Dr Susan Young

Dr Susan Young is a social worker and UWA lecturer. After graduating in social work from UWA in 1988, Dr Young worked for the (now) Department for Communities in remote and rural WA and Metropolitan Perth for a total of 22 years.

During that time, Dr Young developed an interest and gained experience in developmental processes with isolated and remote communities, Aboriginal communities and families from varied backgrounds.

Dr Young joined UWA in 1994 to part-time teach the social work course. She also spent some years teaching the rural and remote social work course at Edith Cowan University in Bunbury where she was able to extend and consolidate her interest in rural and remote social work
practice.

She is now involved across most areas of the social work course at UWA, with special interests in teaching community practice, social policy, and research methods, working alongside colleague Glenda Kickett in the two units teaching about Indigenous Social Work and Indigenous Policy and Practice. The courses in which these topics are taught include:

• Master of Social Work (coursework or coursework & dissertation)
• Graduate Certificate of Social Policy Practice
• Graduate Diploma of Advanced Social Work
• Master of Advanced Social Work 

Her main areas of research are:

• exploring community approaches to child protection in WA and with international partners in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Norway
• developing decolonising approaches in practice and in teaching/learning
• the contribution made by whiteness theory to social work and social policy theory and practice

Dr Young works with a number of postgraduate research students on topics such as:

• Indigenous models of social work practice
• CALD communities, their networks and community systems of child care
• Volunteering, housing needs and refugees and asylum seekers
• Chaplaincy and social work in schools
• Family decision making and child protection

Anyone interested in postgraduate research can contact Dr Young to discuss further.