Last week’s terrible news that a 10-year-old Aboriginal girl had taken her own life shook many Australians. Yet there would be few Aboriginal families who have not already been affected by the suicide or attempted suicide of their young people. This includes our own extended families and kin.read more
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people leaving out-of-home care are even more likely to experience poor outcomes and with more serious consequences This framework is a trauma and attachment-informed approach embedded in a cultural, ecological and developmental perspective. It aims to help workers recognise and make sense of many of the young people’s behaviours, attitudes and responses to the ordinary and extraordinary challenges involved in the transition from care to adulthood. It is not...read more
This practice guide highlights key messages arising from the development of a trauma and attachment-informed framework for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people leaving care. The more detailed framework is described in the Making Tracks: A trauma-informed framework for supporting Aboriginal young people leaving care (Jackson, Waters, Meehan, Hunter & Corlett, 2013). This practice guide draws on the messages from the overarching framework and considers some of the implications for practice in supporting young...read more
This booklet has been inspired by the Yarning Up on Trauma training and has been produced at the request of participants primarily to accompany this training. Yarning Up on Trauma was designed to assist workers in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community organisations who work with vulnerable children and families throughout Victoria to understand historical and present day trauma. It attempts to assist those workers to recognise and deal with traumas of their own, as...read more
The programme now called We Al- Li evolved out of the need to help heal the individual, family and community pain and trauma resulting from colonial domination and power abuse. The concept behind We Al- Li came from the knowledge that where there is pain there must be healing. We Al- Li wanted to provide a healing approach to the needs of those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people presently suffering post- traumatic stress disorder,...read more
Providing a startling answer to the questions of how to solve the problems of generational trauma, Trauma Trails moves beyond the rhetoric of victimhood, and provides inspiration for anyone concerned about Indigenous and Non-Indigenous communities today. Beginning with issues of colonial dispossession, Judy Atkinson also sensitively deals with trauma caused by abuse, alcoholism, and drug dependency. Sharing their stories, contributors also demonstrate the Aboriginal gift to the nation - Dadirri: listening to one another, and...read more
In May 2010, the Healing Foundation announced its first funding initiative aimed at acknowledging and addressing the pain and hurt caused by colonisation, forced removals and other past government policies. The primary purpose of the healing initiatives was to improve the social and emotional wellbeing of Indigenous people and communities, focusing on the wellbeing of body, mind, spirit and culture. In October 2010, following an open-tender funding process, the Healing Foundation awarded funds to 21...read more
We Al-li community and workplace workshops are an Indigenous therapeutic response to individual, family and community pain that many people carry as part of their life experience. For Aboriginal peoples this pain is more specifically defined as the traumatic impacts of the multiple intergenerational experiences of colonisation resulting in ill-health, individual, family and community dysfunction (dys - Latin from the Greek dus meaning painful or difficult functioning). We Al-li specifically meets this need through tailored...read more
