A Difficult Journey: How Participation in an Indigenous Cultural Helper Program Impacts the Practice of Settler Social Workers Supporting Indigenous Service Users
Date
2019-05-28
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Abstract
The impacts of the Indian Residential School System and other assimilationist policies have had a devastating impact on the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. As a result, Indigenous Peoples frequently experience poorer economic, health, and social outcomes, including experiencing homelessness at a greater rate than settler Canadians. Unfortunately, social work as a profession has been complicit in this history of colonization and still struggles to work effectively with Indigenous Peoples. In this post Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada era, it is incumbent upon the social work profession to actively seek better ways of working with Indigenous service users as reconciliation is not possible whilst such inequities continue to exist. Homeward Trust Edmonton (HTE), with the Housing First (HF) program, have developed a unique strategy to work more effectively with the Indigenous Peoples they house. It is called the Indigenous Cultural Helper Program (ICHP). This program offers housing support staff the opportunity to learn about Indigenous histories, worldviews, cultures and ceremonies in order that they may experience and understand the significance that (re)connection to culture can have for people attempting to connect with home. This research study interviewed settler housing support workers who had taken part in activities offered by the ICHP to determine if their participation had any impact on their housing support work with the Indigenous Peoples in the program. An anti-colonial research methodology for settler researchers doing research in Indigenous sovereignty was used for this research (Liz Carlson, 2016 a, 2016b). Through participants’ rich narratives, the research found that the housing support workers were impacted personally, in their relationships with the Indigenous service users they work with, and in how they view the transformations necessary within their organizations.
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Keywords
Indigenous Cultural Helper, Indigenous homelessness and housing, Anti-colonial settler social work, spirituality in housing support, Housing First
Citation
Slessor, J. (2019). A Difficult Journey: How Participation in an Indigenous Cultural Helper Program Impacts the Practice of Settler Social Workers Supporting Indigenous Service Users (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.