Social Work Education

The International Journal

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cswe20

Promoting youth-directed social change: engaging

transformational critical practice

Fran Gale & Michel Edenborough

To cite this article: Fran Gale & Michel Edenborough (2021) Promoting youth-directed social
change: engaging transformational critical practice, Social Work Education, 40:1, 58-79, DOI:
10.1080/02615479.2020.1779209

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2020.1779209

Published online: 16 Jun 2020.

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SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION
2021, VOL. 40, NO. 1, 58–79
https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2020.1779209

Promoting youth-directed social change: engaging

transformational critical practice
Fran Galea and Michel Edenboroughb
a
School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University, Penrith, Australia; bSchool of Social Sciences, Western
Sydney University, Richmond, Australia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article examines the influence of social workers’ critical practice Received 4 September 2019
on youth-directed social change among hard-to-reach young peo­ Accepted 1 June 2020
ple in neoliberal new public management contexts. Young people KEYWORDS
are increasingly acknowledged as essential change agents in ame­ Critical social work; youth
liorating their experiences of disadvantage or marginalisation. Yet, participation; participatory
youth and community organisations supporting projects and stra­ action research;
tegies to engage with young people’s agency find change from neoliberalism; new public
these interventions is small, or non-sustained. In exploring what management; Nancy Fraser;
obstructs and what galvanises youth-directed social change, com­ adultism; youth-directed
parative analysis of three youth participatory action research pro­ change
jects nested in youth-facing agencies in New South Wales, Australia,
was undertaken. Particular attention is drawn to the young people’s
perspectives in order to provide insight into tackling challenges of
youth disengagement and exclusion. The article predominantly
draws on Nancy Fraser’s critical theory of social justice as
a heuristic to illuminate dynamics of the young people’s projects.
At the heart of all projects were transformative measures with
potential to impact underlying structures which foster marginalisa­
tion, opening up prospects for sustained change. Despite
a significant barrier being new management practices reinforcing
adult asymmetrical relationships with youth, strategies informed by
critical social work practice were able to support young people to
progress their social change goals.

Many of us rejoice in being members of a profession that is imbued with social justice as
its fundamental value and concern (Reisch, 2013). Yet increasingly, our employment and
work contexts, influenced by neoliberal new public management (NPM) discourses and
austerity measures, constrain the social justice horizon down to a ‘small pinched thing’
(Hurston, 1990, p. 29).
Frequently, critical social work theory and skills are offered as means not only to
address injustices of neoliberalism but to progress social justice aims. Many of us,
however, have had disillusioned students ask, as one of our students recently did, ‘But
in the current welfare environment, can critical social work really be effective in practice?’
This raises questions about whether we need more critical practice or new forms of it
(Fook, 2016; Healy, 2001) that respond to these new practice contexts.

CONTACT Fran Gale fw.gale@westernsydney.edu.au School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University,
Penrith, Australia
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION 59

To explore these questions of effectiveness of critical social work practice, we conducted

participatory action research informed by critical social work principles in three diverse
practice contexts in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. We aimed to identify effective
critical practices and strategies, particularly from the perspectives of the young co-
researchers: young people living in contexts of inequality.

Locating the research: neoliberalism, adultism, and critical social work in

resistance
Neoliberalism in recent decades has become the governing global ideology. This is
despite its sometimes surprising and weighty critics, like economist and former
Reserve Bank Governor Bernie Fraser who described it as causing misery, social polar­
ization, and growing inequality (Karp & Hutchens, 2018). Notwithstanding global
variations in its meaning and practices, consensus exists that neoliberalism espouses
individual freedom, reduced government functions, and a minimalist state, and that it
privatizes services and promotes austerity to achieve this (Boas & Gans-Morse, 2009).
Within neoliberalism, the market is the arbiter of social justice (Brodie, 2018). Neoliberal
policies and applications reinforce individualism and self-sufficiency, and uphold com­
petition (Metcalf, 2017).
Neoliberalism has driven cuts to community services and welfare provision. This is
part of neoliberalism’s ‘dispossessing dynamic’ (Garrett, 2010, p. 346) where, along with
privatising previously untouchable services, thereby converting them to sources of profit
and capital accumulation, reductions are also made in state funding of community
services and the social wage (Garrett, 2010). This contributes to redistributing capital
upward in favour of the wealthy (Garrett, 2010), widening the gap between rich and poor
thus resulting in maldistribution (Fraser, 2008). Neoliberalism’s market philosophies
have also brought audit regimes and cultures of risk management (Chenoweth, 2012),
known as New Public Management, expressed through benchmarks measured in narrow
quantifiable terms and increased surveillance of services and personnel, including social
workers (Chenoweth, 2012). Government funds are allocated competitively to services to
encourage productivity and efficiency, increase profit and/or reduce costs (Macalpine &
Marsh, 2008), and to shape organizational practices. Other core values such as equality,
equity and participation are de-emphasized (Gregory, 2007).
For social work practice, neoliberal NPM policies accentuate service delivery, manage­
ment, and finance, while sidelining professional knowledge, skills, interventions, and
autonomy (Chenoweth, 2012). Hierarchy eclipses collaboration in relationships between
service users and workers (Fook, 2016, p. 28). In sum, dominant neoliberalism and the
accompanying NPM endorse increasing governmentality and economics. Meanwhile,
there is a risk that social work as a field abandons emancipatory change (Spolander et al.,
2014). Although neoliberalism has a significant impact on other human service profes­
sions, it is particularly pertinent to social work, which has a well-articulated value base
enshrining commitment to social justice expressed in international and country-specific
codes of ethics (Reyes & Segal, 2019). The Australian Code of Ethics, for example, makes
clear our profession’s commitment to social justice, social action, and changing unjust
structures (Australian Association of Social Workers [AASW], 2010) to which neoliber­
alism can be seen as antithetical (McAuliffe et al., 2016).
60 F. GALE AND M. EDENBOROUGH

