UNSW’s Elizabeth Fernandez, Professor of Social Work at the School of Social Sciences, was awarded the AM on Australia Day, Indian Link reports.
Her career in the field of child and family services, for which she was recognised, spans 45 years in Australia. It has seen considerable contributions, especially to the lived experience and long-term outcomes of adults who as children were raised in out-of-home care. These include her extensive research on Forgotten Australians, members of the Stolen Generations, and British Child Migrants.
“My work early in India was foundational in this regard,” the Mangalore-born Chennai-raised Prof Fernandez told Indian Link.
“Soon after my master’s degree in social work at Madras University, I founded the first professional foster care service in India. It was quite a paradigm shift, to create care for vulnerable children within a family environment, allowing participating parents to undertake care responsibilities for the deprived and vulnerable in their own homes.”
Operating this service for five years at the Madras School of Social Work, she was able to create greater consciousness that congregate care was not providing the benefits of family relationships. The pilot program was later extended to Bombay, delivered by Nirmala Niketan.
She then embarked on an academic career in her alma mater Stella Maris College at Madras, becoming Head of the Department of Social Work.
She moved to Australia in 1978, and took a PhD researching children removed from their families, studying the factors that enabled them to return to their families after an episode in care.
Today she is an acknowledged authority in the field.
She is also recipient of the 2019 International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI) Award in recognition of outstanding contribution to the field of child indicators research from an international perspective.
“I feel privileged and grateful,” she said of her AM honour. “It is a validation of my work and contribution to Australia. It is also an acknowledgement of the importance of social science research and how it addresses the needs of marginalised people. Also, it recognises teaching and learning in the higher education space. Hopefully it will be noticed, and influence social policy.”
FULL STORY
Elizabeth Fernandez AM: A career dedicated to children in out-of-home care (Indian Link)
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Prof Elizabeth Fernandez (Source: Supplied)
