Special Assembly of the Synod on the

Family (5-19 October 2014)

Caritas Australia Input

Pastoral Challenges to the Family in the
Context of Evangelization
Introductory Remarks
Caritas Australias programs are focused on addressing the extreme poverty that afflicts children,
women and men in some 35 countries of the world. In collaboration with our partners, many of
them agencies of the local and national church, we accompany families and communities supporting
them to increase their resilience, independence and influence. Caritas and the local Church walk
together to support and strengthen people in their families.
While this paper will focus on Caritas Australias unique work with families among Australias First
Peoples, it is important briefly to identify some broader lessons learnt by Caritas Australia about the
challenges families face. These issues have been captured most recently by the Australian Catholic
Bishops in their Social Justice Statement for 2013-2014, Lazarus at our Gate - A critical moment in
the fight against world poverty. This statement draws on the work of Caritas Australia.
i

Pastoral Challenges reflected in the teaching of the Australian Bishops
In their Social Justice Statement of 2013-2014
ii
, the Australian Catholic Bishops stated,
We are also conscious that, although enormous progress has been made in alleviating poverty
throughout the world, there is still a great amount left to achieve. It is estimated that by 2015
almost one billion people will be living on an income of less than $1.25 a day.
iii
Over a quarter of
a million women still die in childbirth annually. As many as eight million children die every year
from malnutrition and preventable diseases such as diarrhoea, measles and malaria.
iv
One in
eight of the worlds people does not get adequate nutrition.
v

Drawing from the stories of the families and communities with whom Caritas Australia and its
partners work, the Bishops outline five examples of areas where the world needs to focus its effort:
those who are hungriest;
those most vulnerable to disasters;
Indigenous peoples;
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those with disabilities; and
those uprooted from their homelands by conflict or oppression.
vi

All of these groups are comprised by families. It is helpful briefly to reflect on the particular
challenges these families face. The Australian bishops make the following observations:
Women in developing nations face the responsibility of feeding and caring for their families
and are particularly vulnerable to precarious circumstances.
vii

In the developing world, 500 million smallholder and family farms produce 80 per cent of the
food consumed.
viii
Yet often these farmers find themselves forced to grow produce for export
markets and are no longer producing enough food for their families and local consumption.
ix

Indigenous peoples face far greater health, welfare, educational and social challenges than
non-Indigenous people do. They are over-represented among the worlds poor and among
those facing oppression and social, political and economic exclusion. Cultural, geographical
and language-based discrimination deprive them of education, basic human services, skills
training and employment opportunities. Worldwide, Indigenous peoples fare worse than the
majority populations around them, particularly with regard to health, child mortality rates
and education.
x
This face of inequality and poverty, so prevalent around the world and in
Australia, is often related to a history of dispossession and the loss of self-determination in
the life of families and communities.
xi

In developing countries, 90 per cent of children living with disabilities do not go to school. As
few as one per cent of disabled adults in such societies can read and write.
xii

For millions of refugees, it will be many years before they can find a home again. Some never
do. Of the refugee population under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees, around two-thirds 6.4 million people had been in these circumstances for
five years or longer. Refugee camps can be the size of small cities: the one in Dadaab, Kenya,
is home to about half a million people, including some 10,000 third-generation refugees born
in the camp.
xiii
Not only have these people lost access to their livelihoods, their extended
families and their faith communities, but they are very often prevented from moving around
freely, earning a living wage or planning for their futures. Those displaced from their homes
are prone to disease and trauma, causing them to experience poverty at many different
levels, no matter how high their education or employment levels before.
xiv

