We have several Aboriginal health workers in our team that have the
ability and the family connections within our community where we've
actually got community members coming to us asking us for help because they know
that they can trust us.
It's just so good to have a familiar face that you can
relate to. It helps them to open up and and feel comfortable with sharing what's
going on in their life and not just addressing the issue at hand but it
could be stemming from something that's happening in in their home as well in
their community.
People can't sort of think of what we would classes the
normal things of life but they haven't got a good roof over their head or where
they haven't got an employment or when they're a long way away with no transport.
Within my role if people are accessing our service I feel really
lucky that I can actually go and pick the people up and bring them to their appointments.
Dubbo is very unique and it's probably one of the most unique birthing sites in
the state. It covers and services two-thirds of the state of New South Wales so that
says it all really. The biggest thing is to make them feel welcome because to
start with their birthing off country and that is a really big part of that
cultural sensitivity and we have to embrace ways of making that more
pleasurable by having say recognition of their country in this space.
So the building strong foundations program is about best start to life so it's
recognized that 0 to 5 years are the most influential in setting up a child's
future, our program is designed around and support for families
Doing the belly casting it's not only about engaging with our women and providing them with a
cultural connection because normally at the end it will either be the woman or a
family member, aunt, uncle will actually paint the belly so it's bringing so many
different areas together.
In all of our facilities across the far west we have a dedicated hospital room
that can be used for people at the end of their lives and it has a family room
attached to it, it's very culturally sensitive that area so that particularly
for our Aboriginal patients and their families it means that can be private space
but a space where they can be outside and we can even take the hospital bed out.
The Aboriginal community will then come into our centre for their new consults,
see this artwork and see this person that in that community has gone through
this and they can make a positive connection to this person it might make
them feel a bit more comfortable with having the treatments that were giving.
I started off in physiotherapy when I first joined this traineeship that was
amazing, jumped over to speech pathology, that was interesting but occupational
therapy has won it over for me. I'm the first person to go to university in my
family. I'm the first person to finish year 12 so been like a really great
experience for me my mum, my nan, my dad everyone's proud of me.
Just being with the team they're really supportive, everyone out here is smiley, they'll talk to you
about anything anything you ask.
With the program that we did with Bugalwena AMS at Tweed Heads we managed to
increase their renal registry fivefold so they went from around five patients
identified as having kidney disease in the AMS up to around 70 patients
identified as having kidney disease, the important thing is then we can treat
them and we can educate them so that kidney disease doesn't progress to them needing
dialysis in the future.
You know 50 years ago Aboriginal people weren't allowed to
use their own language and now we can have it on our boards in you know two quite
significant public hospitals in regional New South Wales, absolutely amazing.
School children that have come in here and seen the boards, kids now learning
Wiradjuri language in schools then it translates across to the hospitals.
I'm wrapped in the way things happen here, I feel so relaxed, so comfortable and
with the respect and everything that they give you here, it's unbelievable,
I wish it was outside that happens in here, I'm really happy here.
We look at what the community requires from us not what we think that we can
actually give the community but what they need.