Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T01:07:55.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The need for a community-led, holistic service response to Aboriginal young people with cognitive disability in remote areas: a case study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2020

Ruth McCausland Open the ORCID record for Ruth McCausland [Opens in a new window]  and
Leanne Dowse Open the ORCID record for Leanne Dowse [Opens in a new window]
Ruth McCausland*
Affiliation:
School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Leanne Dowse
Affiliation:
School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia
*
Author for correspondence: Ruth McCausland, Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

There are multiple structural and practical barriers to Aboriginal young people with cognitive disability in remote areas receiving the support and services they need. Multidisciplinary mixed-methods research over the past decade has provided evidence of the ways that many such young people end up with complex support needs and being ‘managed’ by police and justice agencies in the absence of appropriate early intervention, transition support and community-based options. This article presents and synthesises knowledge generated by this body of work and contextualises it within the experiences and trajectory of a young Aboriginal woman with cognitive disability and complex support needs from a remote town. This case study is drawn from a New South Wales linked administrative dataset containing data from health, housing, disability, human services, police, legal, court and justice agencies on a cohort of people who have been incarcerated. The article draws out key principles and strategies to suggest what a community-led, holistic service response could have looked like for Casey.

Keywords

disabilityIndigenous researchsocial servicesyouth justicecase study
Type
Articles
Information
Children Australia , Volume 45 , Special Issue 4: Special Issue: Poverty and Child Abuse , December 2020 , pp. 326 - 334
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors confirm that this article is an original work that has not been submitted to nor published elsewhere.

