 Before we go any further, I want to acknowledge Country, I'd like to pay my respects to our Elders past and present and to the amazing leaders who are emerging today. I am on a Warwickle Country today in Toronto, so I pay deep respects to the Elders that are here as well as my own family on Camilloroy Country. Simon and Ruth are here today to share with you a bit about the practice framework from Camilloroy's home. There's been amazing thinking that's gone into this deep wisdom and lived experience that have come from many of the uncles at the boys' home, and so this is a really special moment to celebrate their work, but to also learn and hear from Ruth and Simon and Tiff around how this could be implemented into practice. So please feel free to put questions in the chat. I'm going to do my best to go between questions we've already got, questions in the chat, so if I miss anything, chuck your hand up. We really want to open this up to be a really bright and lively conversation, so jump in at any time. It's not a problem at all. But first of all, just Ruth, Simon, did you have anything before we go into a little bit of background about you guys? All good? Fabulous. Now, I hate doing this part because I'm going to read, and it sounds really awful, but anyway, here we go. So for those of you who might not already know Simon, he's a Bungalow man with many years experience working with Aboriginal people and communities, particularly in service and program development. Simon is skilled in evaluation and policy development and analysis and program management, and he's widely acknowledged for his ability to bring Aboriginal perspectives to these spaces. He has led major change initiatives across housing, health, mental health, community and family services sectors. In 2019, he was awarded the evaluation, Australasian Evaluation Society's Award for Excellence in Indigenous Evaluation, and then again in 2021, he won the AES Award for Enhancing the Social Good. Simon is committed to realizing self-determination for Aboriginal people and addressing the effects of trauma. Obviously, why you're such a specialist in this piece, Simon. And then Tiff, who isn't here yet, but you'll get to learn all about her, Tiffany McComsey completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester in 2012. She examined Aboriginal community development practices in Redstone from 2005 to 2007. Tiff is a passionate community advocate, and he's a member of the Executive Committee of Just Reinvesting South Wales. She's the CEO of the Conchilla Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation, which supports survivors of the Conchilla Boys Home Training Home. Their descendants and families, she spent a very decade working and conducting research with Aboriginal community members and organizations, primarily in Sydney, inner city Sydney, in the communities of Redfern and Waterloo. Tiffany was the inaugural coordinator of Just Reinvesting South Wales and sits on the Indigenous Issues Committee of the New South Wales Law Society. Wow. How impressive. And then definitely not least, but we have Ruth McCawson. So, Ruth is an Associate Professor in Research and Evaluation and the Director of Yarowai Narrowly. Ruth, have I got that right? Thank you. It's a partnership between UNSW and the Yarowai Elders Group in Walgert that grew from research collaboration on the incarceration of Aboriginal people with mental health and cognitive disability. A non-Indigenous researcher and evaluator, Ruth has worked for over 25 years in the fields of criminology, human rights and community development. Her research focuses on systemic and community-led responses to criminalization and incarceration. Ruth is on the New South Wales Committee of the Australian Evaluation Society and Chair of the Board of the Community Restorative Centre. Nice. Does anyone have any questions before we jump into a little bit more about the practice framework? So now that you know a little bit more about Simon, Ruth and Tiff, we're going to come into the part of why we're here today. And that's to learn a little bit more about the Conchilla Boys Home Aboriginal Corporations Practice Framework. Simon's going to provide a few slides about the practice framework. So just give you a chance, Simon, to get your slides up. Yep. So it's great to see such a good turnout today. And I also wanted to acknowledge that I'm on Gadigal land of the Eora Nation, and I wanted to pay my respects to Elders Past Present and Emerging and to all other Aboriginal people here at our presentation today. And just want to let everyone know Tiffany's joined us. So she's in the room with us, which is exciting. I'm just going to try and get up my slide. I'm not doing death by PowerPoint, I promise, but I just wanted to give you just a little spin through what the practice framework is. Hopefully everyone can see that now. So I just wanted to lead you through our KBH practice framework that we did with KBH. So done my acknowledgement, but I also wanted to acknowledge that all of the artwork that describes the healing journey and the practice framework was done by Jeremy Warrell, a Gumaro man, and seriously go and check his workout. It's wonderful. So I just wanted to share with you what a practice framework was. So essentially, a practice framework is a foundational document that brings together research, practice, theories and principles, knowledge and experience in a concise, convenient format to inform and support a service, its staff in their everyday work. So in designing such a document, a really from from our perspective anyway, all practice frameworks you design should really speak to the subject area and speak in such a way that it speaks to the service users and all of the staff who are going to use it because if you don't design it that way, people won't engage with it and they won't use it. So the practice framework that we did captures the KBH's unique approach to working with survivors, their descendants, families and other program participants. And what it importantly does provides a foundation for all practice programs and outcomes they're trying to achieve. And like as I outlined before, it brings together theory and practice and outlines of way of working all in one document. Now I've lost my little lost my mover. So we like to view a practice framework as like a recipe. So it brings together theory, research, cultural knowledge, experience and practice. And we think of practice frameworks as recipes. So not not every cook is going to end up with the same result. But it provides you with the same foundational ingredients. It guides people in their work. And what it does is that you can bring your own touch to the work. But it should really all taste like KBHAC. So everyone's going to do it slightly differently. And I think that's where a lot of the magic gets created. Now where's my next slide? I've lost one. So the the five ingredients of the KBH framework is that it sets out a vision of how they work. It talks about and embeds their values into practice. And it informs how they work with survivors, descendants and their families. And it has focus areas in it that describe the core ways of working with survivors, descendants and families. And where the real big innovation for this particular practice framework came into play was all of the describing the healing journey, work of coming into contact with KBHAC and the magic that they achieved there. And what what we've got up here for you is the diagram of all the healing journey. So you can see them around there. So it all starts with contact. Then we go into the connect face support yarn. And the kind of middle stage speaks to to growing in your own understanding of your history, your trauma, and connecting to the healing journey. KBHAC always view within this journey that they always stay with the survivors, descendants and family. And and they stay there and hold trauma in like a holding place for them. And they never leave them on the journey. So no matter where they're at, they're always with them. What you see up on the screen also is the KBH visions, values, practice principles, how they work, what the focus areas are. And a lot of this journey is really achieved through doing individual healing work, group healing, advocacy and legacy. So the three really fit together which which kind of not only is about the healing journey, but for people to heal, there also needs to be a legacy created. A lot of the legacy work that gets created is through the phenomenal work that KBH and the uncles do through their advocacy at national, state levels, and through a lot of community mechanisms and forums. So I just wanted to speak just briefly about the healing journey. So, so where we actually started off for those who have seen a copy of the document, like this was an iterative project, where we actually started with that front end of the document, which has got, you know, all the kind of best practice stuff about trauma informed practice, and also contains a kind of vision and values in the journey. But the healing journey was the second stage that we did, which was, which was year two. And we worked with Tiffany and the agency and the uncles to work out, how will we articulate this journey? Like it's