For young people, the hierarchical relations of neoliberalism also intersect with the
asymmetrical power of youth versus adulthood (Mayall, 2002). Traditionally, young
people defer to adults’ authority and, as part of the ‘natural order,’ adults are presumed
to possess the ‘natural right’ to exert power over children. As ‘learners,’ ‘recipients of
adult input,’ and ‘becoming,’ young people are seen as in a ‘stage’ en route to (normative)
adulthood. Consequently, young people’s voices are often unheard in discussion and
decision-making, which affects their wellbeing and life chances (Kellett, 2011). In
Australia in 2018, when school students held a climate change strike, the Prime
Minister and other members of Parliament told them to return to school. ‘We don’t
support our schools being turned into parliaments. What we want is more learning in
schools and less activism in schools’ (Noonan, 2018). This dismissal contrasts with the
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), which clearly states that
children and young people are agents in their own right, not adults in waiting. Having
conceptual autonomy, they can contribute actively to decision-making, sharing power
and responsibility with adults. This focus challenges the community of adults to include
children and young people as active participants in all matters affecting them (Sinclair,
2004). Nonetheless, their inclusion frequently remains tokenistic: varying levels of young
people’s participation in research reveal that often, research involving young people
reflects adult agendas in contexts determined and organized by adults (Lansdown,
2005). However, when young people decide the issues, how they want to address them
and are supported to act, tokenistic approaches are avoided (Hart, 1992). Notably, young
people are not homogeneous. Within neoliberal environments, there is a growing gap
between those who are differently advantaged or disadvantaged depending on their social
location (Kennelly, 2011, pp. 6–7).
In opposition to the injustices of neoliberalism and, by extension, adultism, critical
social work offers an alternative body of emancipatory principles and practices. For
critical social work, the roots of many experienced problems are not individual and
personal but found in wider social processes: relations of gender, class, race, and other
intersections of oppression and inequality (Mullaly, 2007; Webb, 2019). Critical social
work is an umbrella term for a range of critical theory perspectives and practices. These
include materialism and constructivism as well as poststructuralism (Fook, 2016); how­
ever, common to all forms of critical social work is an abiding concern with analyzing
power imbalances and redressing inequalities (Moya-Salas et al., 2010). Critical social
work recognizes multiple discourses and ways of knowing; it values diversity, grassroots
approaches, and perspectives from groups without traditional privileged status (Fook,
2016; Webb, 2019). Hence, it highlights co-participatory practices and working in
collective, nonhierarchical ways with service users and others (Mullaly, 2007).
Moreover, to be transformative, interventions redressing disadvantage need to target
the underlying generative framework i.e. structures creating disadvantage (Fraser, 1996).
Critical social work declares social work’s responsibility to be reflexive, aware, and
challenging of dominant narratives and discourses such as neoliberalism and NPM
that shape policies, practices, and even social work itself (Healy, 2001).
Over the past decade, the social work canon has been normatively and practically
enriched by Fraser’s critical theorizing (Bozalek, 2012; Holscher, 2014). In this
article, we principally use Fraser’s critical approach to social justice to illuminate
dynamics of the young people’s projects and as a heuristic to identify and understand
 SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION 61

processes and practices that progress or inhibit transformative social justice. Fraser
(2008) identifies three interconnected dimensions of social justice—(mal)distribution,
(mis)recognition, and (mis)representation—which are respectively overcome through
transformative economic redistribution, deconstructing the identities of recognizer
and recognized, and by ‘low status’ groups becoming peers in social life. Rather than
affirmative interventions that secure the dominant order and mark beneficiaries as
‘different’ or lesser, transformative interventions are needed to restructure the under­
lying generative framework (Fraser, 1996). While all three dimensions of Fraser’s
social justice approach have circularity (Holscher, 2014), participatory parity is
central to redressing economic and cultural injustices. Redress involves identifying
institutionalized arrangements that unjustly prevent participation of all as social
peers and substituting patterns that foster participation of all as social peers
(Fraser, 2008).
Neoliberalism also constrains social work educators and practitioners in macrostruc­
tural policy, organizational contexts, and microinterpersonal levels (Wallace & Pease,
2011). Despite social work schools discussing and analysing structural and systemic
inequality, educators can find that, ‘we are failing to translate the ‘social’ of social work
into practice’: rather, ‘the focus on the individual has become an end in itself ‘(Silva Brito,
2019, p. 15). For this and other reasons, (including students interpreting teaching
through dominant cultural frames they bring with them; finding it difficult to think
outside those frames (Holscher & Sewpaul, 2006)), students can struggle with applying
critical theories to practice. Many find it easier to apply individualistic explanations of
social problems and individual level interventions; neglecting structural causes of
inequality (Fenton, 2014; Morely et al., 2017; Silva Brito, 2019).
Wallace and Pease (2011), however, warn of ‘overgeneralised accounts of neoli­
beralism’ which leave ‘little room for challenge or change’ (Wallace & Pease, 2011,
p. 133) Not dissimilarly, Garrett, while acknowledging neoliberalism’s influence on
social work education, is critical of its presentation as completely dominant, pointing
to resistance endeavours (Garrett, 2010, p, p. 351). Challenging neoliberalism’s
influence involves providing learning opportunities that prompt students to move
beyond individualistic explanations of social problems and to identify and apply
understandings of social justice, inclusion and equality in social work practice
(Fenton, 2014; Morely et al., 2017). Approaches increasingly used include, but are
not limited to, real life case studies which apply social justice understandings to
practice; role plays and problem-based enquiry (Bowers & Pack, 2017, p. 101);
service users’ stories and their lived experience (Morely et al., 2017) and participation
by social work practitioners whose work demonstrates social justice in practice
(Fenton, 2014). Importantly, critical reflection and analysis which draws attention
to power imbalances is an essential underpinning appraising lens. Furthermore,
Preston and Aslett (2014) urge an activist pedagogy which offers students meaningful
activism experience; affirming social action as a core element of social work identity.
If any discipline can inspire opposition to oppressive dominant discourses it is social
work due to its fundamental ethical basis (Morely et al., 2017). ‘Thus working towards
systemic social change is a legitimate collaborative social work pursuit and engaging with
“the political” is a guiding principle’ (Briskman, 2017, p. 274). Social work education thus
should provide a multiplicity of opportunities for analysing and applying critical social
62 F. GALE AND M. EDENBOROUGH

justice perspectives to practice (Fenton, 2014, p. 333). The young people’s localised projects
discussed in this paper form case studies that link critical theory, practice and research—
one of the means increasingly used in teaching critical social work.

