Dr Kathomi Gatwiri

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.

This project listened to 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 young people in resi care to learn to trust people and to feel safe.
This document provides a brief summary of the insights shared by young people 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.

This report offers a summary of Phase I of a research project funded by the Australian Research Council through a DECRA Fellowship. The research locates belonging and dignity as social justice and human rights issues that are central to how well we live with ourselves and how we live with others. Specifically, this project surfaced how experiences of negative racialisation result in loss of dignity. Here, the concepts of dignity and racism are linked together to extrapolate how racialised experiences of humiliation, dehumanisation, devaluation, and minority stress result in diminished self-esteem, self-love, and self-image- and, consequently, fractured belonging.

In their landmark research, Elias and Paradies (2016) showed that race-based exclusion cost the Australian economy “an estimated $44.9 billion, or 3.6% of GDP, each year in the decade from 2001-11.” Their research documented how many years of healthy working life are lost due to the mental and physical health implications of racial stress resulting from what I refer to as compounding experiences of racial indignity. When people live their lives with a compromised sense of dignity, there are symbolic, social, material, economic and political consequences.

The research utilises the experiences of one of Australia’s most systemically disadvantaged migrant groups to explore 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 racialised within colonial modernities. To grapple with this contradiction, this research 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.

It is possible for people to be “included” and yet still feel like they do not belong (Anderson et al., 2019; Gatwiri and Anderson, 2020). To date, there is a lack of consistent understanding within policy and public discourse in Australia about what belonging truly entails. In consideration of the experiences of marginalised groups, references to belonging are often synonymised with ideas of inclusion, social cohesion, and community harmony. Belonging, however, is an enmeshment of multiple factors, including structural positioning (citizenship, agency and identity) as well as emotion (safety, ease). It is the intersection between the structural and the emotional dimensions that foster the right to be.

Australian studies have shown consistently that despite the strong emphasis on “celebrating diversity” and “inclusion” in Australia, those who occupy marginal identities have narratives of ‘outsiderness’ that are interwoven through their daily existence. This suggests that while the law can legislate for inclusion, the law is not equipped to help people feel belonging because belonging is not just a matter of including other people’s differences but rather a “more powerful force than any [diversity and inclusion] strategy could ever be” (Sands, 2019: np). It is within this context that this research attempts to isolate the what and the how of felt belonging is produced or facilitated.

The research particularly focuses on the connection between belonging and dignity, bringing to an academic context a phenomenon I was observing in my clinical practice. When clients came to seek my support in a therapeutic context, the majority of people spoke about racism first and foremost as a form of indignity rather than as a trauma event. The trauma aspect was brought about if the indignities were ongoing, chronic and unresolved. At that time, I began to troll the internet looking for literature discussing the explicit interrelationship between dignity and race- or more aptly, dignity and racism. There was none. The literature that I accessed on disability and dignity and also aging and dignity was a good starting place.

This research attempted to uncover the indignities that Black people experienced and how they got in the way of belonging- or even more profoundly, feeling human. It is the first research in Australia to theorise the intersection between race and dignity. The people I interviewed for this research confirmed that dignity in Australia is a racialised phenomenon. Many stated that it is everyday experiences of indignities, which they believe were amplified by their Africanness and their Blackness, that got in the way of feeling safe, feeling settled and feeling like they belong.

The research undertakes Australia’s first in-depth inquiry into experiences of racial dignity and belonging, employing African-centered methodologies and theories. The analysis of the data demonstrates how racial dignity is operationalised through four primary concepts: (i) humanisation, (ii) everyday relational practices, (iii) sociocultural experience, and (iv) self-determination. Collectively, these concepts, discussed in my published article “Racial Dignity Framework: Advancing dignity-led thinking and practice in Australia” elucidate how persistent and cumulative experiences of racial indignity serve to diminish, devalue, and dehumanise racially minoritised/marginalised people.

From this research, a ‘best practice’ framework has been developed for practitioners who work predominantly with racialised communities and human services, with a view to minimising experiences of social, cultural and economic dislocation and disadvantage. The framework produced from this research can be expanded to most disciplines, including social work, health studies, education, and law. The framework itself can be used to consider and theorise the experiences of almost every marginalised group. The practice framework profoundly enhances our ability to critically understand and address the factors that enable and constrain social cohesion and, consequently, belonging. The framework is significant for policymakers, educators, organisations and practitioners working with members of marginalised communities who are working towards a more racially equitable and socially cohesive Australia.

Racial dignity is the metaphorical garment that clothes us. Without Dignity, our humanity is rendered vulnerable, weak or loose.