such a complex one. And it's a journey that actually goes forward and backward, all depending on where people are at for their healing. So what we, the healing journey itself encourages empathy by placing the reader in the shoes of survivors, descendants and their families at each stage. And it links the experience of survivors, descendants and their families to the behaviors and skills of the KBH workers. So in in setting out to develop, so it's just giving you a bit of a bit of a look at what each one of the journeys looks like. So what we've done is trying to get this picture out of the way. What we actually did and where where we believed the innovation came in for this piece of work was we did an empathy mapping process where we use male and female stick figures that we put up on the wall and we had workers and survivors and descendants in the room with us. And we actually took it from a perspective to say we don't want to know the bits of casework you do. We don't want to know all the elements of a particular plan you might do with somebody. We want to get to the essence of what it really feels like for survivors and descendants to be at these particular stages. So we actually did it in rounds and it was over many workshops where we took each stage and we actually said to Uncle Witty who was one of the key people along with Leslie and other workers in the agency. So what do you commonly hear from a survivor when they reach out to you at the contact stage? And we really wanted to get down to the the depth of feeling of what they might be feeling, what somebody might observe. So we use this framework of C which is survivors, descendants and program participants. What are the kind of things you'll see here? So you know common common things there that people experience are you know like what am I doing here? Can you help me? I want to know more about my story. You might be wondering if you can trust us and I hope I don't have to tell my story more than once. And in that contact stage then it goes into the kind of the the worker behaviors. So you know really common things that you will hear are you know we'll make time to get to know you and understand how we can support you. We will welcome you each time we see you. We will always hold this space open for you and your family and we will take the time. And we in that last column we did a little bit of do which kind of speaks to some of the behaviors that you'll want to see in the space. You know like listening actively and attentively warm open welcome body language. Understanding that people will be angry at that stage and that that anger is actually not about you. It's actually about their experience that they've had. The KBH model is all about holding people in a safe trauma space for them to experience where they're at to be able to go through the different stages. So with that empathy process we did we did we got the uncles to put themselves in the place of the workers and we did the reverse. And we did that kind of in grounds around the room. And then as we developed each journey we actually we we spoke about it together to see and feel how it resonated. Because in this particular space when you're working in the kind of survivor space a lot of it is about having genuine empathy. People genuinely understanding that you feel and get their trauma like you will never experience what they went through but you can work in such a way that you can create a healing space through your behaviors. So so we had quite a lot of fun in the empathy mapping process by getting them to put each other in each other's shoes. That's how we ended up coming up with the journeys. We've only kind of spun you through a little bit of one journey but there are five journeys that we did. And yeah it was it's a once in lifetime opportunity that we had to do this kind of work. And just wondering if Tiffany is there and might want to also speak on some of the work that we did together and what it maybe yeah whatever you want to say Tiffany if you're there. Thanks Simon. Good to see you. I'd also like to start by acknowledging country and I'm here on Gadigal land and also pay my respects and moments silent that we do for stolen generation survivors who are no longer with us but whose spirits drive us forward. Thank you. The uncles like to say moment instead of minute acknowledging their different concepts and structures of time and we're not we're not on a minute's silence ever. The practice framework was really special for us. I think just taking a step back this organization was established in 2002 by the survivors of Kinchela Boy's home and it was really a time when you had the bringing them home report had come out. There was a lot of activism and conversations happening about survivors needs reparations and it was the brotherhood that had the uncles survive Kinchela Boy's home when they were in there and it was that brotherhood that they took with them out into the world after they left Kinchela Boy's home. Sadly some of those legacies were so terrifying and tragic that too many of the uncles passed very early in life in the 20s and 30s but the other brothers were able to get through adulthood and in 2002 said you know as brothers we know what we went through and we know how to support each other and we need something that looks after us and also looks after our families. So the strong vision was always there from when this was set up trying to then get government to understand why they should fund an organization like this was unfortunately another long journey that still continues but really OATSE at the time recognized that the bringing them home counseling model was never going to work for these uncles and what you needed was a collective healing model that understood the strength of peer support, survivor led support that was always going to be a source of healing for the uncles and so that funding came through in 2010 so already there was a gap of when uncles started to connect and have a vision for something and then when it was realized so we've sort of been playing catch up ever since then and that was a funded position in 2010 fast forward to where we are and all of a sudden resources were coming into the organization but we had such an organic way of doing what we did it was really hard to explain why this was working and so we got fortunately to be part of a pilot that allowed us to actually work with ARTD and when you find the right person and the right consultants you know you want to make this work and we were fortunate enough to after we developed a program logic to come into this space to create a practice framework and part of why that's been important for where we are now is for an organic organization when you sort of start to spread out and do a lot of different things you know when something doesn't feel right and for us we took the path to become an NDIS registered provider and that meant a lot of new people who weren't necessarily connected to why we existed in the first place and what the uncle's journeys were about so making this practice framework has actually strengthened the survivor led vision and model that we have created and that healing journey like Simon said we hold trauma and we hold a place of belonging trust and home for survivors and descendants who have never felt that in their own lives and we're creating a community that's both fixed in one place but also extends to lots of different geographic communities but if an uncle's survivor a descendant family member contacts KBHAC they know that they belong and by being able to use this as a guide for anyone who works or volunteers or consultants with us of how they need to be in the space in order to really align with survivors and their families this tool is really important and it's I think a testament to being able to work with anyone who's experienced trauma beyond just stolen generation survivors because the conversation that we had internally with Simon and his team in how do we embed this in our own practices what people bring to an organization like ours through their own lived experience in most cases we have Aboriginal team members some who have stolen generations legacies and their families others who don't but who bring other community and family histories to this place and the work that they do it touches everyone and so I think that's the power of what we've created it's an interesting space that is is sort of unique I would say to stolen generation survivors but also speaks to the historic trauma that transcends all Aboriginal communities we're constantly moving and living in the past but carrying something forward and it's legacy making and it's future making and we have conversations that will take us and the uncles back in time to when they were in that institution and when we go to where that site is looking at that and you see a place of pain and horror that the uncles want to transform into a place of truth telling and healing and so if you don't have the right tools in order to help facilitate a journey that for many starts in silence but then leads to someone like our chairperson Uncle Whitty who hugs everyone as part of his healing but who will talk you through what healing is which for him is restoring a family structure if the