Data collection and analysis

This article presents results of an empirical study aimed at identifying effective critical
social work practices enabling youth-directed social change. Three projects generating
youth-directed change located in rural, regional, and metropolitan areas across NSW,
Australia, are discussed. The research was approved by Western Sydney University
Human Ethics Committee. Working with young people in youth directed ways meant
power was given over to the young people as much as possible within the obligations of
academic research, constraints of funding bodies and the guidelines of ethics committees.
A designated worker, informed by critical social work principles, explored youth
concerns and supported their change goals. The projects evolved over 12 to 24 months.
All three youth-facing organizations hosting these projects have an explicit policy of
empowering young people.
Participants across the projects ranged from 16 to 21 years and met weekly. The co-
researchers followed a model of self-directed group work (Mullender et al., 2013),
participatory action research in which workers and participants co-share power, social
activism serves to respond to participants’ concerns, and socially just community trans­
formation and agency are sustained (Archer, 2013). See Table 1.
Participant interview transcripts, observations, field notes, and relevant media reports
were thematically analyzed, interpreted for insights (Stanley & Wise, 2013), and cross-
checked with the young people to establish meaningful understandings. The data were
also analyzed reflexively, interrogating the process, the relationships that developed, and
how these progressed or inhibited young people’s agency.

Grassroots, co-research and a collective approach

Challenging discourses that construct them was important for all three young people’s
groups.
The young women from the metropolitan youth organization wanted to reduce stigma
for young people with mental illness like themselves. The young Indigenous men registered
a ‘disconnect’ between themselves and their local community. Believing the school and
justice system often saw them as a ‘problem,’ they chose to focus on disrespect: ‘No one
respects us young black fellas anywhere’ (PawsUp Young Person YP).
Steeltown young people’s deliberations centered around discrimination: ‘They just think
we are failures in our lives; [but] anyone can easily find themselves in our situation’
(Steeltown YP).
Another young woman, pregnant, described a recent incident: ‘This old lady in the
street spat on me and called me disgusting because she reckons I am too young and
couldn’t be a good mother’ (Steeltown YP).
All the young people perceived social hierarchies such as generation, race, gender, and
class in their lived experience. In diverse ways shaped by context, they reality-tested the
offer they received to own the research.
Table 1. The three projects.
Projects
Locations: socioeconomic, geographic and
cultural diversity.
Co-researchers
Issue identified: Young people were invited to The young co-researchers identified lack of
identify an issue of concern to them in their
community (defined as any community, e.g.,
school; families; employers) and what they
would like to change.
Workers: were provided with training aligned The worker had an established reputation
with critical social work principles and
inducted into the aims of the project. They
recruited young people in ways which had
greatest relevance for their own community.
Host organization
PawsUp
Rural: Predominantly Anglo community with Regional: A socioeconomically disadvantaged
Indigenous people mainly living on the
outskirts of town in what was once a mission
where Indigenous people were formerly
segregated during White colonization.
Indigenous young men varying in number
from 20–58 (core group 20) met bi-weekly
over 18–24 months. Continued to meet-up
after project completion. Recruited through
existing youth networks and word of mouth.
respect for ‘young black fellas’. The project
they chose to address this was to care for,
and train dogs, competing in local show
jumping events and working with livestock.
working with young people in this rural
community where he lives and grew up. He
was recruited by word of mouth.
A rural branch of a NSW State Government
Department hosted this project in the rural
community.
Steeltown
regional town with higher than average
unemployment rates.
Young women and men varying in number
from 3–6 (core group of three) who met
weekly over 18–24 months. Recruited
through a local homeless person’s
organization.
The young co-researchers identified
community discrimination against homeless
unemployed young people as the issue that
concerned them. They chose to address this
by creating a magazine illuminate
challenges they face; aiming to dismantle
prejudice.
The worker was local to this community and
had a history of working with local young
people. The worker was recruited by
advertisement.
A regional non-government organization, well
respected and with established links in the
community.
Freelancers
Metropolitan: culturally and linguistically
diverse suburb of Sydney.
Young women varying in number from
2–6 (core group of two) who met
weekly over 12–14 months. Recruited
through a multicultural community
organization.
The young co-researchers wanted to
reduce stigma for young people with
mental illness. They proposed to
address this through creative writing,
telling their own stories.
The worker was locally involved working
with CALD people and recruited for the
project through advertisement.
A metropolitan non-government
organization with an imminent funding
review.
SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION
63
64 F. GALE AND M. EDENBOROUGH

For months, the PawsUp young men were comparatively silent. The project worker
tentatively suggested projects, such as learning bushcraft with local Indigenous elders. They
agreed; however, when arranged, none attended. For Indigenous young people, adults not
listening or asking reinforces experiences of racism and colonialism. During colonization,
Indigenous Australians lost and never fully regained control over their lives; Indigenous
elders such as Patrick Dodson underscored Indigenous people’s need for respect by having
greater control over their own affairs [and being] able to make decisions about the
practicalities that affect them (Conifer & Dziedzic, 2017). The worker and group continued
meeting weekly. The worker waited and listened, encouraging, supporting, and resourcing
the young men’s deliberations and solutions, avoiding leading or directing. Concurrently,
the worker and social work researchers also met with the hosting agency, a NSW state
government department, advocating the time necessary for a grassroots approach that
supported the young men’s agency. The worker and social work researchers did not foresee
the young men’s eventual choice: They nominated training dogs to show-jump and work
with livestock, naming their project ‘PawsUp.’ Their comments show the value they placed
on interrupting existing power relations to have agency:

It’s [project] good because you guys gave us a choice [of project]. (PawsUp YP)

You’ve given us a chance to do something ourselves. (PawsUp YP)

While discussing media power to inform opinions and behaviors, Steeltown young
people decided to produce a magazine to illuminate the challenges homeless young
people face to dismantle prejudice and to provide information that those who had
lived on the streets knew to be important. Early on, however, they confronted traditional
power relations.
When the worker clarified with the group whether they wanted rules about behavior,
an intragroup argument broke out, so that the worker threatened to leave that week’s
meeting. Turning to her, the participants said, ‘See, we knew you wouldn’t stick by your
word and you’d make up your own rules.’
Hearing their expectation (of adults taking control), the worker stepped back and
acknowledged the power relations. The worker and young people concurred that power
was co-shared; the young people were the experts and owners of their project, their
knowledge being central and respected. However, while the host organization in princi­
ple supported the project, this endorsement led management to worry that the young
people ‘had too much control’; they might cause the organization reputational embar­
rassment, jeopardizing funding and community goodwill. The worker recognized this as
a bid to monitor and manage the young people’s potential risk. Management’s neoliberal
concern with risk management intersecting with adultism was to re-emerge at intervals
during the Steeltown young people’s project. The worker, however, gently continually
challenged the ‘risk’ narrative and advocated for trust in the young people.
In both these scenarios, the workers stepped back, relinquishing as much control as
possible, letting the process unfold and supporting the young people’s taking ownership.
In the third scenario, management appeared unable to relinquish control, and the
worker felt stymied. Concerned that young people with ‘mental illness’ are often margin­
alized through misleading discourses and representations, the young women Freelancers
from the metropolitan youth organization wanted to write and blog their own stories.
 SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION 65