References

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). (2020). Youth detention population in Australia 2019. Canberra: AIHW.Google Scholar
Avery, S. (2018). Culture is inclusion: A narrative of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability. First Peoples Disability Network Australia, Sydney.Google Scholar
Baldry, E., Dowse, L., McCausland, R., & Clarence, M. (2012). Lifecourse institutional costs of homelessness for vulnerable groups, Report to the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. Australian Government.Google Scholar
Baldry, E., & Dowse, L. (2013). Compounding mental and cognitive disability and disadvantage: Police as care managers. In Chappell, D (Ed.) Policing and the mentally ill: international perspectives. CRC Press: 219–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldry, E., Dowse, L. & Xu, H. (2013). People with mental and cognitive disabilities: Pathways into prison, background paper: People with mental health disorders and cognitive disability in the criminal justice system. UNSW.Google Scholar
Baldry, E., McCausland, R., Dowse, L., & McEntyre, E. (2015). A predictable and preventable path: Report on the Indigenous Australians with mental health disorders and cognitive disability in the criminal justice system (IAMHDCD) Project. UNSW.Google Scholar
Bamblett, M., Long, M., Frederico, M., & Salamone, C. (2014). Building an Aboriginal cultural model of therapeutic residential care: The experience of the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency. Children Australia, 39(4), 206–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bower, C., Watkins, R. E., Mutch, R. C., et al. (2018). Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and youth justice: A prevalence study among young people sentenced to detention in Western Australia. BMJ Open, e019605. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2017-019605 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Campbell, M. A., Hunt, J., Scrimgeour, D. J., Davey, M., & Jones, V. (2017). Contribution of Aboriginal community controlled health services to improving Aboriginal health: An evidence review. Australian Health Review, 42(2), 218–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dew, A., & McEntyre, E. (2017). Safeguarding conversations in planning: Aboriginal disability planning in Walgett report. UNSW Sydney.Google Scholar
Dew, A., McEntyre, E., & Vaughan, P. (2019). Taking the research journey together: The insider and outsider experiences of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 20(1), Article 18.Google Scholar
Dharriwaa Elders Group (DEG) (2020). Elders knowing & showing. https://www.dharriwaaeldersgroup.org.au/ Google Scholar
Dowse, L., Cumming, T.M., Strnadová, I., Lee, J.S., & Trofimovs, J. (2014). Young people with complex needs in the criminal justice system. Research and Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 1(2), 174–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellem, K., Baidawi, S., Dowse, L., & Smith, L. (2019). Services to young people with complex support needs in rural and regional Australia: Beyond a metro-centric response. Children and Youth Services Review, 99, 97–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellem, K., Smith, L., Baidawi, S., McGee, A., & Dowse, L. (2020). Transcending the professional-client divide: Supporting young people with complex support needs through transitions. Child and Adolescent Social Work. doi: 10.1007/s10560-020-00651-x CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
FPDN (First Peoples Disability Network Australia) (2018). Ten priorities to address disability inequity in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities for the National Disability Strategy and National Disability Insurance Scheme. https://fpdn.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/FPDN-ten-priorities-2018.pdf Google Scholar
Gilroy, J., Dew, A., Lincoln, M., Ryall, L., Jensen, H., Taylor, K., Barton, R., McCrae, K., & Flood, V. (2018). Indigenous persons with disability in remote Australia: Research methodology and Indigenous community control. Disability and Society, 33(7), 1025–1045.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network and Juvenile Justice NSW (2017). 2015 young people in custody health survey: Full report. Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network. http://www.juvenile.justice.nsw.gov.au/Documents/2015%20YPICHS.pdf Google Scholar
Lowitja Institute. (2015). Family wellbeing – Using an empowerment approach to achieve closing the gap targets. Policy brief. https://www.lowitja.org.au/content/Document/FWB-Policy-Brief.pdf Google Scholar
McCausland, R. (2018). Yuwaya Ngarra-li youth justice forum report. https://dharriwaaeldersgroup.org.au/images/downloads/Walgett-Youth-Justice-Forum-Report-June18.pdf Google Scholar
McCausland, R., Baldry, E., Dowse, L., & Reeve, R. (forthcoming). The economic costs to government of people with mental and cognitive disability being managed by criminal justice agencies.Google Scholar
McCausland, R., Baldry, E., Johnson, S., & Cohen, A. (2013). People with mental health disorders and cognitive disability in the criminal justice system: Cost benefit analysis of early support and diversion. Report for the Australian Human Rights Commission. August.Google Scholar
McCausland, R., & Baldry, E. (2017). ‘I feel like I failed him by ringing the police’: Criminalising disability in Australia. Punishment and Society, 19(3), 290–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCausland, R., Reeve, R., & Gooding, P. (2019). The economic case for improving legal outcomes for accused persons with cognitive disability: An Australian study. International Journal of Law in Context, 15, 367–389.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation (NACCHO). (2020). Submission in response to the Productivity Commission draft report – Mental health inquiry. https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/252128/sub1226-mental-health.pdf Google Scholar
McCausland, R., Spencer, W., MacGillivray, P., Robinson, V., Hickey, V., McEntyre, E., & Baldry, E. (forthcoming). ‘Yuwaya Ngarra-li: A community-led partnership with a university’.Google Scholar
Panaretto, K. S., Wenitong, M., Button, S., & Ring, I. T. (2014). Aboriginal community controlled health services: Leading the way in primary care’. Medical Journal of Australia, 200(11), 649–652.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reeve, R., & McCausland, R. (2019). Calculating the criminal justice, health and human services costs for the MHDCD Databank: updated method.Google Scholar
Reeve, R., McCausland, R., Dowse, L., & Trofimovs, J. (2017). Economic evaluation of criminal justice support network. Intellectual disability behaviour Support program. UNSW Sydney. Google Scholar
Smith, L., & Dowse, L. (2018). Complexity and disability: Drawing from a complexity approach to think through disability at the intersections. In Kent, M., Ellis, K., Roberson, R., & Garland-Thomson, R., Interdisciplinary approaches to disability: Looking towards the future (pp. 123–130) Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, L., & Dowse, L. (2019). Times during transition for young people with complex support needs: Entangled critical moments, static liminal periods and contingent meaning making times. Journal of Youth Studies, 22(10), 1327–1344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, J., & Allan, J. (2012). Building relationships with Aboriginal people: A cultural mapping toolbox. Australian Social Work, 66(1), 118–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yuwaya Ngarra-li (2018). Walgett action plan for children and young people. https://dharriwaaeldersgroup.org.au/images/downloads/Walgett-Action-Plan-for-Children-and-Young-People-June18.pdf Google Scholar
Walgett Aboriginal Medical Services (WAMS). http://walgettams.com.au/ Google Scholar