organization can do that we've succeeded by holding a place for survivors to work in their own time through that healing journey and it's different stages so I'll stop rambling. No that was wonderful things so much Steve and I'm sure that everyone's got lots of questions but I would like you to hold just for a moment if you were just mentioning tools and I think that's a perfect segue to you very to talk about your project and the work around developing some tools for people to think about what does this look like would you like to expand a bit more on that. Thanks Sky and thanks so much Simon and Tiffany I'd like to acknowledge I'm joining from Gadigal country and paying my respects to Elders Past and Present here and on all of the unceded lands that you're all joining from acknowledging Simon and Tiffany that extraordinary work that you've just outlined which really I think answers the research questions I suppose that I was looking into a few years ago which I will briefly talk about today which as Sky mentioned some of that was designed to kind of have a practical orientation because while I'm a researcher also worked as an evaluator and a lot of researchers do but don't necessarily then think about the theoretical and conceptual and value-based questions that are raised by being involved in evaluation and that was sort of the starting point for me in this study that I wanted to talk about that I did over a number of years which was really based on having worked in the sector but also hearing from a lot of people about the frustrations and the limitations and a bit of the devastation I suppose about the way that evaluation is seen as a means to build an evidence base and secure funding and I think your points Tiffany and Simon about thinking around how you demonstrate value and impact to government of something that you know at such a deep core level is absolutely what's needed and driven by miscastal and generation survivors and bringing together that the kind of government criteria around what it sees as kind of rigor and evidence and value versus what communities really are leading and building and seeing community controlled organizations talk about what's needed and the disconnect between that. So this the research that I did really was before the more recent work by the Productivity Commission into Indigenous Evaluation. There had been a number of the Australian National Audit Office and early days the Productivity Commission saying there's all of this money that on paper is going to Indigenous programs. We don't see that being translated into addressing that was the closing the gap paradigm really thinking about addressing Indigenous disadvantage and so there's been a lot of work that's happened at the Commonwealth Government level since then but I think this research which was published in the Evaluation Journal of Australia a couple of years ago now really was seeking to and I will try and share my screen of my PowerPoint that is far less colorful than your Simon but which just sort of sets out a little bit of the detail around the research questions that I set out to investigate through qualitative research which was really interviewing you know mostly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were working at a ministerial level or a senior public service level evaluators they were many people involved in the day-to-day practice of that work and it was really looking at these research questions here and so I guess one of the things I was wanting to investigate with that was you know let's actually learn from people working in the practice of this work and so I was nodding you know Simon as you and Tiffany were talking a lot because obviously you know that the kind of detail of the practice work is where the magic happens you know it's where the meaning of the value of this kind of work so I set up an ethics advisory group of you know Aboriginal people working in this area and did a whole lot of policy analysis some interviews and then developed some case studies including of evaluations that I'd been part of you know and I think we're going to explore this a bit later but the particular role and responsibility of non-Aboriginal people working in Indigenous Evaluation I think is a really critical one for those of us working in this area to interrogate and reflect on regularly and the focus I suppose around this is around these two the findings I'm talking about really briefly today and just really want to focus on some of the key quotes from this but the article that the link was sent around to has got a lot more detail but as I said you know people who are really working in the day-to-day basis around the practice of this work so I've kind of got the themes of the findings and then a key quote so this is one which was really about that question of the conflicting kind of priorities or motivations or measures of progress and definitions of success that often exist between Aboriginal communities and organisations and government in funding this and this one was a pretty extraordinary quote from a very senior Indigenous public servant who kind of talked about having a we had a bundle of money to work in one community after about 12 months we hadn't spent much the minister called me over and asked what's happening no one really treated these people meaning people in the community in which this man had been working with a number of his team not only treated them with respect and genuinely wanted their input what we were doing was building the capacity of people to start genuinely making decisions in their community and he being the minister said well that's nice but I'm going out there with a journal in a couple of weeks and I'm sorry but I can't take a phone call of someone's capacity being built right we're kind of talking about I mean it's a kind of one example he gave but it really you know shows just how the detail of the gap between the way that programs get funded and the expectations often really unrealistic expectations around what a small program funding is able to deliver on and that question about you know what kind of gets measured or gets recognized in that process another key finding was around the lack of appropriate and effective evaluation models and practices in indigenous policy and this was a very poignant one for those of us who work in criminal justice evaluation this is a particularly you know kind of pointed one around randomized controlled trials often put up as the gold standard for evaluation it's just not appropriate when you're looking at complex lives I think at a commonwealth level a lot of people are still unable to make that distinction and you know we've seen that most recently the productivity commission in their recent most latest investigation which is into prisons and really that what they kind of say is well there's not good evidence about what works in reducing incarceration levels what they mean is there isn't certain kinds of evidence so there's not you know but the kind of population level impacts that aren't realistic or reasonable things to ask of small place-based programs in particular and so I think there's some really you know important questions about what gets considered to be good evidence that's rigorous and even how realistic or reasonable that is I think that's Greg on a phone call in the background there we can mute him we can pin him but not mute him he's the host or carry on one of the other findings I suppose was around how politicized and constrained evaluations become and selectively reported and I'm sure there's no one on this call that hasn't observed an example of that in practice there was one evaluation consultant who I did a really great interview with who was talking about being engaged as an independent monitor of a consultation process and this was welfare policy related in indigenous affairs so what we've been measuring is very defined around this kind of evaluation of the process that would then be reported in a different context to say consultations followed the very parameters within which we may be able to measure something be very defined so they had a checklist of whether certain things had happened and they might have happened but that didn't necessarily influence the quality of the consultations and you often see those those sorts of very narrow constraints around the way that evaluations conducted and then government using that to say that was a good process it was fine and everybody was happy with that so the kind of misrepresentation often of evaluation methodology and fine things another key finding and this will be a really interesting one to explore a bit more later if there's others who are interested in this work which is around often you see that kind of divide so you see evaluators who will say I'm a quant person and others who'll be a qual person and I guess what a lot of interviews that I undertook as part of this particularly for people working inside government were saying that's really unhelpful like actually what we need is a combination or in fact we need what's relevant to the program at hand or the work at hand and this was a really lovely quote from someone who was talking about the qualitative research around capturing the stories so saying and they've