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Strong in Family and Culture

Posted on April 8, 2025 - Case Studies

Making culture & Family Possible for Disconnected Children

Central Qld Indigenous Development (CQID) & CSnet

Through their generous sharing of knowledge and experience from Jason Field (CEO) and James Mundy (General Manager Children’s Services) from Central Queensland Indigenous Development (CQID), we learn about the history and growth of CQID, the work of the Strong in Family and Culture Program, implementing Delegated Authority as a government policy of transferring decision making to Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations and how the use of CSnet supports the way that CQID embeds strong cultural practice and the work every day towards achieving better outcomes for Aboriginal children, families and communities.

 

1. Making Culture & Family Possible for Disconnected Children

Mandy Doon from CSnet talks with Jason Field (CEO) and James Mundy (General Manager Children’s Services) from Central Queensland Indigenous Development (CQID). After an Acknowledgement of Country from James, Jason begins with the background and history of CQID.

“Central Queensland Indigenous Development is an Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation. We have a footprint that covers locations from Rockhampton, to the Livingston Shire, we go as far West as the border, we have an office in Longridge, Emerald, Woorabinda, Gladstone, we go as far South as Hervey Bay, Maryborough and Bundaberg where we also have offices.”
“We currently have 234 staff. 90% of those team members are Indigenous or Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander. Our primary focus is supporting community wherever those needs and supports are required. Our primary services are around child protection, so our focus is on supporting children. Delegated Authority is a responsibility under which we’re supporting Aboriginal children returning home from being placed in the child protection system, where they’re highly over-represented.”
We also introduce the other parts of the conversation reflected in each short audio that accompanies the case study
  • Part 2 – Listen to the ‘why’ for embedding Family Strong in Culture into the program. See and hear about the Aboriginal artwork that depicts the four core values of the Strong in Family & Culture Program – Voice, Family, Culture, Belonging
  • Part 3 – Learn about the underpinning principles of data integrity and self-determination in the design of the program, hear how the governance of Aboriginal family stories, confidence of families and communities who work alongside CQID, and the role of the CSnet client information system can strengthen and support those principles
  • Part 4 – Hear about how the cultural work and services are delivered including Strong in Family and Culture (Delegated Authority) & other CQID programs including –
    • finding family – know what works best
    • cultural support activities & engagement – know what works and for who
    • family connections – record the stories & cultural heritage that belongs to the child & ensure that information is never lost

We hear about the learning that is supported by testing ways of doing things, and finally, we discuss how we work together in partnership to achieve better outcomes.

We urge you to listen to the stories in each short Part through the voices of Jason Field and James Mundy from CQID.

 

2.Why Family Strong in Culture

James talks about the CQID’s approach to Delegated Authority and implementing what is called the Strong in Family and Culture Program.

In terms of how we decided to implement [the program] we had cultural community authority from our traditional custodians and elders within our local community and it wasn’t something that we took lightly – it was their decision that they wanted us to proceed down this path.

“There were two big worries that the community wanted us to address and what the two biggest worries were:
– One, we wanted to address the over-representation and stop Aboriginal children coming into care
– But more importantly, we wanted to ensure that the children that were in the [child protection] system grew up connected to their family and connected to their culture so they had a stronger sense of identity and a sense of belonging.”

How we developed the Strong in Family & Culture Program was based off the views and wishes of the elders in the community. We then aligned that approach to the Child Protection Act, which was section 87 and section 88, which is that Jason our CEO, is the formal Delegate and decision maker for family time and connection to culture and community.

Through our practice and our journey of improving towards better outcomes for our young people, we decided to expand those Delegations into section 51, which is the development of case plans and implementation of the child’s case plan through the great work of our employees and walking alongside children and families. Through Jason as the Delegate we’re able to exercise Section 82, which is actually making decisions about placing children back into their family.

“That was our vision, but we certainly did not just want to be decision makers. We wanted to ensure that we developed a program that provided all the necessary supports required to not only find and connect family, but then to sustain that connection into a permanent placement.”

Aboriginal artwork that depicts Voice, Family, Connection, Belonging

James talks about the artwork and story behind it.

It’s an incredible piece of artwork, which I must acknowledge Brendan Butler, who’s the artist for that art piece that you see there.

“We wanted to ensure that when we implemented the Strong in Family and Culture program that it didn’t deviate or move away from what the original vision of the program was. And so as we’ve expanded the number of children the number of Delegations [in the program] we wanted to ensure that we stayed true to what the community wanted and what our vision was of that program.

So we came up with four core principles. They are four overarching principles for the program –

  • Voice
  • Family
  • Connection
  • Culture

Those four core values are actually within that artwork…”

  • You can see the four Aboriginal symbols around the outside. That’s in recognition of family – they represent the child, a man, a woman and an elder. Our vision is to ensure that children are connected to three generations – both maternal and paternal and so by connecting the child back to man, woman, which can be father, uncle, grandfather, mother, auntie and their elders, they’ll actually go on a healing journey through the Darumbal waters. And then you can see that through the healing journey of the water, they’re all connecting in the middle there, and that represents the coming together on a meeting place and then having their own individual journey through the rivers.
  • You can see the new birth of a tree, which is their new journey, and their new healing thanks to the service delivery and being connected back to mob.
  • You can see cultures represented up to the right hand side with the Torres Strait Islander flag, the Aboriginal flag and two prominent symbols, as well as the symbols around the outside
  • In the darker piece, the artwork and the symbols down at the bottom are the symbols for love and shelter, which is representative of the core value of belonging
  • On the left hand side is voice, and so those symbols are mob coming together on country and that represents self determination and having their voices heard about matters that impact them.

