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The need for a community-led, holistic service response to Aboriginal young people with cognitive disability in remote areas: a case study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2020

Ruth McCausland Open the ORCID record for Ruth McCausland [Opens in a new window]  and
Leanne Dowse Open the ORCID record for Leanne Dowse [Opens in a new window]
Ruth McCausland*
Affiliation:
School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Leanne Dowse
Affiliation:
School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia
*
Author for correspondence: Ruth McCausland, Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

There are multiple structural and practical barriers to Aboriginal young people with cognitive disability in remote areas receiving the support and services they need. Multidisciplinary mixed-methods research over the past decade has provided evidence of the ways that many such young people end up with complex support needs and being ‘managed’ by police and justice agencies in the absence of appropriate early intervention, transition support and community-based options. This article presents and synthesises knowledge generated by this body of work and contextualises it within the experiences and trajectory of a young Aboriginal woman with cognitive disability and complex support needs from a remote town. This case study is drawn from a New South Wales linked administrative dataset containing data from health, housing, disability, human services, police, legal, court and justice agencies on a cohort of people who have been incarcerated. The article draws out key principles and strategies to suggest what a community-led, holistic service response could have looked like for Casey.

Keywords

disabilityIndigenous researchsocial servicesyouth justicecase study
Type
Articles
Information
Children Australia , Volume 45 , Special Issue 4: Special Issue: Poverty and Child Abuse , December 2020 , pp. 326 - 334
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The authors confirm that this article is an original work that has not been submitted to nor published elsewhere.

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