Work with Urban Aboriginal families

In 2005 PIFA initiated the Father Ted Kennedy Project, with a $150,000 grant from the Scully Foundation, for use over three years. Although this funding forms the basis for our work we have received other contributions which have allowed the work to expand somewhat.
The aim of this work is to pilot and trial interventions for Aboriginal families, during pregnancy and in their children’s early years to discover how we can best support them in their parenting role.
The work is unique in that it is:

Intensive, individualized and long term when necessary
Linked to individual outcomes via an ongoing action research model
Based on the latest research on parent child relationships
Offered by highly qualified professionals
Committed to facilitating reflection on the work and dissemination of insights and learning gained to others involved with Aboriginal families
Able to channel the majority of funding into direct work with families due to keeping overheads to a minimum and a high percentage of in kind resources

allows parents to come to term with past trauma and it’s ability to negatively affect them in their relationships with their children
facilitates the development of supportive communities around parents and their children
offers peri natal support that reduces domestic violence during pregnancy therefore alleviating the effects of trauma on the foetus (One Domestic Violence event has been shown to be equivalent to a mother being on drugs for one month in its affect on cortisol levels in a foetus and is now seen to be part of the spectrum that accounts for higher infant mortality rates and low birth weights being double in Aboriginal women to the rest of the population) Quinlivan and Evans 2001.

Examples of our Aboriginal work

Home Visiting

Urban Aboriginal parents have suffered dislocation. They have been dislocated from their land, their culture, their community and often from their own families. As a result of many levels of loss and trauma this generation is left with anxiety, rage, depression and a sense of helplessness in the face of conditions over which they feel they had no control. Urban Aboriginal families, while facing all the stresses of any new family when they have a baby, also face quite distinct challenges related to marginalization and trans generational trauma. Supporting Aboriginal families during early parenting requires a special type of engagement which, while taking into account the normal developmental needs and stresses of all new parents, appreciates the particular issues which they face and is sensitive to their cultural heritage. Home visiting offers a way to individualise services for parents and children and show that we are willing to engage with them wherever they need us. The program is offered as part of a range of possible services in which families can become involved. PIFA consultants visit vulnerable families at least weekly from pregnancy and for up to five years.

Within Families:

Improved emotional relatedness between parents and their children
Extended social networks
Deepened understanding of the role of the past in influencing the present

In the Broader Community:

Increased understanding of the needs of urban aboriginal families during pregnancy, birth and early parenting
Improved ability to offer appropriate interventions

Group work Partnership

It is now widely recognized that early interactions between infants and carers don’t just create the context for early development and learning but directly affect the way the brain is wired. In the course of normal development, babies learn about the world from their main carers. When parents are attuned to their baby they reflect and extend on what the baby may be feeling. However, when mothers are struggling to come to terms with the parenting role they can find it difficult to respond appropriately to their child enough of the time. This means the infant's expectations of self and others, which develop in the context of those earliest relationships, become distorted.

PIFA, SDN Children’s Services, Murawina Aboriginal Child Care Centre and the Aboriginal Children’s Service work together to offer a range of groups for Aboriginal women who are pregnant or have a young child.

Monday Mothers' Group

The aim of this group is to help women manage the anxieties which arise during motherhood and to alleviate, as much as possible, the impact of these anxieties on the parent-infant relationship.
Group goals are to:

Assist parents to increase their sensitivity and emotional responsiveness to their child
Support parents to overcome negative patterns of child rearing and replace them with parenting strategies that are both rewarding for parents and beneficial to their child’s development

Workers are still uncovering, with the Aboriginal women how best to give them the support they need, so far what has been learned is that these women require, along with developmental information and practical strategies which all parents find useful:

therapeutic help to think about how their cultural and individual experiences might impact on their ability to care for their child
support to come to terms with past traumas and manage the effects of them, so that they are less likely to be re-enacted in their relationship with their child

A DVD Package on the Effect of Substance Abuse on Parenting

PIFA workers are discovering that engaging and supporting urban Aboriginal parents during the transition to parenthood requires innovative programs that can embrace not only issues which effect all new parents but also integrate the effects of past influences and cultural heritage.