Straight away, the families know that they’re not getting the same service that they would from the department, essentially. … in terms of explaining and ensuring that the families and the children understand what the program is and what we’re there to do, it’s moved away from the norm of just paperwork and flyers and brochures. As soon as we start explaining the program, utilising artwork, that they know that this is a program that is culturally responsive and culturally developed.

“… we wanted to deliver a program that actually culturally met the needs of our families. So instead of taking out brochures or paperwork or your typical A4 document, we’ve actually created an artwork to explain the story or what their journey will be with our staff walking alongside them. So it’s not only an artwork piece where we can yarn to families and children about what our program is, it also connects people like the session here today where we can explain what the core values are, what the program entails. It also supports with our recruitment to ensure that the people that are employed to work within the program and walk alongside our staff are our families are aligned to those four core values.”

 

3. Data integrity and Self Determination in Decision Making

James talks about why data integrity and self determination underpin the work of CQID and the role of the CSnet client information system in supporting those principles.

“…families are entrusting our organisation with their storylines and their family lines. And so it was really important to us that we made the decision to develop our own client management system. And again, our families and our ancestors and our elders have entrusted us to ensure that their data and their storylines are kept confidential and that they know that the information that they’re sharing is kept private with us because they’ve entrusted us to share some pretty sensitive Information

One example is that we’ve been able to map for one young person about 200 family members, which went back, I think, 5 or 6 generations. And so when you look at that on its own, that was obviously some very sensitive information, cultural information that family shared with our organisation. And so we needed to ensure that we were aware of who and how that information was going to be collated and stored safely.

“…it gives confidence to our families, that family information that they’re sharing isn’t being inputted into a government system or client management system where we didn’t have any self determination or any sovereignty over that for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Sovereignty is a very important part of our being and so we needed to ensure that data sovereignty was also a part of how we designed the program, which is why it aligned with CSnet in terms of connecting people, data and outcomes. So not only are we able to give faith and confidence to the families and the communities that we’re serving. But it also gives us information on how we’re doing the work and to ensure that we’re measuring our outcomes effectively.”

We discuss the roll out of other in CQID programs beyond Strong in Family and Culture for a whole-of-organisation client information system.

CQID had huge expansion in terms of the program and the footprint that we have. So we essentially developed CSnet for Strong in Family and Culture. But now we’ve rolled that out to include other programs including Next Step Plus, and extended post care. We’re utilising it for our ions programs as well. We’re looking at expanding to Woorabinda for our Youth Services as well. And now we’re looking at trying to link that in, to Foster and Kinship care.

“The rationale, and I guess the importance of connecting those particular programs within CSnet, is that we’ve been able to track a continuum of care through all of those programs and a lot of the children within Strong in Family and Culture, are aligned to those other programs.”

Our Foster and kinship care programs safely assess kin carers and try to make a formal placement. Next Step Plus and extended post care programs are there to walk alongside young people to ensure that they have strong independent living skills for when they transition out of care. Recognising the importance of support that’s required for when they turn 18 is the other rationale. And then we’re looking at also in our Out of Home Care programs, we don’t use the term residential home, we call it a transitional home because we recognise the importance that there are families and mob out there for these young people and that they should never be in a residential home – it’s a transitional home to get them back to families so we’ve identified the benefit of CSnet to support connection internally with those programs.

“CQID was very adamant that we wanted to ensure that it was language being used that was reflective of what we wanted to achieve.
So Delegated Authority is the government’s term, but obviously we wanted to use Strong in Family and Culture because that’s what we wanted to do – to strengthen family and cultural connections for children and then that meant that implementing a client management system, we were then able to translate that language in a way that worked not only for our staff but is representative of the way that we talk.”

I think language is very important. I think language is one of the blockages where there’s misinterpretation and where people sometimes misunderstand each other – the lack of a shared language for how we communicate – communication and language for us in our service delivery and client management system is absolutely important. – James Mundy

 

4. A whole-of-organisation solution rolled out in stages for multi-programs

James discusses the roll out of other in CQID programs beyond Strong in Family and Culture for a whole-of-organisation client information system solution –

CQID had huge expansion in terms of the program and the footprint that we have. So we essentially developed CSnet for Strong in Family and Culture. But now we’ve rolled that out to include other programs including

  • Next Step Plus
  • Extended Post-Care
  • Alcohol and Other Drugs (AODs) support

Expanding to Foster and Kinship care, and to Woorabinda for our Youth Services

“The rationale, and I guess the importance of connecting those particular programs within CSnet, is that we’ve been able to track a continuum of care through all of those programs and a lot of the children within Strong in Family and Culture, are aligned to those other programs.”

