecting, and defending the rights of Aboriginal people. Since 1968, the organization has collaborated with indigenous organizations and international firms to facilitate the acknowledgment and establishment of the rights of indigenous people. IWGIA seeks to emancipate individuals via capacity development, documentation, and support on local, regional and international levels. Their mission is to pursue a world where the voice of the Aboriginal people are heeded, and their rights are implemented (Dahl, 2009).
IWGIA originally focused on indigenous people in Asia and Latin America from the early 1990s and commenced working with Indigenous people in Africa and Russia. It achieved Observer NGO status at the UN and employed this opportunity to expand Aboriginal community organizations’ reach. IWGIA recently engaged forty-two strategic and project partners with thirty-one projects across the globe (Rohr, 2014).
The Australian Healthcare Landscape
The Australian health landscape has four vital tiers. The first tier is profound and entails antecedents of health and other demographic variables, including employment, education, family, income, and rural and remote Aboriginal Australians. The second tier involves the promotion of health and circumvention of diseases (Chenoweth, & McAuliffe, 2015). This involves physical activity, immunization, illegal substance abuse, cancer screening, and mental health.
The third tier is standard health and community care, such as aged care, dental practice, allied health, and general health practice. The final tier is minor and is featured by specialist care such as residential care, local hospital networks, and public and private hospitals. In the annex, some variables contribute to the health landscape. One vital factor is the impacts of people’s health, opportunities, and challenges (consumer and clinician expectation), supporting policies and infrastructure and funding.
The Australian health landscape is amalgamated and mildly sophisticated, with a significant number of private and public stakeholders (Australian health framework, 2012). The system enjoys federal public funding and delivery framework supported by private expenditure. The federal system has three tiers, requiring state, local, and federal governments’ extensive participation.
Role and Value of policies
Policy-making is a political process that requires the participation of stakeholders such as state and federal governments. It is framed by their ideologies, availability of resources and social issues. Conversely, policy implementation involves putting its policy practice to deliver planned programs and services.
IWGIA has a Privacy Policy that applies to all information provided by members/contributors through their role as a user of their services. The policy provisions include visiting their website and receiving their newsletter. This policy allows visitors to read more about the data they collect, and how they process the user’s data and the period, the data is stored. IWGIA also has a zero-tolerance policy on corruption and mismanagement of funds. The policy is vivid in its assertion that no officer shall benefit from illegal practices such as inducements or rewards concerning tendering, award of the agreements, or execution of the agreements.
Advocacy of IWGIA
Global Governance
IWGIA endorses the Aboriginal people’s access and profiting from both local and regional human rights systems and its universal agendas. Much has been accomplished by indigenous peoples since they began advocating for their right to engage in international decision-making processes. Internationally, they have risen in the UN system implementation of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations in 1984. However, more still needs to be done.
Land Rights
The loss of land and natural resources undermines many indigenous peoples. It undermines the sociocultural cohesion, economic security, and human dignity of indigenous people across the world. Indigenous people share connectedness with nature as their identity is rooted in their land. Losing it is losing their identity (Hall, & Patrinos, 2012). IWGIA has always supported resistance against land grabbing for the exploitation of minerals, oil extraction, deforestation, and developing national parks and infrastructure.
IWGIA advocates for securing land rights and empowers indigenous people to operationalize territorial self-governance. By mobilizing and organizing themselves, indigenous people protect their boundaries from the influx of armed settlers, businesses, and other entities. Their resistance has often been answered by brutality and sometimes murder. Land grabbing leads to evictions and human rights abuse (Dahl, 2009).
IWGIA uses its assets and income strictly to the conduct of its charitable activities. Officials must apply all income and assets in compliance with its statutory aim (Mikkelsen, 2015). IWGIA policy amendments can be made after a written submission to the Board a month before the Board meeting and gaining support of two-thirds of the Board. The new statutes ought to be approved by the members in writing, as well.