been brought in at the end of the process which of course is really common in evaluation funding capturing the stories we were managing to get a glimpse of coming in after programs had been running for such a long time if programs were able to capture stories from day one the impact of that qualitative evidence would be much greater because it had been collected throughout the course of the program that can actually help form an evidence base that people would possibly pay more credits to then an independent evaluator coming in so there's some obvious tools and examples here that Simon and Tiffany's work speaks really closely to and I know Skywork you've been involved with just two which is actually how do you embed evaluative capacity and thinking within organizations and from the outset and you know whether you call it co-design whether it's developmental evaluation whether it's just properly resourced community led evaluation it's exactly the kind of thing which is needed and a find all kind of area of finding was a political leader who talked about the decontextualization of evaluation being a real problem and saying we need to look at program evaluation that takes into account broader policy context and broader parameters within that you have to really to unpack really entrench structural barriers like cost shifting between states and federal governments the problem of siloing and a whole range of impacts on these sorts of areas that never come into the equation there needs to be a way to look at the policy context and I interviewed a number of people working in implementing programs who's evaluating the government's response who's evaluating their capacity to engage with communities who's evaluating the whole policy paradigm not just individual programs and who sets the terms of evaluations and what questions to get answered about the value of the program was a key thing and this was a really poignant point from someone who'd spent decades working within government really trying to affect change from the inside talking about evaluation really just as another mechanism of control this is a person deeply demoralized by what they'd seen and they could say you see it in the way that medical services Aboriginal medical services are under so much scrutiny which manifests itself in accountability regime so people are spending you know this is off the side from the quote but saying people organization spending all of their time meeting these kind of often really arbitrary targets and reporting requirements for their funders this person said well it's about mismanagement of risk the government is trying to manage the risk of black fellas wasting money the black fellas are trying to manage the risk of dying early there's no relationship between the risks that's got to be managed that is such a devastating and poignant quote of the different stakes and that concept of risk in the funding of programs and their evaluation so what's needed people were really clear and strong around this and so much of what was described you can see in the work that um that Simon and Tiffany already described they're talking about community control which is not just advisory committees and saying what should happen is the community or the organization or the group they should actually devise the priorities and the targets and the aims and then go to government with that for funding and then government should provide the funding the people on the ground do the work and it's they who should engage the evaluators totally independently so that things can be evaluated in that way another core area that um people identified as needed that I spoke to was um capacity building and resourcing for data gathering and analysis evaluative practice and reporting and those questions of indigenous data sovereignty that we're all really keen to hear more from Sky on a bit later but she's insisting that she's going to be asking those questions back of us we'll have to keep going around in a circle but she's a great um expert in this area around actually what's kind of needed around accountability and advocacy in this area and this one consultant who'd worked on a lot of indigenous programs said what all of the programs we looked at lacked was ongoing internal monitoring and the capacity internally within the programs to do that we thought that was an area where organizations had broader systems funded to do that that would help keep them on track and constantly reflecting on their practice rather than having independent evaluators coming in afterwards so actually the expertise and the knowledge within the organization is enhanced by that reflective and evaluative capacity internally to do that work and those embedded models of evaluation I think are some really fantastic tools that have emerged in the time since this research happened um what's needed so this was a really clear one from many of the people interviewed around realistic time frames um and appropriate metrics based on the funding available including positive measures of culture, community and well-being not just the deficit models where the only metric of success around say the overcoming indigenous disadvantage framework is indigenous people to be at the same kind of meet the same metric as non-original people not distinct measures of well-being or culture or value um and this was a really poignant quote from one program manager working in the youth justice program said I recall when the minister came out and did community consultations for Aboriginal affairs the community consult that I went to we were talking to him about how the government should change what they measure I guess the data outputs instead of are we meeting certain benchmarks maybe they need to look at what the real benchmarks are at a real grassroots level and that is engaging in services kids go to school families staying together seeking medical support for illnesses and conditions that sort of stuff that's probably the million dollar question how do we evaluate the success of someone not having contact with the justice system someone not reoffending and just very and finally um around um what people talked about as being needed was around indigenous centered and land evaluation and this was a clear um statement from an indigenous researcher who does a lot of work in the human rights and evaluation areas said we've got to keep using our declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples that should be framing and is a good way to talk about evaluation what are the key things that should be part of a human rights approach to evaluation indigenous identity is really critical indigenous education health and self determination and the community needs to be part of that policy space so on that I will stop sharing and hand back to you sky thanks so much Ruth that was wonderful and I guess you guys can see the two parts that are coming together here one is the practice framework and then how do we embed this kind of approach and thinking and practice within to like within everyday standard service delivery but then also our own practice as individual people working within organizations or as consultants and practitioners who might come in and out of spaces so we've got a number of questions that have already been submitted and I've seen a couple coming up here so I'm going to selfishly start with my own and then we can go from there so the question that I had and this is this is for all of you I was really I love the practice framework I sat with it for probably a couple of hours I emailed someone was like this is so good I'm going to get a cup of tea I'm going to sit down and I really did sit with it and I kind of kept thinking wow this is such a kind of guide for how how do I act when I go into places what is it that I need to do in everyday life in moments of work and how could this be useful for other organizations who might not even be working in the same space so and if you kind of touched on this before that it was actually that it has a broader use and I was keen to hear more from for all of you actually around what are the things that are really pretty cool that you would like people to take from the framework and then what does it what does it take you know what are the core bits great question so say for me like KBA JC and the uncles always had a vision of the healing journey like I kind of feel like in a lot of ways we were facilitators in the space to capture the journey but but for me and Tiffany and I have had multiple discussions on the framework like I can see for me I can see how worlds created from this framework I can see service systems redesigned I can see policy and program reshaped there's a lot of work that's still to go into it like Tiffany and I and KBH have been absorbed in the work but like you could create policies programs systems service redesign by looking at this framework this is a framework that we've kind of described is really the uncle's gift to the trauma community and the broader community so there's for me and Tiffany and I the agency are embarking on the next pieces of work but there's so much that can be created out of out of this framework but I actually think the applicability to the broader trauma community is immense I think