08 February 2010

This article discusses a program written specifically to help Indigenous men to engage with and understand their children.

It also provides a conduit to other family services and contributes to the building of community capacity in those regions in which it is adopted. Robyn Parker talked with Lynne Slocombe (Program Manager) and Matt Stubbs (Manager, Waitara Family Centre) about the creation and adaptation of the program.

See site: Australian Policy Online: Hey dad

08 February 2010

The Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council has compiled these stories from NSW Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services to demonstrate the success and potential of these Aboriginal community initiatives.

See site: Australian Policy Online 10 out of 10

Locator Map for Communities with story on site

Locator map for Communities identified by NT and Federal Government as Territory Growth Towns for development as hubs.

• Closing the Gap Clearing House - Clearinghouse for evidence-based research on overcoming disadvantage for Indigenous Australians
• Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research - informing and influencing intellectual understanding, policy debate, policy formation and community action through research education and community engagement
• Indigenous Science Network - The Network is an e-mail based exchange of information and ideas. Over the past seven years the bulletins have been produced every two months and have been archived at the website.
• Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses
• Indigenous Health Information - ’one-stop info-shop’ that aims to contribute to ‘closing the gap’ in health between Indigenous and other Australians by informing practice and policy in Indigenous health by making research and other knowledge readily accessible
• Desert Knowledge CRC and Desert Knowledge Australia
• EngineeringAid Australia - Support for Indigenous students to continue study of Engineering at University, including annual week long summer school - the Indigenous Australian Engineering Summer Sch.
• Koori Mail
• Indigenous Times
• Reconciliation Australia
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Early Childhood Sector Advisory Group
• ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation)
  
• AIATSIS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies)

The Greens set up a Senate Inquiry on the legislation that started hearings this month. There are 35 submissions so far (Feb 3) including ACOSS, Anglicare, St Vincent de Paul and NAPCAN, which deals with child abuse, none of the submissions support the proposed changes. This is very significant as most of these named agencies generally support government initiatives.

Speakers included Irene Fisher who helped set up, and is Chief Executive Officer of Sunrise Health Service, a highly effective Indigenous Health Service servicing the Katherine East Health Zone. The success of the Sunrise Health Service’s Board was reflected in the award of a special commendation from the inaugural Indigenous Governance Awards conducted by Reconciliation Australia and BHP Billiton.

Irene spoke of the lack of any evidence to support either the extension of the Welfare Income Quarantining, nor its original enactment. In fact there is evidence from around the world points explicitly to the fact that inequality breeds ill health. Those who are poor and powerless have far, far worse health outcomes than those - like our politicians in Canberra - who enjoy higher status.

Sunrise has compared data collected before and since the intervention and the results are dispiriting. Anaemia is an iron deficiency that leads to poor growth and development, and as such is an indicator for the general health of children. Since the intervention, anaemia rates in the area have jumped significantly.

In the six months to December 2006, 20 per cent of children were anaemic. A year later the figure had increased to 36 per cent, and by June last year it had reached 55 per cent, where it stayed in the last six months of 2008.

Now, more than half the area’s children face big threats to their physical and mental development. In two years, 18 months of which was under the intervention, the anaemia rate nearly trebled.

There is also a worrying rise in low birth weight among babies. In the six months leading up to the intervention, 9 per cent of children had low birth weights. This rose to 12 per cent in December 2007, and to 18 per cent six months later. By the end of last year, it was 19 per cent, double the figure at the start of the intervention.

Since compulsory income management of welfare payments began in the region in late 2007, there have been documented instances when it affected people’s capacity to buy food. This included diabetics, who with no local store access were unable to access food for weeks at a time. Their response to this situation was to sleep until food became available.

Also Jeff McMullen spoke of his experince in the communities and the effect of the Intervention, particularly through the stigmatising of Aboriginal men as a excuse for the Intervention.

The Macklin claims for the effectiveness of the program are based on the supposed good results of  Income Management, imposed on 73 Aboriginal communities as part of the emergency response. There are serious doubts whether the NT program has had an overall positive effect on the communities and individuals involved. There are questions on the validity of the data the government is using and the gaps of no data.

At the rally the book “This Is What We Said” was launched. This book is a follow-up to the report called “Will They Be Heard?” launched in November 2009 by the Hon. Malcolm Fraser. Using pictures and quotations taken from footage of actual consultations at Bagot, Ampilatwatja, Utopia and Yirrkala, this book provides a graphic account of the depth of frustration and despair of many Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory regarding the Intervention. It is therefore tragic that legislation, about to be debated in Parliament, pays scant attention to the views expressed by many Aboriginal people during the consultations process of 2009. For further information please check: http://stoptheintervention.org/facts/films-and-literature/book-this-is-what-we-said

No attempts were made by the government to measure the ill effects that the process may have had. There is no international research that shows the good effect of such controls. Imposing such constraints on people’s lives has not been shown anywhere to be of benefit while loss of self esteem and sense of control is known to be damaging.

We need to focus our attention on the lack of evidence for government policy, especially in light of their insistence that they produce evidence based policies.

These are programs run by government or other organisations that have had a good impact in community. We can consider why they worked.

We are interested here in articles as to why projects that were working did not continue. These may be projects that were working before defunding or being closed and others that are under threat. Some are CDEP projects, others short-term pilot programs that didn’t get followed up.

Why should people know about good programs and bad funding decisions? Because our levels of ignorance allow Governments to make too many bad decisions that ignore evidence.

The following are stories we have linked to this site as they discuss what is happening in Indigenous Affairs that suggests what could working and why this might be so.

Below are some stories of the many programs that are working in education, health, the law and other areas.