Dr Kathomi Gatwiri

Background: First Nations children and young people are disproportionately represented in residential care in Australia. This overrepresentation is a direct consequence of the enduring legacy of colonialism and assimilation policies that have fractured Indigenous families and communities.
Objective: This article examines the lived experiences of First Nations young people living in Therapeutic Residential Care (TRC) settings, exploring what supports their wellbeing and what constrains it.
Participants: Sixteen First Nations young people aged 12–18 living in TRC settings across New South Wales, Australia.
Methods: Using thematic analysis informed by Critical Race Theory, the study privileges the voices of young people, positioning them as knowledge-holders whose insights are too often marginalised or excluded from policy discourse.
Results: Participants identified key enablers of wellbeing, including relational stability, cultural affirmation, and opportunities for autonomy and growth. Constraints included frequent relocations, disempowering routines, fractured identity, and cultural disconnection. Themes of systemic racism and the need for cultural safety emerged strongly. Young people articulated both what the system must stop doing (e.g., disempowering practices) and what it must do more of (e.g., honoring relationships, embedding cultural safety, and enabling agency).
Conclusions: The study highlights the urgent need for structural reform in TRC, grounded in Indigenous perspectives and relational accountability. Elevating the lived expertise of First Nations young people is essential to creating culturally safe, empowering care environments.

This project helps young people who live in homes with youth workers because they’ve had tough times with their families or foster carers. These homes are called ‘therapeutic residential care’ or ‘resi care’ for short. The researchers wanted to know what makes it easier or harder for these young people to learn to trust people and to feel safe.
This document provides a brief summary of the findings from Phases 2 and 3 of this research project funded by the Australian Research Council (LP210100177) and the Centre for Excellence in Therapeutic Care (CETC), a division of the Australian Childhood Foundation.

Background: Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a concerning social and public health problem, however there is limited knowledge around the practices and responses that best support safe disclosures of CSA from the perspective of victim survivors and practitioners.
Objective: The study explored practices and responses that enable or hinder disclosures of CSA, in order to enhance service system responses.
Participants: Fifty-one adult victims of CSA and twenty-three practitioners supporting victim survivors in Australia.
Methods: Online in-depth interviews with survivors and Yarning sessions with practitioners were conducted between March and July 2024. The data analysis was informed by the Theory of Practice Architectures to explore the practices and responses that enable or hinder disclosures of CSA.
Results: Only a small number of victim survivors (n = 8) had safe adults to whom they could disclose the abuse they experienced during childhood. Even in these cases responses to their disclosures were reported to be inadequate. Most participants had to disclose multiple times, in different forms, over their life course to be heard and for their disclosures to be acted upon. Findings highlight promising practices that help disclosures and what needs to change to support children's safety.
Conclusions: Current Australian child protection practices may assume that children have a safe non-offending parent to disclose to. Our research shows that a deeper understanding of CSA is required, which privileges the voices and lived experiences of victim survivors to inform contemporary practice frameworks underpinning practitioner responses.

Background: First Nations children and young people are disproportionately represented in residential care in Australia. This overrepresentation is a direct consequence of the enduring legacy of colonialism and assimilation policies that have fractured Indigenous families and communities.
Objective: This article examines the lived experiences of First Nations young people living in Therapeutic Residential Care (TRC) settings, exploring what supports their wellbeing and what constrains it.
Participants: Sixteen First Nations young people aged 12–18 living in TRC settings across New South Wales, Australia.
Methods: Using thematic analysis informed by Critical Race Theory, the study privileges the voices of young people, positioning them as knowledge-holders whose insights are too often marginalised or excluded from policy discourse.
Results: Participants identified key enablers of wellbeing, including relational stability, cultural affirmation, and opportunities for autonomy and growth. Constraints included frequent relocations, disempowering routines, fractured identity, and cultural disconnection. Themes of systemic racism and the need for cultural safety emerged strongly. Young people articulated both what the system must stop doing (e.g., disempowering practices) and what it must do more of (e.g., honoring relationships, embedding cultural safety, and enabling agency).
Conclusions: The study highlights the urgent need for structural reform in TRC, grounded in Indigenous perspectives and relational accountability. Elevating the lived expertise of First Nations young people is essential to creating culturally safe, empowering care environments.

This study explores the role of relationships in therapeutic residential care (TRC) for young people in Australia, applying Honneth's Recognition Theory and Social Capital Theory. Through in-depth interviews with 38 young participants, the research identified key relational practices that promote safety, wellbeing, and self-worth. Young people valued workers who built trust, engaged with their families, and respected their autonomy. The paper utilises Recognition Theory to understand these findings and advocates for intentional, relationship-based practices that encourage young people to form meaningful connections within and outside of care, contributing to improved outcomes in residential care settings.

