Broadening care to include family interventions is essential when working with Aboriginal people, because of the importance and extent of the family group in Aboriginal culture. Members of the extended family may have responsibilities for caring for individuals with whom they have a particular relationship. For example, a grandmother may be expected to take a caring and educative role in the antenatal care of her grand-daughter.
The dynamics of family groups impact on the health of people living in them. When thinking about family health, consider these two points:
| "…It is through the family that individuals may be exposed to,
or protected from, aspects of the social, economic and physical environment… …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 |
Developing a relationship with a family will help health staff to:
Consulting with health staff as a family group may help family members to:
| Working with family groups 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 this case study, a family member approaches the Aboriginal Health Worker(AHW) for advice. Because the AHW's family relationship, she was able to respond in a way and at a pace that enabled her niece to make her own decisions. The AHW shared her expert knowledge and offered her support.
| Working with a family member 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 |
Volume 2 contains specific strategies and activities for working with groups in the areas
of Food and Nutrition, Alcohol and Other Drugs and Environmental Health. Some of the group
activities include: doing shop tours, establishing a community night patrol, organising a
bush tucker trip, organising a health week, or working on a dust suppression project