However, organization management did not engage with their proposal but requested
they produce street art for the annual local government-sponsored street festival.
Having been successful in previous years, this represented the center’s work and visibility in
the public space. This non-governmental organization (NGO) depended on community-
based as well as recurrent government funding, and a review was imminent. Management’s
control here appeared to reflect NPM processes: as funding cuts result in workers being spread
thinly and having fewer resources with which to provide services. Consequently threats to
funding may foster a risk management culture, which can inhibit community organizations
from exploring innovative practices. Nonetheless, the young women, persistently requested
the worker help them develop writing skills. Observing the funding review pressures, the
worker described feeling ‘squeezed’. Maldistribution appeared central to pressures the worker
experienced and the thwarting of the young women’s project. Wallace and Pease (2011, p. 35)
note that neoliberal cost cutting of services and associated NMP practices means workers are
exposed to contradictory pressures. The worker decided to try to meet the young women and
management’s needs: providing free writing websites and information, and also art materials
to meet management’s expressed wishes. The young women were disappointed: ‘She (worker)
said she would give us these free websites for writing and said “I hope you continue on with
that” but she handed out art stuff’ (Freelancer YP).
In this scenario, management retained control and could not respond to the young
women’s offerings. The young women produced little art and became increasingly
disengaged.
In progressing their respective projects, both Steeltown and PawsUp young people built
and sustained collective frameworks. In both sites, traditional power differentials were
interrupted, and the young people occupied different social roles from previous negative
and stereotypical constructions. Steeltown young people, who lived unstructured lives,
arrived every Tuesday for 18 months; they planned, wrote, typeset, and crafted, produced,
and distributed a polished 20-page magazine complete with advertising and Sudoku. They
negotiated respective roles and supported each other to identify and acquire the respective
skills to produce their magazine. They assisted each other in making community contacts,
conducting interviews, for example, with local football celebrities.
Twice a week, the PawsUp young men met for dog training. They welded training
jump equipment to compete their dogs, often meeting at 6.00 a.m. on Saturday mornings
to travel the country show circuit. Demonstrating a strong collective commitment, they
not only negotiated all decisions as a group (for example, rules around behavior, choice
of shows) but invited siblings, extended family, and friends to attend. Their collective
commitment was compellingly exemplified when they refused the opportunity for each
to take turns to work with a particular dog that consistently made winning jumps.
Instead, they chose to stay working with the dogs each had trained and developed
a relationship with, commenting that the winning dog won ‘for all the group.’ In winning,
they disavowed individualism, recognizing interdependence:

There’s not any competition because we’ve all got the same shirts on. (PawsUp YP)

We all help each other out no matter what. (PawsUp YP)

66 F. GALE AND M. EDENBOROUGH

It’s just this incredible buzz for the kids. It’s not drugs, or alcohol, or dangerous driving. It’s
all about . . . being part of a group and being tuned into what everyone else is doing. (TAFE
Coordinator)

Diversity and recognition of undervalued perspectives

All the young co-researchers were labelled with totalizing, constraining identities at
various points in their projects. In two of three projects, strategies aligning with critical
social work principles enabled these to become positive turning points. When the
PawsUp young men competed their dogs at one of their first local agricultural shows,
police entered the arena with sniffer dogs and only approached the PawsUp team,
looking for evidence of drug use, treating them as suspects. This echoed colonial
experience: ‘I don’t like this racist shit. Its crap’ (PawsUp YP).
Relative to non-Indigenous people, Australian Indigenous people are overpoliced due to
the colonizing role of Indigenous criminalization and state interventions, which fix
Aboriginality as a ‘site that requires intense governance and intervention’ (Cuneen, 2008,
p. 15). In rural areas, Indigenous young people experience high levels of unemployment
and truancy. Within neoliberalism, emphasis on individual responsibility sees such factors
and cultural labels become ‘risk factors’ and deemed the result of individual failings, not the
outcomes of injurious structural arrangements including inequality, discrimination, and
enduring systematic structural oppression from colonization (Choo, 1990).
Following the sniffer dog incident, the social work researchers prepared to travel to
the community to support the project worker’s advocacy with the police. However,
this became unnecessary, as the community had seen the marginalizing dynamic at
work in the police’s actions. Local community members wrote letters of protest to the
police and local newspaper, indicating the young men were simply engaging in
community life and that either all or no contestants should be subjected to the sniffer
dogs. They asked for these young people ‘to be given a go.’ Justifying themselves, the
police argued they were expected to ‘come down hard’ on the young people. This
incident and the PawsUp project initiated a softer policing approach in the commu­
nity. Having roots in the community, the young men’s project also facilitated greater
collective action.
Steeltown young people had left school early and had inconsistent work and educa­
tion. To produce the magazine required developing creative responses, which involved
mutual interaction with their wider community. They believed they had something of
importance to offer. However, the host organization’s management insisted on vetting
the magazine for quality and content, arguing its publication could affect the organiza­
tion’s public reputation and with government. The young people were ‘misrecognized’
(Fraser & Honneth, 2004, p. 29). They felt disillusioned that they were viewed as deficient
and untrustworthy, and feared all their work might be rejected. Arranging to meet
a senior staff member identified as open to influence, the worker and social work
researchers sought to replace the narrative of risk and mistrust with one of ability,
competence, and enthusiasm, advocating the young people be entrusted with producing
their magazine without vetting by management. The senior staff member read the
magazine, exclaiming he was ‘surprised it is so good.’ The magazine’s merit thus
reinforced this successful challenge to a dominant risk/deficit discourse by a narrative
 SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION 67

of trust and competence. It made space for a different understanding, and thereafter, the
young people were accorded growing recognition. Surveillance of them decreased;
relationships based on valuing their perspectives increased.
These incidents demonstrate misrecognition (routine maligning or stereotyping) of
the PawsUp and Steeltown young people. However, the young women Freelancers
experienced nonrecognition: where the ‘Other’ is rendered invisible (Fraser &
Honneth, 2004, p. 29). Almost no dialogue ensued with the young women about their
concerns. Despite the organization’s explicit aim to empower young people, its manage­
ment controlled how the young women could participate. Several wishing to write to
challenge inequality experienced by young people with mental illness had previously
failed to obtain support from surrounding adults. One commented, ‘dad says it [writing]
is a waste of time.’ Organizational management replicated this failure of adult support.
NPM imperatives converging with adultism and possibly assumptions about the stigma­
tized domain of mental illness were reproduced in the organization’s relationship with
the young women. The young women also disputed the degree of surveillance required
by benchmarking procedures, but to no avail:

