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The ONES We Serve
The Katina Woodruff Children’s Foundation serves clients who are experiencing post-traumatic stress, dislocation and major life-shift adjustments associated with settling into a developed world. Most of the children are suffering grief – several have been orphaned prior to being sent to live in Australia. All of Katina’s clients are suffering the grief of disassociation from their extended family network and familiar culture and language.
Other suffering evidenced:
- Debilitating fear prohibiting speech of any kind and language.
- Ostracism from lack of skills and experience in Australian group dynamics.
- Ill-advised discipline for actions perceived as misbehaviour, which are rather due to factors such as a child not reading cultural cues or knowing the way in which Australian schools relay their expectations to children.
The activities undertaken by the KWCF include:
- Identifying the cause of trauma
- Designing programs specifically tailored to each individual child based on identified suffering
- Writing ethnographies and plans of actions which guide others in their dealings with children in the midst of trauma or suffering
- Demonstrating, training and mentoring practitioners in other disciplines to use the methodologies developed by the Foundation using the approaches of Child Anthropology and the Anthropology of Play.
In particular, this is done through the following and other methods:
a) Exploratory anthropology of plays sessions with individual children identified in consultation with school staff. These children are demonstrating signs of acute suffering or distress. These sessions are conducted both within the local school and subsequently in the homes of the children, involving their siblings and parents and hence assisting the whole family unit with their settling into Australia.
b) Developing professional plans for practitioners of other disciplines to enable and empower them to more adequately address the suffering and distress of the children.
c) Intervention in social interactions between the identified children and others in their school playground, homes and neighborhoods. This creates understanding not only of the Australian way of life, but also assists other children to relate to and include new arrivals in our country.
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