Working with groups

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• Has a clear understanding of its purposes and goals.
• Is flexible in selecting its procedures as it works towards its goals.
• Has achieved a high degree of communication and understanding among its members…
• Is able to initiate and carry on effective decision making, carefully considering minority viewpoints and securing the commitment of all members to important decisions.
• Achieves an appropriate balance between group productivity and the satisfaction of individual needs.
• Provides for sharing of leadership responsibilities by group members - so that all members are concerned about contributing ideas, elaborating and clarifying the ideas of others, giving opinion, and in other ways helping the group to work on its task and maintain itself as an effective working unit.
• Has a high degree of cohesiveness [attractiveness for the members] but not to the point of stifling individual freedom.
• Makes intelligent use of the differing abilities of its members. Is not dominated by its leader or by any of its members.
• Can be objective about reviewing its own processes. It can face its problems and adjust to needed modifications in its operations.
• Maintains a balance between emotional and rational behaviour, channelling emotions into a productive group effort.

Alcohol and Drug Programs Unit 1988:1-25

In October 1997 I began teaching the Certificate 1 in Health (Aboriginal Communities) at Tangentyere Council. It was a course recommended by the Food and Nutrition Unit in Darwin. I went over to the Training Officer at Tangentyere Council with the information about the course and offered to teach it. They advertised it around the Council and town camps. Some of the people who decided to do the course had met me before but not all. The course was chosen because it has a strong nutrition component. It also contains things like 'Introduction to Health, Homemaker Skills', 'Shopping Wise' and 'Senior First Aid'. The course also has electives and the next module planned is 'Care Giving - Older People'. We have completed four modules now.

We started with a group of five women. Three were employed by the Homemakers and Old People's Service (HOPS) and two were with CDEP. After the group had completed two modules they decided they wanted to start a Meals on Wheels project to feed 40 old people in the town camps. They felt that the service was really needed. They'd gained in confidence since they started the training and they also knew that I would support them in whatever way I could. We went out and talked to the old people. They said that they'd like to try the idea and agreed to pay some money out of their pension cheque each fortnight.

We worked together for about three months during the first stages of the project. We decided on the recipes together and I typed them out onto A3 paper and had them laminated. I helped set up lists for the ordering of the food. We worked together as a team. I washed dishes too. They taught me things and I taught them things. After a few months I gradually began to pull out. Now I stay in touch by phone and go over for morning tea sometimes.

Alison McLay, Nutritionist,
Alice Springs Community Health Services

Men, especially Aboriginal men, rarely go to the Health Centre when they are sick, let alone when they are healthy. They wait and wait until the problem is unbearable then they go to the health centre. Providing health education to groups of young men can be a difficult exercise. It is difficult to find them, to raise their interest in health issues and to identify what is important to them.

Five key concepts/strategies were included in the design of the well men's checkups.

The health centre was taken to the people: Tests were undertaken, some by Health Promotion Officers and others by Aboriginal Health Workers: blood pressure; height/weight; blood sugar levels; cholesterol; haemoglobin; sweat loss; and peak flow. The National Heart Foundation's healthy heart assessment was modified to include information on smoking, dehydration and alcohol.

Health education was integrated into group activities that men enjoy and are already participating in: Groups of men meet several times a week to train and play football. Approaching men at football settings appeared to be the perfect way to target groups of men.

Messages were made relevant to the men and their activities: Messages were targeted at how to improve the players' chances of winning, that is by getting fitter, stronger, healthier and smarter. Discussions with players included the importance of water to functions of the body; how smoking reduces the lungs' ability to absorb oxygen, … the detrimental affects of drinking kava or alcohol the night before playing football, and the positive benefits of eating a high carbohydrate meal before playing to increase energy levels.

Healthy lifestyle role models were used to provide inspiration to younger men: To increase knowledge of men's health issues and promote interest in the well men's checkups, a local football role model was identified…who is now playing Australian Football League…[and] speaks the language. He was able to visit schools and football teams to talk about healthy lifestyles and the dangers of smoking. A video of the local community football grand final was also put together with messages about smoking, nutrition and fitness…

Incentives were provided for men to attend well men's checkups: Barbecues were held at the health centre after the men's check-ups.

Extracts from an article by Smith and King 1998:69-71

…Most people live much of their lives as members of a family, and it is within the context of family life and dynamics that they learn much about how people respond to life experiences and relate to each other. Families can influence the life of an individual quite profoundly"

Wass 1994:35-36

When a child is not growing well we talk to the mother and father about their baby. At the second meeting we talk to the whole family including the mother, father, aunties, uncles and grandparents from both sides. This is the right way of doing things here at Yuendumu. At the third meeting a couple of people who went to the first two meetings leave and go back to their own camps to talk to their own families about making the kids healthy at Yuendumu. This is the way we spread the message about health at Yuendumu.

Lottie Nabangardi, Community Nutrition Worker,
in Sharing Good Tucker Stories by Bear-wingfield 1996:129

My niece Jane came to see me in the health centre one day. She came because she felt sick, but while there she started to tell me about her husband. She was worried about him. He had started to drink every week. What was she going to do?

Now I knew Jane and her husband for a long time, they had been a happy, healthy family mostly and had not been drinkers. Now it seemed her husband had started to drink; I had seen him going down to the club most days.

What worried me was that wherever he was, drinking or not, Jane was always with him. Did this mean that she was drinking too? I asked Jane about this, I told her that it would be confidential, no one else need know what we talked about.

She talked about how the drinking had started. How their little boy had been really sick and had been in hospital in town, then in the Child Health Unit for some weeks while he got better. Jane and her husband were hanging around in town for a while. The little boy was looked after by the nurses, and their other kids were back in the community with their grandmother. Friends and family in town were drinking a lot of alcohol and it was easy for Jane and her husband to get involved.

When they got home, her husband continued his drinking, he started to hang around with the drinking group and things quickly got out of control. All their money went on grog, they were nearly always at the club, hardly ever at home. When they were at home they slept.

I asked Jane what she wanted to do. She said she wanted to stop all the drinking before it got too bad. She thought that if she could stop her husband from drinking then she would stop too - she only drank because he did.

I talked about the sort of harm that too much alcohol can do to the body and showed Jane some pictures of alcohol damaged organs. I also talked about the harm that too much drinking can cause the family, but I think Jane could already see that.

I explained about careful drinking, that some people can drink a little bit, and if they eat well while they're drinking, and don't drink all the time, they can be OK.

I suggested that she talk to her husband about how she felt; talk to him of her worries for the children and their future as a family; talk to him before it got out of control. I told her she would need to talk to him when he was sober, not drunk, and that if she wanted I could talk to them both together then, and maybe explain again about some of the damage that drinking too much alcohol can do.

I also suggested some things they could do to help them keep away from drinking. I suggested going to their outstation more often, painting, going hunting or maybe taking the kids out with their grandmother and teaching them some traditional ways. Maybe they could play some sport in the community; maybe they could enrol in a training course.

I explained that the choice would have to be theirs but that I would help them as much as I could. If they needed other specialised help, we could talk about that too and arrange it.

So I gave Jane some information pamphlets that explained a bit about alcohol. I suggested that she talk to her husband and then come back and let me know what happened.

Material provided by Living With Alcohol Program
Alcohol and Other Drugs Program

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