We told her [worker] we didn’t want our names taken down and marked off but she still did
it. (Freelancer YP)

I told them [YP] I was sorry but I had to demonstrate attendance because the organisation
required that as they needed to prove the numbers attending their activities. (Worker)

Project efforts to disrupt traditional power differentials were thwarted. The social
work researchers and the project worker met with management to advocate for the
young women’s project. The worker was then allocated a later time slot to meet with
the young women and management; however, this was too late for public transport
home for the school-age young women. Management then proposed a new agenda for
the young women’s participation, asking the worker to recruit them to learn what
community-based young people wanted the organization to provide. One young
women’s response typified the group’s: ‘Why would we? They [the organization]
don’t keep their word and they don’t follow through on advertised programs and
activities.’
The young women’s nonrecognition was confirmed with rejection of what they
offered: To the organization, they were invisible. ‘Misrecognition’ and ‘nonrecognition’
are forms of status subordination, ascribing subordinated group members ‘inferior,
excluded . . . or simply invisible . . . less than full partners in social interaction’ (Fraser
& Honneth, 2004, p. 29). Rather than champion their participatory parity, management
pressured the young women to meet the needs of adults and the organization, confirming
their subordinate position.
By contrast, the PawsUp young men’s active involvement with their dog-jumping
project afforded them greater visibility in their local community, and this challenged
negative constructions. The young men and their families responded to their increasing
recognition (rather than misrecognition):

It isn’t the welfare, you know, it’s doing ordinary shit and stuff. [PawsUp YP, describing the
project]
68 F. GALE AND M. EDENBOROUGH

The families of the team members are highly supportive of the program. They do not now
consider it to be some “do-gooder’s scheme” because they are treated with respect by the
coordinator [worker] and they can genuinely see the positive impact the program is having
on their children’s lives. (Credit Union Media Liaison)

Owning their project, the PawsUp young men acquired agency and ‘the possibility . . . to
influence events’ (Boeck et al., 2008, p. 6). Their viewpoint and knowledge were valued
and their identities renegotiated communally; they could no longer be constructed in
totalizing ways. For the young people, acknowledged as having something valuable to
offer established reciprocity that challenged the colonial orientation and misrecognition.
For the young women Freelancers, their status remained ‘lesser than,’ and an opportunity
for their authentic recognition was missed.

Contextuality, community, and transformation

Both the PawsUp and Steeltown young people’s projects instigated their increasing
engagement with wider community and promoted their authentic recognition and
participation as peers in the public space, both locally and more widely. This increased
community participation by both groups of young people underscores the importance
Fraser’s social justice model gives to participatory parity, both as a means and an end for
the other two principles of (mal)distribution and (mis)recognition (Fraser, 1996).
Material resources were redistributed: employment opportunities for the PawsUp
young men and a successful grant from the local steelworks for Steeltown young people.
Both groups were encouraged to further community participation.
Following their magazine’s launch, Steeltown young people were honored at a public
ceremony in the Town Hall. After Steeltown’s newspaper published a short story on their
magazine, community members nominated the group for an award. Their work was
stated as ‘instrumental in the region becoming a healthier, safer, greener and more caring
place’ (Business Council Chairperson). Following this, they were invited to civic and
business ceremonies and meetings, including an invitation from the local Chamber of
Commerce to discuss concerns facing homeless young people.
The PawsUp team has almost continually won dog jumping events, locally and
interstate, and now hold the Australian dog-jumping record. Local and national
media have reported the young men’s successes. The PawsUp young men’s public
visibility has also enabled the wider community to re-distribute resources. For example,
the local credit union provided a ‘charge-free account’ and their media officer’s
services; tradespeople have offered apprenticeships, and farmers have offered work:
‘Doors have opened from people seeing the relationship between the dogs and the boys
when they’re jumping’ (Worker).
In Fraser’s integrated theory of social justice, maldistribution and misrecognition
mutually reinforce each other to impede participatory parity: recognizing the forms
these take is vital to identifying and unravelling the concrete arrangements impeding
that parity of participation (Fraser, 2008). While misrecognition (as discussed, for
example, in police response to the PawsUp team’s appearance in the showground), is
central to Indigenous discrimination in Australia, maldistribution is a correspondingly
significant feature. Indigenous Australians have considerably lower incomes than non-
Indigenous Australians (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2017) and their ability to
 SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION 69

save and have basic services is hampered. The PawsUp young men’s particular choice of
project has given them wider community visibility, one result of which has led commu­
nity members to offer employment opportunities and assistance in enabling savings. This
community responsiveness advances reconciling distribution and recognition, thus sup­
porting greater inclusivity and participation.
The young peoples’ projects generated positive narratives that did not maintain the
status quo and challenged previous assumptions. Local and wider media coverage of the
Steeltown young people’s magazine was enthusiastic and underlined affirmative, inclu­
sive narratives. TV and radio extended the young people’s skills sets, preparing other
opportunities. Identities are ‘encountered, created and contested’ (Uitermark et al., 2005,
p. 628) in public spaces, and meeting in the public domain, these can be renegotiated
(Uitermark et al., 2005, p. 625), enabling multidimensional components of a group
identity to be recognized and respected.
Similarly for the PawsUp young men, instead of pressure to conform, the public space
enabled acknowledgement and respect for different needs and diversity. The local
technical college now includes dog training as a bridging course. The local school allows
dog-jumping as a co-curricular activity. Farmers’ comments about PawsUp members,
such as ‘They’re not lazy; you have to get going early to train working dogs,’ challenged
previous stereotypes.
The young men described with some pride farmers coming up to them:
They [farmers] came up to us afterwards and said, did you mob train those dogs? And they
shook our hands. (PawsUp YP)

