Yuwaya Ngarra-li Webinar: Government finances, community control and improving outcomes for Aboriginal children and young people

Join us for a discussion of the newest Yuwaya Ngarra-li Policy Paper, Making government finances make sense for communities.

A long-term priority for the community-led partnership between the Dharriwaa Elders Group and UNSW is for Aboriginal children and young people in Walgett to learn, work, be safe, supported and thrive within a robust sense of belonging to their families, community, culture and Country.

For too long, Aboriginal children and young people have been failed by government systems of education, care and justice that are meant to serve and protect them.

Like many Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs), the Dharriwaa Elders Group has for many years requested and advocated for more information and accountability from governments around resources allocated for their community.

Despite commitments through Closing the Gap and evidence about the greater impact of ACCO-led change for Aboriginal children and young people, government processes and resource allocation continues to happen far away from community control.

Through research for this Policy Paper, we have seen that there is currently no way for Indigenous communities to track where Closing the Gap and other government funding is going, nor any way for communities to validate what outcomes have been delivered from this funding. However, it does not have to be this way.

In this webinar, Yuwaya Ngarra-li’s Vanessa Hickey and Loretta Weatherall from the Dharriwaa Elders Group and Peta MacGillivray from UNSW will be joined by Policy Paper co-author Mel Flanagan to discuss the findings of Making government finances make sense for communities, and how governments could work differently to enable community-controlled approaches to improving outcomes for children and young people in Walgett and elsewhere.

Speaker bios:

Vanessa Hickey is a Gamilaraay woman from Walgett and the Community Response Lead at the Dharriwaa Elders Group. Vanessa has been working as part of the Yuwaya Ngarra-li Partnership since 2018, and has been a long-term advocate for Aboriginal children and young people in Walgett.

Loretta Weatherall is a Gamilaraay woman from Walgett and the Wellbeing Lead at the Dharriwaa Elders Group. Loretta has a background as a community researcher and sees working with Yuwaya Ngarra-li as a way to be a voice and advocate for her community.

Peta MacGillivray is a Kalkutungu and South Sea Islander lawyer and researcher, and Senior Research Fellow with the Yuwaya Ngarra-li Partnership at UNSW. Peta is a strong advocate for improving outcomes for Aboriginal children and young people in the criminal justice system.

Mel Flanagan is the founder of Nook Studios. She is a researcher, designer, and advocate for transparency and other open initiatives to improve environmental impacts, social justice, public access to information and participation in decision making, and government and private sector integrity and accountability.

Ruth McCausland (chair) is Associate Professor and UNSW Director of Yuwaya Ngarra-li. Her research focuses on the social determinants of justice, and enabling systemic and community-led solutions to incarceration and disadvantage.