also the way we worked and the methods in which we worked via the empathy mapping process could be replicated for other survivors and others who have experienced trauma in its many faces to capture meaningfully what the experiences like for them like it could be anything it could be could be breast cancer it could be those that have experienced child abuse the for me the thing I learned from KBH and the uncles as well is it's about you you can genuinely do this work when when you understand and accept your stepping into their lives so what they allowed us to do and it's a rare privilege was to be a part of their lives on the journey and I think by continuing to grow with the agency and the uncles there's so much more we can create and contribute to the community I know that was a long ramble but that was kind of my take on that Tiffany over to you you know I think sometimes we get these gifts at just the right time and in sort of preparing for today a conversation I had with Simon was you know we have all of these big policy things happening and I think about conversations around closing the gap or indigenous data sovereignty none of those spaces are actually including the voices or focusing on stolen generation survivors and the legacy of those removals and what that has meant for their descendants and families and the space of being between communities that too many survivors and descendants live in and if this practice framework and its focus on healing is connected to conversations around closing gaps and intergenerational social and emotional well-being or intergenerational wealth creation or intergenerational healing then you need survivors at the heart of that and here in New South Wales it's really an interesting time because for so long stolen generations except for the bringing them home report haven't featured in policy all of a sudden in 2016 the New South Wales government committed to a reparations package and now you have this stolen generations advisory committee which is recognizing that survivor led organizations are unique and it's the survivor led journey that needs to be understood in order to have reparations that are going to have an impact but that's one amazing journey that's working in some ways still very challenging but that's separate to closing the gap and so if you have a department of premier and cabinet who's also making commitments where you're not having survivors as part of the conversation of what are these areas that are important survivors and descendants are overrepresented in justice in out of home care but no policies and or researchers are looking at unique family healing models to address those particular legacies how is that going to help close the gap so I think if we can get behind what this practice framework can do and yes it speaks to so many other trauma communities I think what's really beautiful is we had a transgender man come to our service because he wanted to access the NDIS and in that journey we were able to understand his own childhood experience of institutionalization and abuse that had happened and his whole comment was I walked through your door and I felt safe and I felt understood and no one knew his his experience but it was a feeling that he got from team members who just welcomed him as we would a survivor thank you so much Jeff I think you've raised some really important factors here around the the work and the way that people are in their in their job and the environment that you've created at the boys home and I'm wondering if that speaks to me around what is the role of different people in different parts of the work sorry what do you think like the core kind of responsibilities and roles are for people who are playing different roles within the healing process but also within the evaluation process within the policy sector like what are the core roles or practices that people should take forward in that space I feel pretty privileged in the work that I've been doing in KBHAC and I think some of it is replicable and some of it isn't if you're able to be part of an organization that's just growing and and developing as an organization I think you're in a really good position to start that documentation process of what is this that people are collaborating on to set up and establish and what are the visions that are going into the specific programs or the outcomes that they want to achieve and being able to constantly reflect that back to the group as they're on that journey and so when I first came to this organization like I said we just got funding basically um six months before I started to volunteer so everything was all of a sudden let's restart this process of healing um that had been neglected for a very long time and in when we got to work with Simon and ARTD it was acknowledging we've just gone through this whole growth that some uncles and families are feeling connected to and others are going where is our belonging where has that gone and so to bring the skills of Simon and his team to actually show us what we were doing and what aligned with this survivor-led vision and practice was really useful to us and those empathy maps it was actually the experience of going out of your own shoes and into the shoes of another person that you remembered what we were doing or where we had sort of gone a little bit astray and how do you get that back and so for us a lot of people more recently have started to work in our organization or access services in our organization who weren't part of that initial period so to have a tool like this they're constantly being brought into the family so to speak and I think for an evaluator or for we're constantly having to talk to government about the survivor-led way it's taking that well first you need to be able to listen you need to be able to put away your expertise and actually just sit in a space and you'll probably feel disoriented but I think that commitment to doing evaluation the right way if you're committed to self-determination to indigenous sovereignty it's your learning and ability to reflect back that is also going to inform the experience and the outcomes I think for the evaluator because I think it's easy to write the reports but those reports are a moment in time that then need to be carried forward in actions that are actually going to achieve something it's so important sorry Simon I was just going to I was just going to add to that as well like through the work we're doing with KBHAC kind of we've we've done the work iteratively so we've developed our program logic together we've developed the outcomes framework we've got the practice framework in place now and our next our next two pieces of work are that we're going to work with the uncles to develop the king care king connect model so it'll be furthering bringing their voices to what practice should look like with the model and we're also developing the evaluation framework for all of KBH's work so we're we're we're viewing that the work we're doing is is about practice as survivor-led practice and combining it with the evaluative thinking so we're we're kind of taking it as this is a long-term relationship that we have and we want to continue growing together and we're we've formalized that through a partnership that expresses our connection with each other in the work but also I just want to share one other little vignette which speaks to some of what Tiffany was talking about I had the the rare privilege I think it was three weeks ago of actually getting to spend three days with the uncles at Southwest Rocks and and what I experience in being in the environment with the uncles is that it affords me a place as an Aboriginal man who has my own trauma story and it provides me with a space just to be which is a very rare opportunity that gets offered to somebody like me who's out there doing all the time but the space that Tiffany and the uncles afforded me was a rare opportunity just to be in a space for a change and by doing that you can actually you can grow you can experience your own cultural connection so that's that's the kind of rare stuff that gets offered with this partnership that we have and if I can just very much sorry if I could add to what Simon said and I guess that's this the longevity of a partnership that involves research and evaluation so we got to do this work with ART initially through funding from DCJ as part of a pilot program and I was so excited because when you come from an under-resourced organization and trying to constantly demonstrate what really is powerful work and you don't have a program logic you don't have a practice framework you're always on the back foot and so it was jumping at something that sort of knew what we were going to be in for but not really and the first one of the first meetings we had we just talked about each other's individual journeys and family and the shared journeys of pain and healing that each of us had in our own unique ways just created a different space of why do we want to work together and can we work together and you know everyone has deadlines so you sort of lose that but that sort of set the scene for the ability to actually step up at times to say this isn't working and I remember one time getting really frustrated at