The PawsUp team has had a positive impact on an arguably racist/classist community. The
boys have challenged expectations that young Indigenous men are “drunks.” [They] demon­
strate their responsibility and trustworthiness. This is now known by farmers. This has
contributed to changing opinion. (Local Council Member)

Such possibilities bypassed the young women Freelancers. With public space increas­
ingly a site for generating and negotiating cultural and political identities (Uitermark
et al., 2005), what happens there, including whether young people exercise decision-
making power and how they are represented, is crucial. However management shared
no power with the young women Freelancers, either in relation to the street festival or
at the youth organisation, thus denying them participation as social ‘peers’ (Fraser &
Honneth, 2004). The young women, potentially representing a ‘subaltern counter­
public’, seemed to envisage a dedicated space: supportive and comfortable for meet­
ing, reflecting and honing creative writing skills with opportunities to articulate
alternative interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs (Fraser, 1992).
Such spaces can offer emancipatory potential through activities directed toward
‘wider publics’ (Fraser, 1992). This was not offered. The project worker articulated
her experience of economic considerations being decisive for the organisation’s
direction: ”the driving force seems to be not young people’s wants or needs but
what draws funding”. (Worker)
Through NPM processes community organizations suffer from lack of funding and
market-style competition for resources. Economic distribution in a neo-liberal context
means those at the lower end of the economic spectrum experience maldistribution.
Adequate funding would mean time for the young women to be able to develop their
70 F. GALE AND M. EDENBOROUGH

creative writing skills and carry out their writing projects with the worker’s support. Neo-
liberal NPM policies and practices converged with adultism to silence the young women
and so reproduce their marginalization.
Steeltown young people’s project experiences, encouragement from their community
and the worker, supported them to believe in different futures for themselves and act to
realize these. One young woman undertook a vocational real estate course; another
enrolled at university, explaining that she felt more confident to manage university
now. Following his graphic design work on the magazine, another member enrolled in
a graphic design course. Yet another has gone on to design another magazine and work
with a new young people’s group creating a magazine on young pregnant mothers.
The PawsUp young people’s project choice helped solve community problems, and
they enjoyed partnering with adults in this. The young men took their dogs to nursing
homes to visit elderly farmers who missed their working dogs. They used their skills to
help farmers interstate affected by floods (Meldrum-Hanna, 2011). The project has not
only addressed the initial issue of lack of community respect for ‘young black fellas,’ but
contributed local solutions to ‘glocal’ problems caused by neoliberal practice impacts on
rural Australia.
Farmers have less local control over markets as neoliberal economic globalization
increasingly results in international market integration so annual returns are unpredict­
able, costs rise, and profitability diminishes. Production costs can be more than profits
made, leading to debt. Resulting maldistribution (Fraser, 2008) is a key factor under­
mining rural livelihoods with declining rural communities losing labor to cities
(McMurray & Clendon, 2015). The Indigenous young men’s misrecognition (for exam­
ple, their negative stereotyping in public representations) meant their knowledge was not
recognized and valued by their wider community; the young men and the farmers were
not networked, and the young men rarely received offers of employment. Redressing that
misrecognition through the young men’s successful carriage of their PawsUp project has
enabled PawsUp young men to successfully form ‘Ag Lads.’ Ag Lads responds to the local
rural community’s needs for labor such as working with dogs, fencing, and harvesting,
moving in a direction of addressing maldistribution for both groups.

Discussion
The three cases presented in this paper illustrate the challenges of promoting and
enacting critical social justice practice. While neoliberalism is global and hence requires
global social work strategies (Spolander et al., 2014), its impacts are also ‘glocal’. The
young people’s projects described in this paper are local and limited. Nevertheless they
reveal how the hegemony of neoliberalism finds expression in local practices: the ways
those dynamics play out locally, impacting young people’s lives as well as social work
practices and agencies.
The projects also illustrate how contextualized critical social work practice can
effectively resist and interrupt local, specific neoliberal practices. Applying Fraser’s
criteria for transformative change all three young people’s projects proffer transformative
measures with potential to impact underlying structures which foster marginalization
(Fraser, 2008). This opens up prospects for sustained change, although the young women
Freelancers’ project from the metropolitan youth organization was curtailed. Social
 SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION 71

justice requires transformation in social relations (Fraser, 2008) and in two projects all
three of Fraser’s social justice interconnected dimensions are advanced. Through their
projects the Indigenous young men and homeless young people garnered positive
organizational and community recognition, unravelling dominant negative discourses
about young people in the public space and replacing them with discourses of value. Both
groups engaged with the community’s wider shared goals, participating as social peers.
Steeltown young people received official recognition for their contribution to bettering
community life (Business Council Award) and were invited to community meetings to
discuss the needs of homeless young people; while PawsUp members addressed neolib­
eral ‘glocal’ community concerns in new ways. Importantly for both groups, the projects
enabled re-distribution of material resources: business grants, employment skills and free
credit card accounts (Steeltown young people); credit union resources and employment
opportunities (PawsUp members).
At some points in all projects, neoliberal governmentality replicated and fortified
adultism and they mutually reinforced each other to privilege control and risk manage­
ment over young people’s innovation and voices. This conjunction particularly impacts
young people from contexts of structural inequality for whom neoliberal-inspired revival
of discourses of ‘deserving and un-deserving’ sanctions labels such as ‘untrustworthy’ and
‘irresponsible’ (Van Gramberg & Bassett, 2005).
In all three cases, however, critical theory narratives guided navigation of on-the-
ground dilemmas of practice (Bowers & Pack, 2017). A power analysis lay at the center of
each project and structural issues were identified as root causes of presenting problems,
leading to a focus on addressing the underlying generative framework (Fraser, 2008).
Grassroots methods underpinned the young people’s choices: these were not top-
down projects generated by governments or bureaucracies (including ‘the welfare’ as one
PawsUp member observed).
The young people identified that the concerns they selected to address, affecting them
personally and collectively, reflected wider power differentials and social arrangements:
that social justice requires transformation in social relations (Fraser, 2008). They chose
projects which impacted the public space; which showed the wider community the
dynamics of exclusion, so galvanizing a greater capacity for collective action and sus­
tained change. Through their projects the young people built alliances with community
groups. Their communities responded, embracing difference and developing an enlarged
understanding of interdependence.
Through inhabiting public space (PawsUp YP), launching their magazine into the
public domain (Steeltown YP), and media coverage (both projects), the young people’s
projects leveraged public space which enabled their particular knowledge claims to be
advanced; dismantling some obstacles to inclusivity and participatory parity (Fraser,
2008).
Critical social work actions employed by the workers and the social work researchers
included stepping back and ‘holding the space’ for a bottom-up collective approach,
sustaining community alliances, identifying devaluing discourses and gently advocating
and replacing these, and identifying points of leverage (openings to discussion and
possible change, including identifying staff within the organizations in which the projects
nested who would be open to influence). Workers operated within and were inseparable
72 F. GALE AND M. EDENBOROUGH

