Edu40004 Advocacy And Social Justice Assessment Answers

1.Choose one vulnerable group in Australian society Taking either a social justice, equality or human rights perspective identify what kind of social policies are needed to improve their situation at 1, micro, 2, mezzo and 3,macro levels.

2.Are women a vulnerable population? Are specific sub-groups within the overall population of women particularly vulnerable and if so, which ones? Present research to substantiate your position.

3.Imagine yourself as a member of a vulnerable population. What stereotypes may be used against you in applying for a job as  a member of that population?  Locate research to refute that stereotype.

4.Why do people in society need social policies and why do members of vulnerable populations need them?

Introduction

According to WHO, “Vulnerable people are those people who cannot anticipate, cope with and regain from extreme unfortunate events”. The people of these groups are underprivileged and are always at higher risk and prone to the impacts of disasters. When people are exposed to miseries like economic decline, accidents, natural disasters, it is hard for them to withstand its consequences, unlike others who have easy access to different facilities like health, medical, and have easier reach to institutions to bail them out in crisis situations. So, these vulnerable people have to struggle a lot more than others. In Australia many people do not have access to enough opportunities and they face great challenges even to get basic things that are important for daily life. These vulnerable group of people are deprived of basic facilities like food, medical, education, employment, housing unlike the privileged groups. Many new migrants even experiences food insecurity because of different traditional diets, they fail to get nutritional value due to lack of knowledge about the nutritional value of food available in their local markets.  The situations that makes people vulnerable are social exclusion, limited resources, inequality, poor government policies, environmental conditions, disability.  Groups of people who are considered to be the most vulnerable people in Australia are:

• people living in rural areas
• people with mental illness
• Indigenous people
• people living in low socio-economic circumstances
• women
• children
• older people
• CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) communities
• unemployed people
• victims of crime
• homeless people

Though these groups of people need additional care, support and intervention they are left with negligence, less security and less support. These groups even face difficulties in birth, marriages and death registrations other than most of the people who gets registration on timely basis.

CALD (Culturally & Linguistically Diverse)

CALD simply stands for culturally and linguistically diverse communities of people coming from different parts of the world having different ethnic background, traditions, languages and religions. In other words, these are those people who are born overseas other than those listed by ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) as English-speaking countries. These countries include Canada, United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, USA and New Zealand.

According to Australian institute of family studies, Australia is considered as a culturally and linguistically diverse country as people in Australia are originated from over 250 ancestries and speaks over 400 languages as at their home. Huge number of migrants comes to Australia every year, most migrants are from Europe and India. according to Australian bureau of statistics over 25% of people in Australia are born overseas. These people face many problems like unemployment or insecure employment, poverty, health issues and are not able to access government services. limited access to government services is one of the reason that keeps CALD community to cohesively engage with Australian community. Even though the migrants are well educated and are job holders their income is very low and are vulnerable to poverty. Unemployment rate is much higher in recent migrants than Australian born population. Many barriers are experienced by these people because of which they cannot access government services. Some of the common barriers faced by different subgroups of the CALD community are as follows:

• People from non-English speaking background often faces inequality and discrimination additionally they are misinterpreted about their body language due to difference in culture and language.
• They have limited options when it comes to choosing services due to lack of cultural diversity.
• They lack knowledge of having proper understanding and accessing the available services.
• Many people are unwilling to join or engage in any services as they are concerned that they might be judged or stereotyped.
• They also have the fear of different government bodies like police, child protection, taxation, civil laws, immigration, housing laws, etc as they do not proper knowledge like the natives.

Although there are various age groups of peoples such as child, women, youths or adults under CALD who faces various issues and challenges, we have taken the problems faced by the women in this paper.

Women’s in CALD Communities:

The women from CALD communities more often faces double disadvantages of gender and cultural diversity which results in their problems and necessities neither being addressed nor discovered either adequately or not at all (FECCA, 2012)

This section draws the main issues identified by FECCA (Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia) on the factors that impacts the well-being and health of the CALD women. There are many intersectional challenges faced by the women from these communities on daily basis who have many needs and yet they cannot access the basic services provided by the government due to lack of knowledge or ineligibility to these. This includes women who are temporary immigrants mainly those on 457 visas, members of skilled migrants, foreign students and immigrants who arrive in Australia for a short period due to which they do not qualify for settlement assistance.

The various independent bodies like FECCA who are concerned about the unmet needs of these women in long term as they have serious social and economic effects on them, their relatives and the society in which they live. These women who enter all alone or with their partners under different visa categories are not allowed to take any settlement supports.

The lack of opportunities to socialize with the people beyond their working place or their immediate sponsor, they feel lonely in their homes and therefore increasing the risk of social exclusion.

The various factors affecting the health and social well-being of the women belonging to CALD communities are discussed below:

Racial Discrimination:

The women whose appearance are different than those of the local’s, for instance the Muslim women’s who wear burqa faces racial vilification and criticism in their work place and place of their accommodation. As most of people of this community come from a non-English speaking background, they have to take English classes but due to several family and cultural restrictions they are less available to these classes resulting in less participation in the community they live. It has been found that, they even face problems in getting jobs as recruiters discriminates on the basis of their name. Even though they are unfairly treated at their work place they don’t seek justice due to their lower wage rate. Highly qualified women with leadership skills who show their participation to lead in mainstream issues often faces discouragement and are not appreciated.

