Tag: feminism

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Time for social work to make a clear stand for abortion law reform

Liz Beddoe and Eileen Joy

This week the following notice was distributed by email to members of the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers:

The Abortion Legislation Bill has passed its first reading and has been referred to the Abortion Legislation Committee with submissions closing 19 September. It is recognised that members have a wide range of views about this legislation which would have to be reflected in an ANZASW submission. For this reason, members are encouraged to make their own submission.

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Where has my radicalism gone? Revisited

A guest post by Lauren Bartley.

Nine months ago I wrote a reflection on my first few months as a social worker, and the disillusionment I faced in realising social work practice was not necessarily social justice practice. Read it here! The following post is a down-the-track reflection on my thoughts from that time, and on my first year as a social worker in a child and family-focused NGO.

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New Year’s revolutions

Kia ora koutou katoa

The following reflections from each and all of us at the RSW Collective are offered at the turn of a challenging and energising year for social work in Aotearoa New Zealand. We don’t pretend to speak for anyone else, but we do encourage critical imagination and action – together we can help shape a progressive future.

The social profession seeks to do more than bandage the victims of an unequal society; it needs to be a voice for social change. Critical social workers need to have a powerful voice in practice development, policy analysis and in wider politics. We have something to say about the genesis of social suffering and this involves more than administering evidence-based treatment to the poor.

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Children’s wellbeing or perpetuating handmaids?

A guest post by Eileen Joy 

From the moment Jacinda Ardern took office she made it clear that the wellbeing of children was one of her key priorities.  Ardern established the Ministry for Child Poverty Reduction and underscored its importance by naming herself as the Minister responsible. One of the key tasks of this Ministry, alongside the Ministry for Children, was to create a ‘Child Wellbeing Strategy’. A strategy that is described as “an opportunity to significantly improve the lives of New Zealand’s children” and it aims to do this by “set[ting] out the actions the Government intends to take to improve the wellbeing of all New Zealand children.” All of this sounds like ‘common sense’, surely no one would argue with the idea that we need to reduce the numbers of children living in poverty and that we need to improve the wellbeing of the nation’s children?

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Abortion law reform in Aotearoa New Zealand: In search of human rights, autonomy and empathy

At the end of October this year, the New Zealand Law Commission released a briefing paper: Alternative Approaches to Abortion Law. This paper provides three alternative legal models to existing abortion legislation, all of which recommend that abortion be repealed from the Crimes Act 1961 and the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act 1977, and be treated as a health issue. Liz Beddoe is Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Liz has been deeply and actively interested in the abortion debate for decades, and in this podcast with Deb Stanfield she shares her analysis of the briefing paper and explores problems with the current law – how it contravenes basic human rights for example, and creates unnecessary complexity for women seeking abortions. Dr Beddoe explains in plain language why social workers should care about this issue, what we should know, and how we can prepare ourselves for the coming months of debate.

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