from the milieu of wider community alliances/indigenous community connections that

underlay change.
The role of the worker appeared significant in assisting the young people’s progression
of their goals. Where the worker was stymied, the young people had difficulty making
headway. The young women Freelancers encountered risk aversion and neoliberal
governmentality: their concerns were blocked in order to meet the organization’s key
performance indicators and neoliberal benchmarks, invalidating any uncensored crea­
tivity that might have jeopardized government funding. These processes not only con­
strained the workers’ professional autonomy, they diminished the young people’s
visibility, audibility, and agency, strengthening their marginalization and thwarted inno­
vation for social justice change. Positioning young people as ‘lesser than’ equal partners
prevented recognition and respect for their different approaches to imagining and work­
ing for change. In one project, spaces for change that young people tried to open up were
actively abolished. Consequently, organizations endorsing young people’s participatory
activism can reproduce their disconfirming experiences in the wider community, further
reinforcing their subordination.
The research involved increasing collaboration between the workers and social work
researchers. Collaborative interchanges between the academic and practical arms of
critical social work both enrich the critical tradition and provide opportunities for
advocacy—especially since workers’ freedom of expression is becoming more con­
strained under neoliberalism but academics have somewhat more freedom of expression
(Healy, 2001).
The young people’s projects offer key insights for social work practice education.
Tangibly demonstrating connections of theory to practice in action (Bowers & Pack,
2017), specific case examples assist students to link critical theory, practice and
research. The young people in all groups were explicit that they understood and
experienced the problems they identified not as related to individual deficiency or
requiring ‘the welfare’, as the PawsUp young men explained, but as having roots in
social causes and in unjust social structures. The projects illustrate the importance of
how we construct social work problems as this has vital implications for how we
’variously limit or extend’ our critical practice also drawing in how we see our capacity
to respond to problems (Fook, 2016; Morely et al., 2017). They identified their issues of
concern as collective issues, which they could approach collectively with valuable
collective knowledge. Thus, for the Indigenous young men, owning and engaging
with their PawsUp project not only enabled their local knowledge to translate into
wider community respect, but also facilitated the community’s problem-solving related
to local neoliberal impacts. Demonstrating both relevance and application of critical
social justice theories is imperative in the face of research which observes students
often find individualistic understandings easier to apply than critical social justice
perspectives (Fenton, 2014; Silva Brito, 2019). Accordingly, ‘our profession is easily
pushed towards a shallow (individualistic) analysis that embraces a symptom focussed
approach void of a root cause analysis’ (Silva Brito, 2019, p. 14). Such framing ‘becomes
congruent with an uncritical acceptance of neoliberal managerial social work’ (Fenton,
2014, pp. 328–329). These three cases demonstrates the importance of research
informed teaching as the young co-researchers in all three cases gave a significant
 SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION 73

message about the difference a social justice approach could or did make in their lives
(Bowers & Pack, 2017).
Seeing how linking critical social justice concepts with real life practice can make
a valuable difference in service users’ lives has been found to make application of critical
theory more ‘real’ and meaningful for students (Bowers & Pack, 2017, p. 101). In social
work education, case studies also provide a means to encourage critical thinking and
rehearsal of possible responses to practice dilemmas (Bowers & Pack, 2017).
Rexhepi and Torres (2011) argue knowledge acquisition is connected with ability to
effect change at local and broader levels. Knowledge relevant to students’ geographic and
cultural place may, they observe, be more important than top-down approaches of
traditional higher education models (Rexhepi & Torres, 2011). Accordingly, cultivating
student voice and agency on issues and experiences local to themselves and their
communities assists student skill and knowledge acquisition. For social work, under­
standing and addressing global issues is vital; at the same time social work also finds itself
dealing with the ‘glocal’—advancing people’s claims to social justice by re-presenting
people’s ‘situated’ needs, oppressions, ultimate concerns and resistances in response to
local manifestations of global issues (Ife, 2012, pp. 10–11).
These young people’s projects realistically depict a range of agency settings, in rural,
regional and metropolitan areas with diverse young people’s groups. They call attention
to the ‘challenges of enacting critical practice’ in the complex contexts that social workers
work within and often the ‘perceived gaps between our desire to contribute to progressive
social change and what we can actually do in practice’ (Morely et al., 2017, p, 35; see also
Fook, 2016). It is clear agencies varied in their acceptance or resistance to critical social
justice practices—in two projects changes were enacted with youth co-researchers in the
direction of transformative social justice. In the third the NPM barrier was essentially
based on mal-distribution of funding. As Fenton (2014) states, the agency setting needs
to ‘encourage, or at least not discourage’ (p. 331) critical social justice informed practice.
Neoliberalism though hegemonic, did not emerge as monolithic (Wallace & Pease, 2011,
p. 138). Unexpectedly, a government department as a hosting agency demonstrated most
flexibility in embracing the young people’s projects. It could take the necessary time to engage
with the Indigenous young men’s non-traditional project and welcome their innovative ideas.
We speculate that government departments, although also pressured to adopt neoliberal
NPM in their operations, avoid the same degree of funding anxiety that NGO’s experience
and so may better accommodate previously untried practices. In the Steeltown young
people’s project, the worker and social work researchers consciously identified opportunities
for influence, these interventions were effective, illustrating that social workers utilizing
critical social justice perspectives can sometimes influence the ethical climate of an agency
(Fenton, 2014, p. 331). Holscher and Sewpaul (2006, p. 268) call for social workers to look for
opportunities to advance critical social justice perspectives since solely using an individualistic
frame in neoliberal managerial contexts can lead us to support and reproduce the ‘very
systems which oppress and work against’ those with whom we work.