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights Charter recognizes that all human beings have ‘inherent dignity’; they are ‘born free and have equal and inalienable rights’ (Universal Declaration of Human Rights Charter, 1948). This article explores an important contradiction: the idea that all people possess equal, inherent dignity versus the reality that race, a social construct, creates categories that assign unequal worth to those who are racialized within colonial modernities. To grapple with this contradiction, this article introduces the concept of Racial Dignity, which demonstrates how race profoundly shapes who is afforded dignity as a given and who must struggle for it. The Racial Dignity Framework (RDF) functions as both a theoretical lens and a practical approach to analyse how racialized experiences of exclusion and (non)belonging impact a person’s sense of worth. Drawing from critical theories and, in particular, Jacobsen's conceptualization of bodily dignity, the RDF is operationalized through an examination of how dignity is fostered or undermined through micro-practices of i) humanization, ii) affirming everyday relational practices, iii) sociocultural experiences, and iv) self-determination.

Background: The health of African migrants in Australia is a largely under-researched topic despite the steadily increasing size of the population and its uniqueness. In particular, few studies have explored the mental health of African migrants in Australia or their utilization of mental health services.

Aims: This study explored the barriers to mental health help-seeking among first-generation African migrants in Australia.

Methods: In this qualitative study conducted using the hermeneutical phenomenological research approach, the purposive sampling method was used to recruit participants. In-depth interviews with participants were undertaken online via Zoom, Teams, and WhatsApp calls. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, utilizing a thematic analysis as the primary data analysis method.

Results: African migrants were more inclined to seek support for mental health conditions from religious figures such as priests instead of seeking professional help. Religion and poor knowledge about mental illness were highlighted as barriers to mental health help-seeking. Participants also considered cultural beliefs, fear of stigma as well as the high cost of healthcare in Australia as significant barriers to mental health help-seeking among African migrants.

Conclusions: Findings reinforce the critical need for culturally competent mental health services tailored to the beliefs, values, religion, and experiences of African and other migrant communities in Australia. Given the strong attachment of many African migrants in Australia to their cultural and religious beliefs, such services are essential for practical support and intervention.

Therapeutic residential care (TRC) is a mode of delivering out-of-home care (OOHC) that can help meet the needs of some of Australia's most vulnerable young people and their families. TRC programmes aim to support young people to develop positive relationship experiences in a safe and stable environment. Given that TRC is a relatively new model of intervention, to date, the alignment between its aspirational aims and the existing and evolving policy environment in which it is located has not been analysed in any depth. This paper reports on a national policy analysis exploring how TRC is constructed in policy documents. One hundred and thirty-two relevant policy documents were analysed to identify the practices and the conditions that facilitate the development of relationships and connections. The aims of the policies underpinning TRC were consistent with the literature outlining promising trauma-informed approaches. Findings show how the policies support the development of beneficial relationships for children and young people; however, there were also several discrepancies and silences identified, including a limited conceptualisation of children's participation.

Despite its widespread use for quality assurance within the academic publishing economy, the peer review process is significantly flawed, and to a large extent, “broken.” Emerging literature from researchers who work from marginalized cultural, theoretical, and political perspectives shows that while peer review processes are useful in upholding academic ethics and rigor, they can also be biased and exclusionary. This has led to vexing questions about how peer review processes function to discipline and police dissenting knowledges. The findings and reflections presented here are based on data collected from in‐depth interviews with 23 early‐career to senior‐level self‐ identified racially and culturally minoritized (RACM) academics across a range of disciplines from 14 different Australian universities. The paper challenges the Eurocentric logic of the peer review system, arguing that it functions to maintain the status quo through valorization of Western ways of “knowing.” The data interpretation paints a picture of participant conversations about the impact of mean or destructive feedback, which is normalized within the current peer review model. The findings indicate that marginalized and minoritized researchers navigate the politics of peer review in diverse ways, ranging from conforming to resisting, and developing strategies to work around the rigid norms of this billion‐dollar industry, all while striving to maintain the integrity of their research.

The human rights challenges faced by Queer youth in out-of-home care (OOHC), such as foster and residential care, have largely been overlooked in child protection research, policy, and practice development. This systematic scoping review aims to identify and synthesize the existing international, English-language, empirical research documenting the human rights challenges experienced by Queer youth in OOHC systems. This review followed the Joanna Briggs Institute methodological guidance for scoping reviews. Seven electronic databases were searched to locate relevant articles, including Academic Search Premier, APA PsycInfo, CINAHL, MEDLINE, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Initially, 1,384 studies were identified, with 50 meeting the inclusion criteria for the review. Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis was used to synthesize the data and identify key themes. The five core themes identified were as follows: (a) sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression (SOGIE)-based rejection and harm before entering OOHC, (b) SOGIE-based discrimination and harm in OOHC, (c) structural disadvantage and exclusion, (d) mental health and social well-being disparities, and (e) social and relational issues. There are considerable gaps in the published research documenting the human rights experiences of Queer youth in OOHC systems outside of the United States. Heterocisnormative child protection ideologies and systemic issues, including constraints limiting SOGIE data acquisition, work to oppress Queer youth in OOHC, diminishing the quality of their care experience. These structural and systemic issues are the catalysts for SOGIE-based discrimination and harm experienced by Queer youth in care.