Dellios, Alexandra2026-06-092026-06-090725-6868WOS:001747982300001ORCID:/0000-0001-9832-2419/work/216717230https://hdl.handle.net/1885/733810156Australia’s welfare systems underwent dramatic changes from the 1970s. This included a move from assimilationist approaches to more pluralist ones, in delayed recognition of Australia’s multiethnic populace. This paper explores the perspectives of three migrant-background women, self-identified ethnic welfare workers, who worked within a developing multicultural welfare system in the Australian state of New South Wales from the 1970s and 1980s. Their oral history testimony is analysed in conjunction with contemporaneous papers by ethnic welfare workers and academics debating the practice and philosophy of migrant welfare. Ethnic welfare workers were both witnesses to and active participants in the practical and philosophical changes to welfare and social service delivery in NSW since the 1970s. These oral histories provide the historical account with subjective perspectives on both the day-to-day realities and broader ideological implications of legislative changes to community welfare practices. The three women demonstrate the complex and non-linear relationship that ethnic welfare workers have to the social work profession and to the idea of professionalisation from the 1970s.The same debates – about investing in ethnic specialist or generalist services in a multicultural Australia – also appeared in the final report of the 1978 Galbally Review of Social Services presented to the Liberal Fraser government. In NSW, various shifts in funding indicated an embrace of the type of pluralist system advocated by Rodopoulos and Liffman. Neville Wran’s Labor government made investments in new multicultural services embedded within State bodies, alongside investments in community-run not-for-profit Migrant Resource Centres. In 1978, the Wran government also established the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission (EAC) as a statutory advisory body. The EAC, in 1983, explicitly advised government ‘to ‘mainstream’ ethnic affairs rather than let them be the sole responsibility of specialist services’ (Women’s Co-ordination Unit : 127) Indicative of this trend, the Wran government formed state-wide Multicultural Health Services, which was the responsibility of the State Health Department – although ethno-specific welfare organisations continued to operate. Multicultural Health Services offices were housed within Community Information Centres across the state, like the MCIHC where Freeda and Angela worked. In NSW, migrant welfare continued to be a ‘growth industry’ into the 1980s. The move to fund ethno-specific positions within state-administered services, rather than funnelling funds to ethnic community organisations, reflects the career trajectories of all three women. They each started their careers in community organisations and moved to bodies funded by the NSW Health Department, local councils, or larger not-for-profit organisations supported by a combination of government funding and private enterprise.20enPublisher Copyright: © 2026 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.MigrantMulticulturalismOral historySocial servicesWelfare2026-03-1710.1080/07256868.2025.2592312105036598430