Conclusion
Far from being risky or requiring supervision, the young people given opportunities to
work for change contributed to community problem-solving. They enjoyed working with
74 F. GALE AND M. EDENBOROUGH

adults, valuing genuine power-sharing. Their projects revealed communities can and do
respond; dynamics can change. The young people’s projects illustrate that the current
status quo need not be ‘taken for granted or seen as natural’; that change can come about
by inviting the development of alternatives (Holscher & Sewpaul, 2006, p. 267) and need
not be on a grand scale (Wallace & Pease, 2011).
‘Practice-near’ research observes practice as it happens. Limited until recent years, this
research method is valuable in social work education, because, as Morrison notes, it
illuminates both what prevents and promotes effective social work practices (Morrison,
2016). In teaching social work students to work with young people, these case studies
underscore the importance of embedding social justice perspectives in the worker’s
relationship with young service users. In all three case studies the young people empha­
sised that this was the kind of relationship they wanted with their worker: ‘giving us the
choice’ (PawsUp YP). In two case studies where socially just change was progressed,
social justice practices were enabled through redressing the power imbalance between
worker and young people. Recognising that power influences communication, the
worker invited the young people to choose the issues they wanted changed. The young
people defined the issues they confronted as rooted in social hierarchies which reproduce
inequalities; rather than viewing them as individual failings. Seeing the young people as
experts in their life experiences, the worker invited them to devise their preferred
approach to the issues they identified and take ownership/control of their projects with
the worker’s active support.
To put social justice perspectives into practice, students also require awareness of the
impact of cultural and social contexts on their communication and its interpretation
among diverse groups of young people (Lefevre, 2015). For example, Australian
Indigenous practices of ‘deep listening’ (Stronach & Adair, 2014) and testing trust in
the light of past and present colonial experiences (Cuneen, 2008); meant the worker spent
months just sitting with the PawsUp young men before they revealed their ideas. Under
time pressure and without relevant cultural awareness, the worker may have assumed the
young men were not interested. As Lefevre (2015) also reminds us, awareness of how the
social work context of young service users’ prior experiences of social work, impacts
current engagement, is also essential. For example, social work has not infrequently been
exercised in a social control manner with all three groups of young people (Indigenous;
homeless and those with mental illness) involved in the case studies.
Thoroughly equipping graduating social work students with critical theory frameworks
can enable them to identify systemic obstacles that impact emancipatory engagement and
limit social work’s effectiveness with young service users (Morrison, 2016). The third case
study, in particular, (the Freelancers), illustrated some of the contextual and systemic
obstacles social workers encounter when seeking to operationalise emancipatory relation­
ships and young people’s activism. Insecure and inadequate funding along with managerialist
pressures (such as quantifying and justifying outcomes) hindered the worker’s capacity to
respond to what the young women were offering. Given their pervasiveness, neoliberal
influences can go unrecognised within systems which social workers inhabit. Social work
with young people is increasingly tied to neoliberal risk management and social control and
thus risks superficial analyses that disregard young people’s social and economic circum­
stances and misconstrue their genuine needs (Fenton, 2018; Rogowski, 2011). It is crucial to
include opportunities in social work curricula for students to apply critical social justice
 SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION 75

perspectives in practice scenarios. These can highlight where neoliberal values contradict
social work’s ethical codes and values, and encourage reflective discussion on how these
frames constrain or extend social work practice with young service users (Herrero &
Charnley, 2020). Knowledge of critical theory perspectives, such as Fraser’s, can assist social
work students to reflect on whether their understandings and interventions are likely to be
transformative (Fraser, 2008): that is, progressing dimensions of social justice.
Cognitive approaches alone, however, are insufficient for promoting the social empa­
thy required to understand the structural situations of young people from their perspec­
tives and take action: rather, to promote social empathy experiential means are suggested
(Fenton, 2018; Lefevre, 2015). Case studies, role plays and hearing service users’ stories
are some ways by which students can connect with feelings and lived experiences of the
impacts of social and economic inequalities (Fenton, 2018; Herrero & Charnley, 2020).
For example, the sense of humiliation a young homeless woman in the Steeltown group
endured when she was spat on in the street, and the feelings associated with devaluation
and stigmatisation that PawsUp YP described.
Central for students preparing for work with young people is to be clear on the need to
foreground and activate the UN mandate of young people’s right to participation (now
framed in policies, practices, law and ethical frameworks (Lefevre, 2015) and to enact it in
genuine, not tokenistic ways. Not only is social empathy promoted by hearing young people’s
voices and experiences and through social workers working with young people collabora­
tively, but the UN mandate on young people’s active participation provides a yardstick for
agency policies and practices and a framework which can challenge neoliberal influences.
In sum this paper shows that critical social work, via bottom-up collective approaches, can
demonstrably open up spaces and shape discourses that challenge those dominant cultural
patterns that hinder ‘parity of participation’. It can replace such discourses with patterns that
promote participatory parity. This is most powerful for those who experience greatest
impacts, in intersecting contexts of structural inequality, such as the young people involved
in their collective projects, who had a key role in making critiques, fashioning solutions and
creating alternatives. Social work students exposed to critical social work in action, have
opportunity to confirm social justice as part of the core brief for social work professionals.
These findings coalesce in affirming a robust role for critical social work in contribut­
ing to progressing transformative socially just change.

Acknowledgments
In memory of Professor Natalie Bolzan (1958 – 2017), Margaret Whitlam Chair of Social Work,
Western Sydney University, champion of children and young people’s participation and human
rights.

Disclosure statement
Author one, Fran Gale was responsible for the co-design and carriage of the research and with
author two, Michel Edenborough responsible for this written manuscript. By submitting this
manuscript we declare that this manuscript and its essential content has not been published
elsewhere or that it is considered for publication in another outlet. No competing interests exist
that have influenced or can be perceived to have influenced the text.
76 F. GALE AND M. EDENBOROUGH

Funding
The research described was funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant
LP0668286.

Notes on contributors
Fran Gale Senior Lecturer in Social Work and Community Welfare, at Western Sydney University
and has extensive experience in research and work with marginalised groups, particularly but not
solely with young people including those from traumatised backgrounds. Fran has a key interest in
research on social change through a focus on equity, social inclusion and participatory citizenship.
Michel Edenborough Lecturer in Social Work and Community Welfare at Western Sydney
University. Michel researches in the transdisciplinary areas of well-being; social inclusivity; inter-
cultural understanding, connectedness and belonging. Related research interests explore co-design
and co-creative participatory approaches promoting social change.

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