This post links to the most recent presentation in a series of on-line Seminars that have been organised by the Social Justice and Child Protection Research Network Aotearoa. This is a small group of academic researchers concerned with the question of social justice and the theory and practice of child protection social work, now and into the future. Current co-directors of this initiative are Emily Keddell, Kerri Cleaver, Shayne Walker and myself, Ian Hyslop. This Seminar begins to wrestle with some of the implications of abolitionist ideas for social work generally and child protection in particular. A video recording of this session is linked here and an outline of the material covered is described below.
I am in the process of putting together an edited book with critical Australian social work and human services academic and activist, Bob Pease. The book is entitled ‘Abolitionist Approaches to Social Work and the Human Services’. A range of invited authors are engaging with the ways in which abolitionist thinking around rejection of the carceral state and the rebuilding of socially just systems of care might be progressed. In this Seminar I outline some of the dilemmas facing the development of socially justice practice in socially unjust societies – such as the one we inhabit in contemporary Aotearoa. Abolitionist ideas offer a way out of this bind and potentially inform a politics of radical hope. After this introduction we hear from Kerri and Emily who are both contributing chapters to this forthcoming text.
Kerri considers a roadmap to child protection abolition for Māori. She argues that a flourishing future for Māori is when all mokopuna Māori (Māori children) live in thriving intact Māori structures. In Aotearoa mokopuna account for 68% of the child protection system, a statistic she attributes to the complexities of colonisation, capitalism, and neoliberal social service provisions, stripping Māori of traditional care systems. Amongst coloniality and oppressive systems Māori solutions provide a pathway to abolition through Māori social systems, metaphorically represented as the pā harakeke. Centering Māori, restoration and Māori solutions, Kerri critiques the coloniality of state child protection, current legislative provisions and asserts abolitionist aspirations founded on an ethic of restoration protected through Indigenous legislative rights.
Emily recognizes that abolitionist perspectives in child protection promote a deep understanding of the intersecting inequities embedded in child protection systems, arguing current systems are deeply flawed due to their tendency to reinscribe and exacerbate social inequities, while doing little to effectively prevent harm to children. Abolitionism argues for a re-visioning of systems built by the most affected communities, based on care, equity, healing, community accountability, and rejecting carceral logics of punishment and coercion. In her chapter Emily begins to critically consider the implications, comparing this movement to the decolonial and public health reform paradigms, tracing points of confluence and divergence between them. While all eschew individualistic and moralistic approaches, and promote kinship care, there are significant divergences around evidence-based programmes, expert versus community-led development, the recipients of devolution and the operation of coercive powers. Emily contends that despite these differences, increasingly right wing political contexts must draw our attention to points of potential solidarity and shared action, if only in the meantime.
It is clear to many of us in the social service sector that this is a time of significant challenge from a government bent on applying capitalist market solutions to problems generated by capitalist market society. Abolitionist ideas strengthen our capacity for collective resistance, theoretically and practically. Have a listen, tell us what you think!
Image credit: romac