Violence against women

Many women in CALD community face domestic violence, police and legal system are unaware of this because it is a hidden issue in most of the families of such communities. These women are prone to suffer homelessness and due to different barriers, they get trouble in accessing domestic violence support services, refuges shelters (Mitchell, 2011). They also face lateral violence like harassment, physical violence, so they should be aware of their rights and obligations. Many international students single working women with low income have to endure abusive home environment due to fear of being homelessness. Many immigrants are being the victims of human trafficking, rape, sexual assault and due to poor access of judicial systems for them, they could not get justice. Disabled women are also at the higher risk of violence by their carers and they are not able to get appropriate help and services against violence.

Social exclusion and health problems

CALD women are socially excluded, which makes their living so hard that they could not even get proper jobs and are not able to afford children education, housing (Philips, et.al, 2015). They should get secure jobs and should be able to access government services, to be a socially included in Australian society.

Most women of CALD communities suffers from both mental and physical health problems. The issues like lack of interpreters in the hospital, expensive hospital services, long waiting lists in the hospital makes these women more vulnerable.

As we already learned about the various issues and challenges faced by these women and taking social justice as a perspective we will discuss various ways to improve their situation. By social justice we simply mean the equality that every member of the family or community deserves in terms of opportunities, wealth distribution, social and political rights, etc so that they can have a satisfying life style and understand their importance in the community.

The social policies that can be implemented to improve the standard and situation of women belonging to CALD can be implemented at 3 different levels:

• Micro: At this level, the government should ensure the individual or the families of these women are given proper awareness about their rights so that they can exercise them at the time of need. There should be proper counselling for these women so that they can raise their voice against the domestic violence, racial discrimination at their work place or society, etc. There should be a body to make sure the women from non-English background are aware of the available government facilities which they can avail. Even there should be an interpreter for them at the hospitals or detention centres so that they can better explain their problems. The Government should implement policies to provide safe and secure shelter to the homeless women’s.
• Mezzo:  At this level the work is implemented at small to medium sized groups such as neighbours, local organisation or educational centres. As the micro deals with the change at individual level but in mezzo it focuses on cultural or institutional change.

There should be actions of grassroots levels so that it promotes cross cultural respect and understanding. There should be the support of Australian government to help in these community levels programs to promote mutual harmony and cohesion.

Government should implement policies that should encourage the participation of CALD women in decision making and leadership roles. There should be wider approach so that women’s right gets an equal place in the society which is promoted and respected.

• Macro: This involves operating at higher or larger level of system. At macro level there can be various policies which are discussed below that can be implemented to address or improve the overall situation of CALD women.
• There should be initiatives on national level to reduce the domestic violence cases against these women’s.
• The upgradation of Immigrants ‘rights on the basis of international laws and agreements for the employment convention and migrant’s convention.
• International convention must be implemented to protect the rights of all the migrants and their families.
• Access and Equity policy implementation within the public sector to ensure there is effective representation of service user in decision making.
• The proper implementation of policies which support and encourage women’s participation at economic and national level.

Conclusion:

As from the above study we can conclude that women form CALD community faces injustice and problems at every step of their life be it domestic violence in their families, racial discrimination in community or at their workplace. To overcome this there should be policies or proper laws which secures the rights of women to freedom from domestic or family violence, acts that’s oppresses the women, detention that increases the trauma and different family practices which affects the health and well-being of these women. Additionally, there should be proper laws which should give them equal opportunities to access Government services for social inclusion in comparison to other Australians. There should be strong laws to punish all those who discriminate and harasses women on the grounds of gender, religion, sex, marital status, ethnicity, age or race. Implementing these steps and the policies discussed above will give the women the sense of security and freedom which will not only improve the condition of these women but will also help in overall development of community and country as a whole.

References:

Supporting Australian Women from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Backgrounds 2012, FECCA Women’s Policy Statement.

Working with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) adolescents 2015, Australian Institute of Family Studies.

Mitchell, L 2011, Domestic violence in Australia- an overview of the issues, Department of Parliamentary Services.

Supporting women from CALD backgrounds who are victim/survivors of sexual violence, Australian Institute of Family Studies.

Phillips, J, Dunkley, A, 2015, Domestic Violence: issues and policy challenges, Department of Parliamentary Services

Micro, Mezzo & Macro Social Work, 2012, Another Mirror. Available from: https://another-mirror.blogspot.in/2012/10/micro-mezzo-and-macro-social-work.html [Accessed 30^th  oct , 2017]

Macro, Mezzo and Micro Social Work, n.d, Social Work License Map. Available from: https://socialworklicensemap.com/macro-mezzo-and-micro-social-work/ [Accessed 30^th oct, 2017]

Social justice, 2014, Settlement and Multicultural Affairs. Available from: https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/settlement-and-multicultural-affairs/programs-policy/a-multicultural-australia/national-agenda-for-a-multicultural-australia/participation/social-justice [Accessed 30^th oct , 2017]

Barriers to service accessibility and appropriate service delivery for CALD families in Australia, 2008, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Available from: https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/enhancing-family-and-relationship-service-accessibility-and/barriers-service [Accessed 30th oct, 2017]