Simon and going you know fine just we'll do it this way but yes let's just get it done and he actually was like he heard what I was saying in an email and he just said you know let's meet what's going on and the ability to be honest like that and to I guess share feelings in what is sometimes not seen as a feeling filled evaluation environment is really important and so go with your intuition I think that's what this practice framework also invites people to do and you know I was going to joke around I came on here very nervous and I was going to go what we usually do is a check-in so one word say how you're feeling and some people are comfortable with that others aren't but I think that's this gift as well of what we've been doing with ARTD and I think if you can get funding for a longevity that's amazing because it is you know I've been with this organization for 10 years that's a decade and to see survivors who have passed too early who will never see what they started but to know that what we're doing and continue to do builds on that and to have the ARTD type person walking that journey with you is a once in a lifetime gift yeah I think you're spot on there Tiffany and for some organizations having someone like Simon and the team walk alongside of them is not necessarily a possibility because they might not have that funding but we've spoken a little bit so far around developmental evaluation co-design all those kinds of bits and pieces but Ruth you really touched on just embedding evaluative thinking and practice in your everyday way of working and I wonder if you've got some tips for those people who might be working in programs or organizations where they don't necessarily have the luxury to do all the principles and do the work right and have people like Simon beside them that's a great question sky I mean I acknowledge it's really challenging and you know what I've seen and the kind of partnership that I currently have the great privilege of being part of is between University of South Wales and the Darwa Elders Group in Walgate which really stemmed from research collaboration the first instance which was as as Sky mentioned in the introduction around the criminalization of Aboriginal people with disability so people ending up in prisons because of the failure of other services and support and we partnered with the Elders Group in you know out my colleagues Aboriginal women qualitative researchers who interviewed people and their families around their experience of being in custody partnered with the Elders Group who at that point I think similar to you Tiffany had kind of half a funded person but who at a very deep level were deeply committed to the issues and systemic solutions and were you know storytelling was part of their work like that data gathering you know it's it's not really something that has to exist as a new thing but only evaluators bring from the outside like there's so many organic practices that have great resonance in good evaluation which is that regular reflective work which is you know the kind of what we might call formerly community data gathering but which is the yarning or the storytelling that goes on documenting in different ways depending on different contexts and so there's a lot of that work that happens I think you know looking for partners like obviously as you said Tiffany that work with ARTD was resourced by DCJ increasingly philanthropic organizations are getting into the business of you know seeing the value of that kind of work so looking for partners but universities I would say too like you can often get students or others working in roles that are really happy to bring and learn from and listen to community controlled organizations or smaller programs people running smaller programs around that I think one of the things there's fashions around what government is keen to see around evaluative work and theories of change at the moment everybody around stopping about you know co-design and theory of change etc at its core level it's you know what you described Tiffany you are really clear about what the organization did and the value that it brought and finding partners or a language or a framework that resonate around that you know from my perspective really makes sense I mean I think for those of us you know communities do this work really well I think it's evaluators and those of us with training and power who are in the position to be engaging and negotiating with government are the ones that really need to step up because I think actually you know the way that contracts kind of get negotiated and the way that reports get kind of varied for those of us involved in this work like ensuring that the contracting regimes are genuinely fair that actually you know advocating for kind of evaluation reports to be public like not letting that go because you're worried about the relationship and what you're going to get future funding like being brave in that work and again I think particularly for non-indigenous evaluators and others coming from institutions of power big consultancies universities etc actually pushing back a little bit because we're seeing there's been a shift around you know kind of transparency around government contracting regimes and you can start to see how things that look like indigenous funding or indigenous programs are largely going to non-indigenous organizations or non-indigenous workers or you know certain things that are not really benefiting communities so asking important questions about that but also requiring transparency and accountability around evaluations that are done you know advocating for repositories where that information is made public like evaluations funded through public funds should be on the public record we should all be able to learn from those and organizations without a lot of resources shouldn't have nothing they should have access to the wealth of knowledge that exists around evaluation practice and frameworks tools around not just kind of conventional program logics but theory of change and thinking about impact and gathering that data and really determining the kind of parameters of that so I think that was a bit of a long um circular answered sky but I think it's you know I think it's a really important question I think we all have a role to play in thinking about building evaluative thinking and improving the structural drivers of the evaluation yeah absolutely and I think one of the things that you've raised there is indigenous data sovereignty and trying to find that balance between if community are already doing the story collecting it's happening naturally that truth-telling is just part of what is already going on how do we leverage that how do we amplify that rather than bringing in the evaluator that goes oh no now we need to shift it and change it for someone else so they can see what you're really doing so we're translating something when we just need to kind of get to the point of speaking the same language or valuing the language where things originated do you guys have anything that you want to touch on around that in terms of how that might have been experienced within either of your projects that you've done yeah um I probably do a just a broader comment that kind of sits across all of the practice that we do in ARTD which is I think you can achieve a lot for community voice if you're coming from the basis that all of your work is about self-determination and communities leading the space when you do work through true co-design with community it's not always that it's purest form of co-design as we would know it but I think it gets pretty close and I think for me it's always about um understanding the program environment and the contracts as Ruth was pointing out so all all of the work that we do whether it's through a big evaluation or through it's a capacity building project it's always about negotiating space with community and about them leading the way with the support from us as evaluation and capacity building partners at times so we we often do work where we get our community and orgs to negotiate the space around the terms of reference how they want to engage with government um and it's it's about us sticking true to Aboriginal cultural principles of how we work with our communities and being able to bring the lens of like I've worked in community services for like 20 years I'm well known and respected in that environment so it's often about bringing some of my old history and how I was viewed in the government world to bear on community leading the space so we develop program models with community we develop theories of change we develop whatever community wants to develop and and pretty much where there is facilitators but the end products are what community develop so if we as evaluators can work with communities in a way that it brings their community and cultural knowledge to the fore and they're seen as the leaders what it does then is put them in such a competitive position where they end up getting um greater funding more say in authority with government so quite often the work that we do is equipping community to put themselves forward saying we have the solutions we know what's going on here and and that often the best solutions are a