This report summarises the findings of phase 2 of a research project funded by the Australian Research Council through a DECRA Fellowship. Phase 2 focused on developing, piloting, and refining the Racial Dignity and Racial Indignity Framework as a practice tool to identify the micro-practices of racial indignity and support the affirmation of racial dignity in everyday organisational life. Building on the findings from Phase 1, this phase aimed to operationalise the core concepts of racial dignity by partnering with community and human service organisations across Australia. Through a participatory and Afrocentric approach, the research explored how micro-practices, that is, small, everyday actions and relational dynamics, can affirm or deny dignity in various institutional settings. By trialling the framework in real-world contexts, Phase 2 generated practical insights and evidence-informed strategies to support organisations, practitioners, and policymakers in fostering cultures of care, recognition, and respect for racially minoritised people.

This research builds upon the insights, perspectives, and lived experiences of one of Australia’s most systemically disadvantaged migrant communities to examine a fundamental contradiction embedded in Australian society and institutions. Participant reflections in Phase 1, show how the prevalent use of diversity language in Australian organizations, which profess to welcome, value, and include everyone regardless of race, stands in opposition to the lived experiences of racialized people who are routinely excluded, devalued, and denied dignity in these environments.  To critically engage with this contradiction, the study proposes the concept of racial dignity, which elucidates how race operates as a fundamental determinant of who is automatically afforded dignity and who must persistently earn, defend, or fight to reclaim it in everyday organizational life. By positioning dignity as central to the genuine attainment of inclusion, this research offers a deeper understanding of how racially minoritised communities cultivate dignity in institutions where it is largely defined and granted through Eurocentric norms.

In Phase 2, the Racial Dignity and Racial Indignity Frameworks were piloted in organizations that had committed to developing racial literacy to work safely with minoritized and marginalised people and communities. This pilot phase allowed the research to examine how dignity was affirmed or denied in practice. The resulting findings offered crucial insights into the possibilities and challenges within organizational settings and provided evidence-based guidance for integrating dignity-centered micro-practices.

Young people in residential care face major challenges that can prevent them from forming healthy relationships and a strong personal identity, which are critical building blocks for their wellbeing and safety. For the first time in a large-scale mixed-methods study, we are listening to young people living in therapeutic residential care, staff and managers across NSW about current practice and how it can be improved. This project aims to understand the practices that help young people living in therapeutic residential care to form strong, healthy relationships and have a positive self-identity.

This document provides a brief summary of the findings from Phase 1 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.

The study is being undertaken by an expert team led by Associate Professor Lynne McPherson working with Professor Anne Graham, A/Prof Kathomi Gatwiri, Dr Antonia Canosa and Dr Kylie Day at the Centre for Children and Young People at Southern Cross University. They are joined by leading international researchers Associate Professor Tim Moore (ACU), Dr Donnah Anderson (Charles Sturt University), Professor Robbie Gilligan (Trinity College, IRL), Dr Joe Tucci & Adjunct Associate Professor Janise Mitchell (Centre for Excellence in Therapeutic Care) and Professor Stuart Barlo (Gnibi College, SCU).

The significance of sibling relationships for children and young people in out-of-home care is well documented by national and international scholars (Luu, Conley Wright, & Cashmore, 2020). These relationships offer an opportunity for children to experience relational permanence (Mitchell, Tucci, & Macnamara, 2020) when they cannot live at home. The sibling relationship may be one of the only lasting connections that children and young people in out-of-home care have access to, in light of what is known about instability and disruption in placements (McPherson, Gatwiri, Macnamara, Mitchell, & Tucci, 2018).

This research brief will:
examine what we know about sibling placement in Australia
present highlights from the international research on siblings
explore findings about ways to support siblings in out-of-home care
apply a trauma lens to placement decision making
consider research and practice implications.

The negative impacts of vicarious trauma extend to high staff turnover, which further exacerbates the sense of instability and having a lack of ‘trusting relationships’ experienced by the young people in care (Strolin-Goltzman et al 2010). This brief is focused on what is known about the factors that both worsen and reduce the risk of vicarious trauma and like conditions for those in the child welfare field. It has a particular focus on self-care strategies.

As far back as 2002 in the creation of the Catalyst Program, Mitchell and colleagues developed what was seen as Australia’s first therapeutic foster care program and one of a handful of pioneering programs internationally (Mitchell, 2009; Mitchell, McPherson and Gatwiri, 2020; Porges, 2020; McPherson, Gatwiri, Tucci, Mitchell and Macnamara, 2018). Building on this earlier work, and in the most comprehensive effort to date, Mitchell, Tucci and Macnamara (2020) have proposed a framework of common principles that underpin the emerging paradigm of Therapeutic Care. They argue that the following 12 principles are as relevant to therapeutic approaches to foster care as they are to therapeutic approaches to kinship and adoptive care.