Common Barriers and Opportunity to Service Delivery
Human service workers, especially rural practitioners, experience personal barriers. The experience racial discrimination, which often impacts the quality of service delivery due to tension, which can be attributed to several reasons including; distance, isolation from services and cultural events, lack of anonymity, and family matters related to his isolation (Alston, 2009). The challenge makes attracting and retaining rural practitioners difficult.
The second barrier is the lack of anonymity. Human service workers often feel intimidated by the idea of attending social functions with racist people, although restricted by their code of ethics from revealing the reality of the situation. Being safe and secure in a minute community is often difficult, especially when workers need to leave their work stations to socialise (Alston, 2009, pp. 85).
Opportunities
Alston (2009) maintains that distance and isolation can open up the opportunity to engage in innovative practice. Concerning professional isolation, human service workers have the chance to work in inter-and trans-disciplinary teams, partnering and developing initiatives for the people they serve. Thus, they are likely to enhance their capacity to engage with colleagues, resulting in reduced racial barriers in rural and remote areas and enhance the cultural capacity to deliver services.
Cultural education is another opportunity, vital in reducing symbolic violence engulfed in racism or lack of anonymity. Engagement with various partners helps develop a broader systemic anti-racist program focused on eliminating impacts of ideological features of racism on health care operations. It aids in the planning and implementation of education and training in culturally acceptable practice in health service delivery (Roufeil & Battye, 2008). Developing synergies between health services, academia, and rural communities can increase knowledge and attitudes of health providers, policy systems for culturally appropriate healthcare, and anti-racism.
The capacity to engage in oral and written content
Community service workers need to obtain information from people who may not be willing to disclose it. A social worker needs oral and nonverbal skills to know how to ask the right question while modifying the language appropriately in context (Harms, 2007). They need alternate tactics for acquiring information.
A practice framework involves knowing how social structures are generated, maintained, and that of individual behavior. Orally, they ought to discern and synthesize conceptual frameworks to explain and work effectively within social structures. The ability to engage in written content is known as reflexive practice. Unlike oral communication, writing allows self-assessment and reflection with a degree of objectivity.
References
Alle-Corliss, L. & Alle-Corliss, R. (2006). Human service agencies: An orientation to fieldwork (2nd ed.). Belmont, Ca.: Thomas Learning. pp. 1-13
Alston, M. (2009). Innovative human services practice: Australia's changing landscape . Macmillan Education AU.
Australian Community Workers Association (ACWA) (2014). Who is a community worker? (accessed 21-02-2014)
Chenoweth, L. & McAuliffe, D. (2015). The road to social work & human service practice (4th ed.). Melbourne: Cengage Learning.
Dahl, J. (2009). IWGIA: a history (No. 125). IWGIA.
Hall, G. H., & Patrinos, H. A. (Eds.). (2012). Indigenous peoples, poverty, and development . Cambridge University Press
Harms, L. (2007). Working with people: Communication skills for reflective practice. Sth Melbourne: Oxford University Press. (pp. 11-25).
International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA). Retrieved from https://www.iwgia.org/en/
Lawrence, R. J. (2016). Professional social work in Australia . ANU Press.
Liddell, M. (2003). Developing human services organisations . Pearson Education: Frenchs Forest, NSW.
McDonald, C., Craik, C., Hawkins, L. & Williams, J. (2011). Professional practice in human service organisations . Crow’s Nest: Allen & Unwin.
Mikkelsen, C. (Ed.). (2015). The Indigenous World 2015 (pp. 218-232). Copenhagen, Denmark: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA).
Productivity Commission (2010). Contribution of the Not-for-Profit Sector (January 29, 2010). Productivity Commission 2010 Research Report. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1586630
Rohr, J. (2014). IWGIA Report 18: Indigenous Peoples in the Russian Federation. Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs .
Zon, A, Lindeman, M., Williams, A., Hayes, C., Ross, D. & Furber, M. (2004). Cultural safety in child protection: Application to the work environment and case work practice. Australian Social Work, 57 (3): 288-298.