cultural solution and it's a cultural solution to fit in with the program models and funding the gets given out so often I think that some of our most powerful work that we can do is by doing that kind of work that gets commending to the front so that's kind of my take on it just adding to what you both have said Simon and Ruth I think um and what you were sharing Ruth um it brings to mind just reinvest me south wales and they've created a justice reinvestment toolkit that's accessible on their website for communities to understand what is justice reinvestment and how they might apply it and do it in their local community and then reach out to them if they want additional support I think that's a great model and maybe that's something I guess could think about how do you create um community tools around evaluation that we could access um one thing is and everyone here would appreciate small organizations we are so time poor we don't have the opportunity to stop and reflect even on the same day um so trying to find a way whether it's researchers volunteers who can help sit in the organization to do some of this work with such toolkits um yeah I just wanted to add one last point which is as evaluators and and capacity building work um we should really be in there working with communities in a way that makes their life easier so it shouldn't be burdensome um we should be adding value and and navigating the space like never taking away cultural authority or agency um but like our team within ARTD um create spaces where we can make people's lives easier and I think that's one of the best ways you can actually offer value back is by doing that. That's some good points um so Tiff I'm just gonna pop the justice reinvestment toolkit in the chat here for anyone who might have some interest um and I also just wanted to note Kieran has shared the link uh for through the Truthtelling Museum and Healing Centre which people can give to so I encourage you to click on that link but we might also send that one out after as well um I think there's a couple other questions that have come in beforehand a lot of which we've touched on um but I'm wondering if I can open it up to to the audience and see if there's some unanswered questions that you might still be sitting with I'll um I'll let people keep pondering because I've kind of thrown that out a bit quick. Christine were you about to ask? Yeah listen it's it's really wonderful it this really helps us so much as a a non-indigenous organization that you know the YWCA we obviously I would say particularly in Darwin you know the majority of our clients are Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders and we are really striving to learn how to deliver the best services that we can because we're never going to be an Aboriginal organization and and we we really get that um I live for two and a half years on an Aboriginal community in West Arnhem and I learnt so much it was such a privilege and oh my god if everyone could do that the understanding of Aboriginal people would just explode. I guess for me you know we're working on an Aboriginal workforce development plan um we're working on co-design with our clients and I I absolutely get that Aboriginal-led organizations can often provide the best services but there's still going to be Aboriginal people that don't want that they want a non-Aboriginal organization so what else can we do because believe me we're we're I think doing everything that we can what else can we do to be as culturally safe and secure as we can um with at the moment minimal Aboriginal staff and believe me I'm really working hard on that um and just due to circumstances we've not got a lot of Aboriginal staff at the moment but trying to get Aboriginal staff up in the NT is really really hard any suggestions on how I really power through with this um did anyone want to respond to Christine's question like Christine I think um one of the first things I'd actually say is like as Aboriginal people we've got a right to use whichever organization we want to use yep um and that's going to be Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal for various reasons um and like I think there are all different ways um like like I would encourage you to see what's possible in terms of recruiting people from community into different roles um so I don't know it may not always be to um particular designated role titles but I think there's often ways you can involve community in the delivery of service um so that would be kind of some of the encouragement that I would give and I don't want if there is anyone else from Darwin up on here today because I would really love to be able to get together and and discuss this and you know I really move this forward I mean we've had our first COVID community community transition transmission and it's in Aboriginal communities for the first time um I would really love to have you know a group that we could work on here in Darwin to see how we can progress this and really put out the support and encouragement for Aboriginal people um looking to work in the sector so call out to the Darwin people who are here but it's under Christine Christine it sounds like you could almost set up a little subgroup within within the AES to explore um uh issues around service delivery for Aboriginal people in Darwin. I wonder if we could actually take this a bit broader and and not necessarily speak about one casing point but maybe we could talk about the role and responsibility of non-Aboriginal people in Aboriginal spaces so what is it that non-Aboriginal people called or should be doing um you know in that space um and we know that we need everyone but it'd be great um to hear if anyone's got some tips and tricks I mean I've got a couple but I'll hold my tongue. I mean I guess the question I would post to Christine as well is you know I we kind of hear this a lot to where people have really talked about trying to recruit Aboriginal people to the organisation and found that difficult and and you know I guess one of the things as a service as a as a non-Aboriginal service that's seeking to um you know make your services available and relevant you know it kind of goes to Simon's point like people perhaps at the moment are making decisions about where they're going and if there's reasons why they're not accessing your service actually doing some critical reflection in the organisation about why that might be you know if you've had staff who have left or others but one of the things you could potentially do because obviously um you're part of a you know national network is to think about looking for local community controlled organisations already doing that work rather than duplicating the service kind of partnering with and supporting those organisations in those service roles and particularly in times of crisis at the moment you know it's really about all hands on deck in whatever way is most useful so where you've got resources or staff or others at at your just you know that in your organisation actually talking to those organisations who do have the relationships and are working in a frontline way with communities supporting that work rather than duplicating or working um you know in addition or alongside that I suppose is the question and I know that organisations get funded to do particular things and so get have you know get positions for funded funded for workers to do a thing but I guess that's part of that work I was talking about earlier where if you went back to government and said actually at the moment the most useful thing we think we could be doing is supporting these other Aboriginal community controlled organisations doing this work so having a different kind of conversation with your funders potentially and and I think we've we've really started a lot of that and we work closely there's only four services in Darwin that do domestic and family violence uh to our Aboriginal specific and to aunt and we will work together very collaboratively I mean it's a we're very small up here so you know um and we've got a population of 52 percent Aboriginal so um it's probably different to any other state in that way um and all of us are you're being accessed by it doesn't matter we don't care what colour you are what creed you are or anything but um definitely we we are exploring definitely exploring partnerships and yes as a national organisation it makes it a bit different because we we are different up here because you know NT is a bit different and I really take that on board and you know we've lost staff because of totally different reasons in that they didn't want to leave but they've had to relocate in state for personal reasons or a program is closed um but believe me you know we are doing everything we can um we're doing we've got a um engaging a cultural consultant to do um you know cultural case reviews so it's really hard I would love to have a lot more Aboriginal staff and believe me we are all on it it's just taking time and that's hard I think you're a cultural consultant which should be able to um help you navigate some of the space um but the other thing I was going to mention as well Christine was um and it's an area I'm quite excited about at the moment I'm seeing it mental health