The idea of producing this DVD was suggested by Aboriginal women in our groups, who noted the lack of culturally appropriate, information on this topic.
Introduction

It has been well documented that early childhood experiences are of primary importance to adult health and well being. A powerful way to combat the disproportionately high burden of negative health and social outcomes in the Aboriginal community is to support Aboriginal families during their child’s early years. “Early Intervention promotes child protection, increases school achievement, reduces violence and crime, promotes workforce productivity, reduces teenage pregnancy” and “has a long term cost benefit ratio of 8:1” (Heckman, J. 1999)

All parents, including Aboriginal parents, experience the birth of a child as a time of new beginnings, of hope for the future and connection to a bigger picture. For this reason, pregnancy and early parenting is a window of opportunity for parents to begin to recover from past traumas and make positive changes in their lives. The Aboriginal women with whom we work want to develop a resource for other families to use around the time of birth. This package will help new parents think about the impact of substance misuse on their babies and help them develop strategies to make positive changes in their lives and the lives of their children.
Project Aims:

Train Aboriginal women in film making techniques
Support Aboriginal women in the City of Sydney to make positive links with the community
Develop a resource to help Aboriginal families think about issues of substance use and parenting and how to make positive changes for their children

Project Objectives

An experienced film maker works alongside Aboriginal women in making a DVD for Aboriginal Families
A social worker/psychotherapist from PIFA works with the group to help them think through their ideas, to debrief when necessary and support them emotionally
Aboriginal women who have been trained during the making of a previous package “Australian Dreaming – Being Pregnant”, will mentor new recruits to the work group
Women in the group will interview community members, assist with the PR and the distribution of the package in the Sydney City area
The PIFA worker will work with the group to develop a DL flier to accompany the DVD
The package will be launched and made available throughout the City of Sydney, NSW and Australia

Overview of Project

Substance misuse has been identified as a priority area in the NSW Aboriginal Family Health Strategy. Solutions to substance abuse are closely linked with solutions for family violence in much of the literature. Aboriginal women who attend our group programs at the Aboriginal Children’s Service and Murawina Aboriginal Child Care Centre have also identified substance misuse as a key factor affecting the lives of families and children in their communities.
Families in our Aboriginal programs often speak of an overwhelming and deep sense of powerlessness. This sense of powerlessness and experience of generational violence is often coped with by turning to alcohol and drugs. Research clearly shows that parents who are abusing substances have trouble balancing the needs of their children with their drug use. This causes problems for children of all ages but for infants whose brains are ‘experience dependent’ for development to occur, the long term results can be devastating.
The misuse of drugs and alcohol also fuels the feelings of powerlessness being turned outwards in the form of community and family violence. This is of particular importance in new families, since, ‘one experience of violence has been shown to be equivalent to a mother being on drugs for one month in its affect on the cortisol levels of a foetus’ (Quinlivan and Evans 2001). Family violence is now seen to be part of a spectrum that may account for Aboriginal infant mortality rates that are two to three times as high in the total population and the low birth weights that are more than twice as high for babies born to indigenous mothers than for babies born to non indigenous mothers’

The Parent Infant Foundation of Australia has had an ongoing partnership with the Aboriginal Children’s Service and Murawina Aboriginal Child Care Centre and the group working on this package will be made up of Aboriginal women connected with both of these centres.

A previous package has been made on the emotional experience of pregnancy by PIFA and ACS and it was the women involved in this process that came up with the idea for one on Substance misuse. It is envisaged that a number of these women will take part again and will act as mentors to the new recruits to the group.
A PIFA worker and an experienced film maker will work alongside the Aboriginal women supporting them and training them in developing media resources

Wednesday Womens' Gathering

This is a group for mothers with young babies or who are pregnant, where they can meet other mums in the area, not feel so alone. They can also learn some things about being a mum from each other and from the group workers.

The group runs for 2 hours and there is free lunch after.
Topics that are covered include:
Looking after yourself
Getting into the kitchen.
Making a dollar go the distance.
Digging up family roots.
Who’s around who can help?
What about me and my man – everything goes to the kids.
What’s good tucker for babies?
Crying and tantrums are giving me a headache.
My baby’s nearly here and I haven’t got a clue!

Murawina Aboriginal Childcare, Boori Project

The purpose of this project is to:

deepen our understanding of a child and the child's family
create a program and action plan that will support both child and his/her
parents / carers
follow up on that program with staff from both Murawina and PIFA.

The process is as follows:

(1) A child who is of concern to the staff will be chosen by Murawina
workers .

(2) A PIFA consultant will talk to Murawina staff about the child, set up an infant observation with one of the staff in the room and homevisit the family on one or two occasions. Norma will be individual supervisor of this work.

(3) PIFA workers who are involved in the project facilitate a group at Murawina each Wednesday to discuss one of these cases.

(4) Work plans are designed for the child and their family.

An example of a typical work plan:
• A referral is made for parent or carer to one of the groups run in partnership with the Aboriginal Children’s Service.
• PIFA offers weekly home based support /counseling
• Parents/carers are invited into the centre where PIFA and Murawina staff can talk with them and assist them with their management of their child
• A staff person is be assigned to have special care of the child while they are in the centre and will be supported in this by supervision and support from a PIFA consultant
PIFA workers can be used to do observational and individual work with a particular child in the centre to report back to the Wednesday group meeting