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Purro Birik - (Healthy Spirit)
6.3 Training
The need for ongoing
training that is relevant to service development needs was highlighted
throughout the consultations on a number of levels. The primary issues were
cross-cultural training for the staff of mental health services, and
training on social, emotional, and cultural wellbeing issues (including
mental illness) for Koori health service workers.
It was proposed that
cross-cultural training should include information on Koori history, Koori
gender issues, the role of family and elders in Koori communities, and Koori
concepts of mental health and wellbeing. It was emphasised that
cross-cultural training done in isolation is often not effective and that
any long term effect requires ongoing training undertaken within the context
of an active relationship/partnership between Koori health services and
mental health services.
It was proposed that
social, emotional and cultural well being training should include skills and
strategies for undertaking crisis intervention, understanding the mental
health system, managing psychiatric medication, practising
ethics/confidentiality, working with substance abuse, recognising and
responding to early warning signs, developing local promotion and prevention
strategies, and developing the concept of social, emotional and cultural
wellbeing.
Other training strategies
proposed were adding units in Koori-sensitive practice as core components to
existing clinical degree courses, and more proactively recruiting Koori
people into clinical degree courses.
6.4 Service Development
A number of service
development issues were recognised, particularly by Koori community
controlled health services, as being significant to improving services'
responses to the social, emotional and cultural wellbeing issues of their
communities.
The main issues were that:
-
the role of social,
emotional and cultural wellbeing workers needs further definition. This will
provide greater clarity for workers operating in partnership with mainstream
services, and help to establish greater recognition of the role from within
Koori communities;
-
there is a need to identify
which other mainstream services would be beneficial to engage in
partnerships
-
or protocol arrangements
and how best to go about facilitating cooperative arrangements;
-
a number of Koori health
workforce development issues need to be addressed, such as on-call
arrangements, burnout, career path development, professional boundaries and
professional recognition;
-
a strategy should be
developed to promote ethical awareness on issues such as confidentiality in
the workplace;
-
a strategy should be
developed to increase the recognition of the role of Koori elders in
addressing social, emotional and cultura! wellbeing issues;
-
the development of H'~aling places needs to be supported;
-
the need for community
controlled supported accommodation for social, emotional and cultural
wellbeing issues needs to be investigated, and a model for providing the
support needs to be developed;
-
there is a need for better
quality information about the extent of social, emotional and cultural
wellbeing issues within Victorian Koori communities;
-
health service plans and
job descriptions for social, emotional and cultural wellbeing service
positions need to be further developed to promote better understanding of
what the services can provide;
-
the provision of social,
emotional and cultural wellbeing support to Aboriginal people in Victorian
prisons needs to be further considered and addressed;
-
Koori health service data
is the property of the Koori service and should be collected only as a
condition of funding where it relates to issues of resource distribution and
patient care. Service development data should be provided on a specific
agreement basis only;
-
a strategy is needed to
gather credible data on the demographics of the Victorian Koori community.
Australian Bureau of Statistics data is generally considered to be poor;
-
ongoing evaluation and
continuous improvement needs to occur to ensure best outcomes on social,
emotional and cultural wellbeing issues for Koori people;
-
there is a need to develop
a vision that can be adopted across the State for the provision of social,
emotional and cultural wellbeing services;
-
social, emotional and
cultural wellbeing workers need more opportunities to meet, discuss common
issues, and develop ideas.
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