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In Australia and internationally, Indigenous children are seriously overrepresented in the child welfare system. This article provides an overview of literature investigating the needs of Indigenous children in residential care facilities. The provision of culturally safe and trauma-informed therapeutic care to Indigenous children and young people in residential care recognizes that the trauma and violence that they have experienced is exacerbated by their Indigeneity due to the colonial histories presenting. Utilizing a systematic scoping review methodology, the study returned a total of 637 peer-reviewed articles that were identified and reviewed for inclusion. The process of exclusion resulted in the inclusion of eight peer-reviewed studies and 51 reports and discussion papers sourced from gray literature. Findings from this study, though dearth, indicate that trauma-informed and culturally safe interventions play a significant role in Indigenous children’s health and well-being while in care. Their experiences of abuse and neglect transcend individual trauma and include intergenerational pain and suffering resulting from long-lasting impacts of colonization, displacement from culture and country, genocidal policies, racism, and the overall systemic disadvantage. As such, a therapeutic response, embedded within Indigenous cultural frameworks and knowledges of trauma, is not only important but absolutely necessary and aims to acknowledge the intersectionality between the needs of Indigenous children in care and the complex systemic disadvantage impacting them.

Chronic staff shortages and high rates of turnover in child protection programs create opportunities for social work mobility across the world. Australian child protection departments actively recruit social workers from the United Kingdom and Ireland. This strategy may cause tension relating to the application of known western social work practice and theory and limited understanding of Australian First Nations worldviews. Australia continues to struggle with the ongoing impact of colonisation, First Nations children are overrepresented in child protection service delivery. This paper explores the understanding held by overseas-born and educated social workers of Australian First Nations peoples, when they migrate to practice in frontline child protection. Interviews with 13 practitioners across two-time points explored social work practice in the transnational context. This paper identifies that there is a need to raise transnational social workers' awareness of Australian First Nations child rearing practices that may lie outside their experiential understanding.• Transnational social workers have little understanding of First Nations peoples and their perspectives.• This limited understanding may also impact transnational social workers' rapport with First Nations Australians because their personal lived experiences may greatly differ from the Australian First Nations lifeworld.