Our Foster and kinship care programs safely assess kin carers and try to make a formal placement. Next Step Plus and extended post care programs are there to walk alongside young people to ensure that they have strong independent living skills for when they transition out of care. Recognising the importance of support that’s required for when they turn 18 is the other rationale. And then we’re looking at also in our Out of Home Care programs, we don’t use the term residential home, we call it a transitional home because we recognise the importance that there are families and mob out there for these young people and that they should never be in a residential home – it’s a transitional home to get them back to families so we’ve identified the benefit of CSnet to support connection internally with those programs.

“CQID was very adamant that we wanted to ensure that it was language being used that was reflective of what we wanted to achieve.
So Delegated Authority is the government’s term, but obviously we wanted to use Strong in Family and Culture because that’s what we wanted to do – to strengthen family and cultural connections for children and then that meant that implementing a client management system, we were then able to translate that language in a way that worked not only for our staff but is representative of the way that we talk.”

I think language is very important. I think language is one of the blockages where there’s misinterpretation and where people sometimes misunderstand each other – the lack of a shared language for how we communicate – communication and language for us in our service delivery and client management system is absolutely important.

 

5. Cultural practice, data & reports support decision making & learning

James talks about the work alongside children and families that the Strong in Family & Culture program does every day and some examples of how CQID designs the program, tests and learns from the records:

There is actually no research about the best way to find family … we’ve developed our own finding family strategies where we’ve got about 11 different strategies which we thought would be strategies that would help find family. However, we needed to test that and then obviously capture that so we had evidence to substantiate a framework that we wanted to back. The work of frontline staff to find family gets inputted into the client management system, and documented as evidence of how they came about finding that family. Was it through our normal internal family participation program? Was it through Yarning to local elders? Was it by hunting and gathering information and then actually having to go to a different community to build trust and rapport? And so we’re able to export a report over time around what was the most effective finding family method. That way we can not only inform our future, but also inform other agencies, child safety, other ACCOs across the state, that these are the best methods for finding family and then reconnecting children back to their families. That was one of the most important things around how we substantiate an evidence framework around how these methods work best.

Then secondly, one of the core components is connecting children back to their culture. And so we co-designed this with our Elders Advisory group where we identified a whole cultural menu – there’s about 30 different cultural activities that the child gets to choose and engage in.

“We wanted to substantiate and evidence our framework around whether these [finding family & cultural connection strategies] are the most effective or the most interesting cultural activities for children and young people. So again, once our frontline workers go through that process, sit down and have a yarn with the child or young person around what they want to engage in, they can then identify which are the most effective or the most engaging cultural activities for children and young people.

And then to the family connections – it’s most important. We enter everything into CSnet, then once the child has either exited out of care or transitioned out due to age, we’re able to provide all of this information back to them because that’s their storyline and that’s the most important thing that we’re able to then give the child their family tree. We’re able to give them photos and memories about what they’ve done while CQID has supported them through Strong in Family and Culture”

 

The really important stuff for us and the frontline staff is getting kids back home which is the heart-warming piece of work.

“… informing the sector is also important for me. And when you look at the statewide roll-out now with Delegated Authority, there’s eight other Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations rolling out Delegated Authority. We’re now able to continue to inform the sector about what are the most effective ways to connect children back to family and culture and CQID have been able to do that thanks to a client management system that provides evidence for our service and what we achieve.”

… because of putting [the records] into the system, particularly the cultural activities and the way we do the work, we’re able to go yeah, actually that’s not an effective strategy. We need to audit that and basically just reflect our own [more effective] practice moving forward.

And finally some words from Mandy and James about how we work together –

“It’s about seeing ourselves as partners in the long term … we need to keep having conversations and ongoing contact to ‘test’ things and adjust the system over time so that it meets your needs as the organisation changes …

One of the really interesting things for [CSnet] about being a B Corp, and it impacts on the way we work, is this idea of ‘interdependence’. None of us can solve these really complex issues alone – not as organisations, not as individuals. And so we need to look for partners who are aligned in our values and with what we want to achieve [together] to make a difference.

… it’s been a really fantastic opportunity for us to work with CQID because we can see that in working alongside CQID we can support you to get better outcomes for Aboriginal children, families and communities … We thank you for the work that you’ve been doing with us since 2021”

Mandy Doon (CSnet)

“CQID are big on partnerships and relationships. And one thing that I always love is that it’s ‘relationships before business’ and I think that’s the good thing with CSnet, that we have such great rapport and relationship. Yes, there’s the working relationship, but I know that Jason and I can reach out to yourselves or anyone within the organisation if we needed to change things. And I remember when we first implemented CSnet for the Strong in Family and Culture program no one else had done this piece of work across the State before we started service delivery. So we didn’t even really know what we needed to make CSnet look like – it was a bit clunky in terms of how we developed it when we first begun, but then we’re able to refine and critique and make those changes, as you said, in terms of the workflow process. And there was never an issue in terms of requesting to review or change or amend certain things. So yeah, it is very important.”

James Mundy

Thank very much to Jason Field (CEO) and James Mundy (General Manager Children’s Services) for so generously sharing their knowledge and experience with us.