Pastoral Challenges facing Australias First Peoples
Just over half a million Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in Australia (about 2.5% of
population). Despite their pre-eminence as the continents first inhabitants or First Australians the
indigenous population has a lower life expectancy, higher rates of illness and imprisonment, and
lower levels of education than the non-Indigenous Australian population.
In particular, young people have been identified as a particularly vulnerable group by several of
Caritas Australias partners. The symptoms of their despair are highly visible. The rejection young
people experience all around them (evidenced by the obscene rates of incarceration which plague
First Australians, systemic neglect of children, high rates of unemployment, welfare dependency,
chronic lifestyle diseases, the absence of fathers and grandfathers and policies which demean and
belittle their human dignity) exacerbates the intensity of the crisis of meaning they experience. This
challenge must be addressed.
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The need to provide long-term, on-country support for Aboriginal young people has become a
priority concern for the First Australian Program Partners of Caritas Australia. In particular our
partners have recommended that we support community-led programs for young people that
strengthen families to reduce the levels of suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, petrol sniffing and
violence.
Lessons Learnt from Australias First Peoples
From our relationship with the men and their families from the Kinchela Boys Home (KBH) in the
rural area of the State of New South Wales, for example, Caritas has learned that the major causes
of trauma for these men are due to the following factors:
their forced removal from their families;
the experiences they suffered in their childhood; and
their difficult returns to families and communities, which sometimes involved more
rejection.
For most of the KBH men, talking about their pain and what they experienced in the Kinchela Boys
Home has been too difficult. As a consequence they have suffered in silence and sought comfort in
ways that has been damaging to their health and to their relationships with family, friends and
their communities.
The key priority of Caritas partner, the Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation is to address the
social and emotional wellbeing of the KBH men and their families and to assist in the healing of
trauma that continues to adversely affect them. The KBH men who are still alive fall in between the
50 90 age range. The KBH brotherhood has helped many of the men confront their trauma and find
ways to talk to their families about their experiences and the impact this has had on them.
Specific Programs bringing about change for first Australian families
Caritas Australia is working with organisations and communities to close these gaps by fostering
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander led solutions which focus on healing and increasing well-being.
Specific examples are discussed below.
Local Church, Indigenous led, strengthening community and family
A Caritas partner in the Northern Territory, Top End Catholic Aboriginal Corporation (TECAC) ahs
worked with St Martin de Porres Church to build a strong community that keeps going from strength
to strength.
This community prides itself on engaging with indigenous youth and helping young indigenous adults
in the region experiencing shame, grief and vulnerability associated with generational trauma.
TECAC also undertakes outreach work to indigenous communities in remote communities of
Western Australia and the Northern Territory including; Wadeye, Daly River, Bathurst Island,
Katherine and Santa Teresa.
Some in the community have mobility issues associated with frail age, disability or sickness, while
some others are members of the stolen generation.
The following stories provide a snapshot of the TECACs challenges and achievements.
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Aunty Maria was taken from her home at age 7 from Mount Doreen Station near Yuendumu.
This welfare officer came and asked my brother and I if we wanted to go for a ride in his truck and
we got excited for someone to take us, but we were never to return, Aunty Maria said.
They took us to the Bungalow and my mother and father didnt even know what happened.
Years later she was reunited with her mother, but for Maria and others like her who attend St
Martins its had a big impact and the healing community of St Martin de Porres has made a huge
difference.
Aunty Nancy Gibbs is another impacted. She receives regular outreach and visits in their Aged care
community home from St Martins.
I was too small when I grew up in the Tanami and policeman used to come up on horseback and
take us away from our mothers and put us in a home, Aunty Nancy said.
I grew up in the home, they call us the stolen generation.
Aboriginal elders in the community are invaluable at St Martins.
Today the community not only has a rich heritage and cultural diversity but its growing. It also
reaches out to asylum seekers who often come to church and receive support from within the
diverse community.
Keeping families together when they have to be apart
In a remote central Australia desert area, the western desert Nganampa Walytja Palyantjaku Tjutaku
Aboriginal Corporation (WDNWPT) is small Community-Controlled Aboriginal Health Service with the
primary aim of improving life for people with End Stage Renal Failure (ESRF) who have been forced
to move away from their country to access treatment in Alice Springs.
The organisations mission is to enhance the wellbeing and sense of meaning for women and men
being served by WDNWPT through sustainable social enterprises which bring together trainees,
volunteers, patients, their families and communities. In particular, patients and trainees work
together to produce a variety of bush balms and soaps. The Caritas-supported program increases the
resilience of families in the following ways:
By providing meaningful employment and income for dialysis patients through the
production and sale of bush balms;
Contributing to the retention of traditional knowledge by providing activities through which
this knowledge will be passed on to the younger generations;
Training the younger generations (girls) in all stages of the production, marketing and sale of
bush balms as well as providing the opportunity for them to learn business management
skills;
Retaining connections between patients and their families through utilising family networks
to source and harvest materials for bush balm production; and
Providing a space of cultural safety and dadirri (listening, stillness) at the Purple House.
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Healing families
Red Dust Healing is a specific cultural healing program, written from an Indigenous perspective, and
targeted at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men, women and families. The targeted age is 14-
years and older. The program is based on an ancient and traditional philosophy that engages and
encourages Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men, women and families to confront the problems,
rejection and anger in their life and to understand the links between the intergenerational trauma
they experience and colonization.
Colonisation attacked three essential elements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men:
Identity their image of who they were was distorted through the harsh practices of
assimilation,
Responsibility men were stripped of their traditional roles, which saw them once with
responsibilities to love and nurture, to teach, hunt, make tools, shelter, canoes, etc., and
Relationship both men and women were taken away from the families, and the results of
this today have left many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men not knowing how to
build relationships within their own families, and amongst other men.
One of the key principals and beliefs of the Red Dust Healing program is that if you allow the man to
heal and restore the role of men, you also take huge steps towards healing the family. One of the
main components of this program is the examination of what it means to be a real Aboriginal or
Torres Strait Islander Man. The program provides cultural tools that can be used in day-to-day life for
overcoming rejection.
Positive feedback from Red Dust Healing workshops suggests that the tools encourage participants
to rediscover their pride and find strength within their identity as Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people. Interviews filmed with participants and their family members demonstrate
significant impact from the program including:
reconciling broken relationships,
becoming stronger role models and parents,
re-entering the workforce,
regaining guardianship of their children,
communicating about conflict, loss and trauma,
overcoming additions, and
remaining outside of the prison system.
Some of these changes may be observed in the extracts taken from participants stories quoted
below:
One goes back to the saplings, to the little children. The hurts that come back because of the
tremendous hurts that the adults have been through, thats why the hurts keep going and going and
going its a never-ending cycle. With showing people the tree and experiencing that the hurts dont
have to go back, understanding that weve been hurt might hopefully prevent those hurts going back
to the children. (female participant)
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Hopefully by passing the tools on, and showing them (my children) the tools, its breaking that cycle
and making them stronger in culture, making them stronger as a person and making them stronger
in the community, that they can give back and make our people stronger. (female participant)
I found the LORE really resonated with me If you are strong in who you are it doesnt mean that
youve got to know exactly where youre from, it doesnt mean you have to know all of your family
but if youre strong in who your family are, where you were raised, your sense of self and where you
belong, I think if you know that you have your integrity, you have your honesty, you have power.
Which keeps you away from the other side which is the LAW that gets a lot of our people into a lot
of trouble. (female participant)
Concluding Remarks How the Church can strengthen families who are
vulnerable to extreme poverty and injustice
Our First Peoples have taught us as Church to recognise and celebrate their strengths: these can be
nurtured and increased if people are respected, acknowledged and allowed to lead their own
development. Applying this learning in a broader world and to the whole Church, Caritas Australia
believes that successful pastoral and other programs designed to strengthen family life will have the
following characteristics:
welcome, involve, inculcate a sense of belonging for and ultimately be led by those who are
hungriest; those on the margins of opportunity; those most vulnerable to disasters;
Indigenous peoples; those with disabilities; and those uprooted from their homelands by
conflict or oppression;
address the social and emotional wellbeing of these individuals and their families and assist
in the healing of trauma that continues to adversely affect them;
foster local and highly participatory community and family led solutions which focus on
increasing well-being;
provide a space of cultural safety and dadirri (listening, stillness);
address questions relevant to individual and cultural identity on the basis that if one allows
the man or woman to heal and restore the roles of women and men, one also takes huge
steps towards healing the family; and
provide tools which encourage participants to rediscover their pride and find strength within
their identity as well as tools which can be used in day-to-day life for overcoming rejection.
Children, women and men who experience extreme poverty and injustice are rich in the eyes of
Jesus whose compassion inspires us to change and to place these families first. They are a source of
innumerable wealth in our world.