disability um is about the kind of rise of peer workers so so they might they might be um it's just kind of planting a seed about you might want to consider peer workers in the space as well that could be another way where you could get more community involved we had a wonderful program called women of worth where we were working with women in prison uh six months prior to release in 12 months after and obviously the majority of our clients were were Aboriginal um Torres Strait Islanders and it got defunded um in June which I'm devastated about but um I'm rejigging that and hoping to to get that up off the ground again you know and peer workers most definitely I've got some of our ex clients who are working with me to redesign the program so absolutely thank you so much that's wonderful thank you thanks so much Christine how nice you might be able to apply their practice framework in that redesign that would be super exciting um I just wanted to see if there's any other questions that is coming from the audience any other suggestions on the role of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in this space Tiffany I'm keen to hear from you about what you see um within the um organization um again I um I feel really um honored and so lucky to um have been on this journey as I have been uh and so I came to Australia in 2004 as a research student um doing a PhD in anthropology at the University of Manchester and I was there having read Peter Reed's stolen generations a right for the soul so profound book um and I that touched me as a human um and I was looking at different um Indigenous legal recognition across Australia the US and New Zealand um so how you get into a space can also be important never saw myself as an academic and sense my uh fear of coming today and talking but I would say some of those skills and going very naively into a space and not knowing anthropologies loaded history um sometimes made it um seeing things in different ways was it has been useful um and I would say what I learned at university um through a lot of community development theories um has been applicable in what I do and coming into this organization specifically um as a non-Aboriginal woman um in a men's space of healing but the way that these uncles have created this space um is completely survivor led and I would not be here if they weren't making those decisions on who needs to be doing what in their organization and sometimes that's actually been hard for um other Aboriginal people to see and respect and the uncles have had to have lots of conversations within own communities around what they're doing in this organization and how and why they're doing that I think my every day I learned more about being in this space and you can't ever take anything for granted you may work really well with certain people and that could be very different with other people who you think work just and are just like the group that you're really connected to and all of those learnings are important and if we can't be reflective in our practice I don't think we can stay in any community um let alone this community that I'm connected to where so much trauma and so many legacies of failed and genocidal policies continue to mark people's lives um and we're not going to close any gap if we can't start from that past um to see its continuing impact today so I would say I'm always learning I don't know how much insight I can provide but always learning um and I think um it's hard to say that you're necessarily um just having to be connected to to one community and I would say um as a non-Aboriginal person who maybe doesn't have certain um policy experience or governments experience or research experience again those are places that are foreign and if you can't step out of your professional space you can also cause harm um so I think it's constantly being open to new ideas and new ways of working and reflect on what you're doing to improve what you're doing not very helpful but it's super helpful it's great thank you so much Tiffany um I think I see you've got your hand up um yeah uh I don't know if this is useful um cut me off if it's not um I'm sorry about my background that's left over from 11th of November um yeah I just wanted to contribute I work in the Victorian Department of Families, Fairness and Housing so that's the one with the child protection function um and a bit of history um there was a new Child Use and Family Act in 2005 that had a section in it that was about the secretary of the department being able to transfer that kind of legal parenthood of is that fully in the care of the government um transfer that to Aboriginal community controlled organizations and that sort of been there since 2005 but I think it was about 2017 um yeah and um 2017 that that two Aboriginal community controlled organizations put their hand up and said we're ready to do this now which was the Melbourne-based one and the Bendigo-based one um so there was a pilot and one of the things in Bendigo and I guess we call it Lodin Campus the Upward Chuka and down to um place called Kytan is um first up a lot of the workers at the local it's called Bendigo District Aboriginal Corporation but that were foster parents or kinship carers so there was all this stuff that had to be worked out around um around kind of the appropriate separation of that and also for them to have a child protection workforce I'm not sure of the statutory you know the kind of legal powers went over to them but a lot of um I suppose case management on kids in our home care um basically they didn't have a workforce for that and there was this sense you know the department had some employers who were Aboriginal the the organization had was all employees of mostly employees who were Aboriginal but it was just a lot of um I guess capacity building work and giving up power so I'm really interested in this framework because a lot of um state government in Victoria is is kind of a mandate to to um yeah hand over power self-determination and in the lead up to treaty um and in the pro yeah the process say of forming the assembly so the assembler is getting more of a voice and just you know obviously central agencies like Premier and Cabinet are really pushing this um pushing line departments and regions to demonstrate that they're doing it seriously not the same old same old so it's um I guess to say that it's it's I'm not saying it's a perfect time but it's quite a different time and there's actually a lot of work obviously for non-Amburginal controlled organizations to just and I think what you have demonstrated in the framework in the work with Kinchilla but other links in the chat has been what it takes and and really kind of especially in an organization of state government that's been to do with monitoring and regulating and and have you met UK PRs and your targets on the non-Amburginal sector I mean for one thing it's a very old-fashioned way of funding and measuring but it there's always that sort of play between being the partner and being the regulator that's in the mainstream of a department like this but probably environment probably I don't know my that that it's even more important to really um yeah kind of step down from that pedestal of power during capacity building I'm yeah interesting that probably there'll be a step up again in terms of regulating um but just it's it's yeah it's a really valuable process I think for any organization to get involved in that you know no matter you know what your state is up to or your federal government in terms of finding out that I think what's really important and I was listening to you and what you just spoke about and the first person who came to mind was Molly Dyer and the setting up a vacca and decades ago it was Aboriginal people in advocacy and aligning with Native Americans and the Indian Child Welfare Act which is the unrealized Aboriginal child placement principle of saying when can we as communities have just external right over our children and our families and if we're talking treaty now that has to be right at the forefront. Thanks so much Stephen for adding on to that unfortunately we have reached our end mark but luckily for you there is the opportunity to participate in a short evaluation of today's session yay and Greg has kindly put a link in the chat um Greg would you be able to repost it again on I might be able to quickly do this here um oh there we go uh there you go so it's on a mentor meter and you've got a little code there Greg I don't know if you're going to be sharing this on everyone's screen but we've reached time so maybe we can share the results later when we share this session more broadly but if you've got more questions for Ruth or Simon or Tiffany please feel free to channel them back to AES and I'm sure they'll get distributed accordingly um or you might be able to get everyone's email address if you'd like to reach out um thank you so much Tiffany, Simon and Ruth for your time this afternoon and and your amazing just willingness to share and be so open and honest I think this is the kind of thing that helps us all learn and grow so appreciate it again and there's some links through here to a couple of different things if anyone's missed anything just let us know bye