SAANZ Conference 2024

Chair: Donna Baines

Liz Beddoe, Eileen Joy, Laura Chubb and George Guild
Delusions of neutrality: “Abortion should be illegal (but I am) non-judgemental despite disagreeing with the decision”

Social workers represent diverse identities, values, and beliefs, playing a critical role in helping service users to obtain information and resources needed to make important life decisions including those pertaining to abortion. Abortion is considered by many to be a controversial issue however social work scholarship in recent years has focused on positioning abortion rights as essential to reducing health inequalities.
In Aotearoa, New Zealand abortion has been decriminalised and our study sought to explore social workers’ knowledge and beliefs about the legislative change and how they manage their responses when supporting people who are considering terminating a pregnancy.

This presentation will draw on a qualitative survey that explored the thoughts, beliefs, and the meaning-making that social workers engage in when they consider abortion in their professional practice, following changes to the abortion law in Aotearoa New Zealand. The survey was completed by 122 participants with 14,000 words in open responses related to abortion. These data were explored within a reproductive justice theoretical framework using thematic analysis. While reported views varied from strongly anti-abortion to strongly pro-choice many social workers noted a clash between personal and professional values in relation to abortion. Generally, regardless of their stated personal positions participants called on professional ethical principles such as self-determination, neutrality and being non-judgemental to reconcile any tensions. Our findings suggest that social workers would benefit from more learning opportunities focused on the development of a more nuanced understanding of reproductive justice in order to be able to position abortion as health care.


Eileen Joy and Suzette Jackson
Patriarchal motherhood discourses in social worker talk about mothers who use substances

Patriarchal motherhood discourses affect all women (even those who choose not to mother) by comparing them to an often impossible and idealised version of mothering. Patriarchal motherhood discourses represent an essentialised version of mothering, one which is deeply gendered and perpetuates inequality..

The presentation draws from a doctoral study that included interviews with child protection social workers (n=24) in Aotearoa. Critical discourse analysis was used to see how social workers upheld and/or resisted notions of patriarchal motherhood when talking about their work with mothers who use substances – mothers who are considered by many to be among the most deviant. Findings suggest that social workers predominantly used patriarchal discourses to position their practice as child-centric while leaving the mother with little support. Some practitioners resisted these discourses by articulating narratives including a more structural and intersectional analysis. These findings suggest that social workers need to think differently about motherhood and mothering through adopting a matricentric, intersectional and decolonised approach to their work with all mothers. This work includes recognising broader family networks and intergenerational oppressions in the lives of mothers who use substances.


Natalie Femia
Social justice as sustainability: A post-structural critique of 'burnout' in social work.

In the current context of biomedical neoliberalism, to be a social worker in the mental health field is to be constrained by paradigms of individualism, hyper-managerialism, professionalism, pathologisation, and structural inequities. Inability to be complicit with these constraints can be pathologised as ‘burnout’. Drawing on preliminary findings from qualitative interviews and arts-based body-mapping, this research critically explores the concept of ‘burnout’ in this work, and suggests a complex relationship between perceptions and experiences of ‘burnout’ and the aforementioned constraints. These findings further suggest that this relationship is mediated by close or distant social work values and ethics, and whether people (‘clients’) are positioned through relationality or othering. This research demonstrates hopeful possibilities for strengthening values and ethics of social justice in particular as a method for resisting current constraints, sustaining social workers, and prioritising relationality and solidarity with people (‘clients’).

Chair: Shayne Walker

Donna Baines and Bindi Bennett
Rankings, Ruling and Reproducing Inequities: Critiquing the Knowledge Production of Social Work’s “Top 100 Scholars”

Reflecting on an article authored by Hodge and Turner (2022) that ranks the “top” 100 social work scholars, this paper presents a multi-layered critique of the tradition of using bibliometrics to generate “knowledge” and competitive global rankings of individual social work faculty members, departments and universities. We raise concerns regarding the transformation of neoliberal metrics into social work research questions and projects, and then solidified into competitive, martketised knowledge about social work and its scholars. We argue that through this process, inequity and neoliberalism are normalized and legitimized and we are further distanced from social justice, decolonisation, and equity. Drawing on the literature, we show that racism, colonialism, classism, sexism and geographic inequity are reproduced by the article and the pursuit of these kinds of competitive rankings. The paper concludes by suggesting alternative assessments grounded in community participation and social justice, and aimed at expanding equity and social justice.

Emily Keddell, Shayne Walker, Andrew Rudolph
Protecting whakapapa: collaboration, power and prevention in initial child protection decision-making.

Acknowledgement: We acknowledge Tai Timu, Tai Pari as joint partners in this project, particularly William Kaipo, Jonette Chapman, Jude Hughes, Dave Ashby and Karen Hale.

Within report-investigate child protection institutional structures, decisions are made by state child protection workers about reports that are made to them by other professionals and citizens. Initial decisions have significant consequences, as they can result in protection for children and increased coordination of support services, as well as intrusive, stressful and harmful interventions. They are also the entry point for the start of inequities within the system most notably for Māori. The harm of unwarranted removals, as part of colonial impositions and assimilationist processes are well documented. One consequence of the institutionalisation of statutory child protection systems in colonised countries is that power, decision-making, processes and what is considered relevant knowledge have traditionally been defined and controlled by the state. De-centralising decision-making, a key aim of both statutory and Māori agencies in the reforms of 2019 – 2023 in Aotearoa New Zealand, aims to help address inequities for Maori, reduce care entry, and improve prevention service access. This talk describes an evaluation research project of a de-centralised decision-making triage
process, which operates collaboratively between Oranga Tamariki (state child protection) and community-based social workers from a range of Māori organisations led by Tai Timu, Tai Pari. The aims of the research are to understand the barriers and enablers of this new form of decision -making according to key participants. Of particular interest is its e]ects on power dynamics, the co-construction of risk, and access to supports. This talk will describe the process of building a research partnership between university and community organisations, the methods used, and emerging findings.


Shayne Walker, Lashana Lewis, Natalie Paki Paki, Paula Toko King, Hunia Te Urukaitia Mackay
He aha te korero o to puku!

What wells up from your belly, how do you ‘go with your knowing’ in the child protection process with tamariki, rangatahi and whānau Māori. This presentation is the result of a three year research project with Te Hou Ora Whānau Support Services Otepoti (THO) that examined the key practice elements in indigenous led child protection processes with tamariki, rangatahi and whānau. The outcomes are five pou – the “foundational underpinnings of both good practice and good partnerships” and seven takepū - the “preferred ways, fashioned by Māori thinking and rationale, of engaging with others” (Pohatu, 2013, p. 13). Kaimahi, various community and NGO stakeholders, rangatahi and whanau provided thier stories, dreams and pūkōrero (well-informed, speaking with authority, articulate) regarding ‘what worked’ and ‘what doesen’t’ work for them. These ways of thinking, behaving and acting form the core of practice in THO a kaupapa Maori organisation that has been operating for over 40years. Their aim is to have transformative relationships that result in tangible and real rangatiratanga for those they work with. They can do what they like with 7AA in Wellington but the waka has already sailed Māori and their allies know and can evidence what works!