Shirley Young is an Aboriginal woman descending from the Nukunu people in South Australia. She is a Social Worker and the Director of Two Worlds Consultancy and co-director of Endless Eden.
Shirley has previously worked in various Public Service organisations over a span of 24 years in portfolios such as Health, Child Protection and Child and Adolescent Mental Health.
For the last five years she has been running a state-wide business called Two Worlds Consultancy that contracts services to government and non-government organisations. Services include reunification, therapeutic support to children in Out of Home Care settings, providing supervision to staff in government and non-government organisations, contracting services to the NDIS sector, delivering corporate training and development packages, writing corporate documents and casual lecturing for university social work students.
Shirley currently represents a variety high level working groups that inform and address the over representation of Aboriginal children, young people and families in the child protection system to address systemic failures.
We acknowledge the historical and ongoing impacts of intergenerational trauma and the disconnection from land, kinship and culture.
These factors have had an ongoing impact on the social determinants and over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in all tertiary services including child protection and justice systems.