i
Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC), Social Justice Statement 2013-2014 Lazarus at our Gate - A
critical moment in the fight against world poverty, page 2.
ii
Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC), Social Justice Statement 2013-2014 Lazarus at our Gate - A
critical moment in the fight against world poverty, page 3.
iii
United Nations (2012), The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012, New York, p. 3.
iv
World Bank (2011), Millennium Development Goals: Reduce Child Mortality by 2015, available at
http://www.worldbank.org/mdgs/child_mortality.html
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Caritas Australia August 2014 Page 7


v
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (2012), The State of Food Insecurity in the
World 2012, Executive Summary, p. 2.
vi
Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC), Social Justice Statement 2013-2014 Lazarus at our Gate - A
critical moment in the fight against world poverty, page 2.
vii
Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC), Social Justice Statement 2013-2014 Lazarus at our Gate - A
critical moment in the fight against world poverty, page 5.
viii
K Nwanze (2011), Smallholders can feed the world, Viewpoint, International Fund for Agricultural
Development, Rome, p. 1.
ix
Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC), Social Justice Statement 2013-2014 Lazarus at our Gate - A
critical moment in the fight against world poverty, page 7.
x
World Health Organization (2007), Health of indigenous people, Fact sheet no. 326, available at
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs326/en/index.html
xi
Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC), Social Justice Statement 2013-2014 Lazarus at our Gate - A
critical moment in the fight against world poverty, page 9.
xii
United Nations (2011), Disability and the Millennium Development Goals, New York, p. 8. See Australian
Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC), Social Justice Statement 2013-2014 Lazarus at our Gate - A critical
moment in the fight against world poverty, page 10
xiii
Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC), Social Justice Statement 2013-2014 Lazarus at our Gate - A
critical moment in the fight against world poverty, page 11.
xiv
Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC), Social Justice Statement 2013-2014 Lazarus at our Gate - A
critical moment in the fight against world poverty, page 11.