Final - Pathways To A Good Life Well Lived

Marninwarntikura Fitzroy Womens Resource & Legal Centre
NINDILINGARRI CULTURAL HEALTH
PATHWAYS TO A GOOD LIFE WELL LIVED

Community-owned Recovery Plan for overcoming suicidal despair in the Fitzroy Valley
Community Recovery Plan prepared by Maggie White of Herculeia Consulting September 2011 Contact Maggie on 0400 243 476 or herculeia@gmail.com Page 1
Index Executive Summary Rich Picture of A Good Life Well Lived List of Recommendations INTRODUCTION - The Art and Science of Recovery HEALING THE PAST naming the issues Living in two worlds Shared Leadership as the first step Recognising Trauma Implications of the Marulu Project FOCUSING ON CURRENT CHALLENGES supporting people in pain Community Healing Circles Mental Health Service Provision Youth Perspectives Mens Perspectives Healing Family Relationships Housing Issues Healing through Culture and Creative Processes Sport and other youth-focused infrastructure BUILDING THE FUTURE from healing to empowerment Community-owned approaches to strengthening social recovery Developing Social Enterprise for a Therapeutic Economy From Training to Employment without glitches Three stage Curriculum Related Social Businesses CONCLUSION Appendix A Wicked Problems B Matrix of Service Provision and Gaps C Conceptual Population Modelling Chart D List of references E Brief Biography of Maggie White
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This paper argues for a pathway to recovery based on deep respect and advocacy for the protective factors provided by cultural continuity. Despite acknowledging the truly wicked nature of the problems, it is a hopeful paper and draws extensively on strengths based approaches. It seeks to bring a systemic way of thinking in order to weave together several disciplines that advocate for approaches that draw on both the art and the science of recovery. A major reason for this is that, in the face of wicked problems, expert knowledge is far too slow. Local and tacit knowledge, gained through lived experience, needs to be drawn in to crafting solutions that, in pilot projects, have shown that they can achieve truly astonishing results in very short time frames. There is a need to work from within a locally determined preferred future the proverbial light at the end of a dark tunnel and bring that light into those daily experiences of suicidal despair and chaos. This means that interventions across the recovery continuum need to co-exist and that a non-linear model of recovery is adopted. The consequences of a failure to act now are shown through a projected population analysis of the exponential growth of people severely affected by trauma and associated costs. There continue to be high levels of state intrusion into Indigenous lives and livelihoods across the Fitzroy Valley. This causes deep psychological distress, but responses to that distress continue to be more punitive than supportive restrictive economic development opportunities, incarceration, and removal of children, to name only a part of it. In every well-ordered society, people are held by the structures that they are part of those structures that they co-create and that inform their social, cultural and economic practices. Imposed, external structures across all three major building blocks of society have brought great pain and harm to the communities of the Fitzroy Valley, resulting all too often in suicidal despair and chronic poverty. Therefore there is a compelling need for locally directed recovery processes across all these three major building blocks of a well-functioning society in which all members can experience a good live well lived. Within social support services, approaches based on models of trauma and recovery and that match cultural frameworks are needed across all disciplines working in this field. Continuity of care will be impossible to implement and mean very little when it is not backed up by continuity of concept. Community Healing Circles need to be an integral part of these support structures for people experiencing profound psychological distress and suicidal despair. For full community recovery to be achieved, the last section of this paper proposes models of economic recovery drawn from social business approaches which are structured in such a way that they are based on the needs of people with profound trauma living in the Fitzroy Valley, and which match culturally-directed economic and organisational practices.
ATTACHMENT B RICH PICTURE: MAPPING A GOOD LIFE WELL LIVED
LIST OF RECOMMENDATIONS HEALING THE PAST RECOMMENDATION #1: that government and other investments commit to taking direction from community leaders in upholding those culturally determined approaches that match existing cultural frameworks in all service delivery contracts with the Fitzroy Valley. RECOMMENDATION#2: that, as a matter of urgency, community leaders request that there be the necessary support for developing and strengthening shared leadership processes which match cultural frameworks for those communities in the Valley currently implementing a Section 175. That such support be made available to all other communities who wish for it. RECOMMENDATION #3: that community leaders and agencies in the Fitzroy Valley are supported to develop and implement culturally based healing programmes that explicitly draw on concepts of cultural continuity. That these programmes aim to protect young people in particular from suicidal thoughts and feelings. The focus of these programmes may include re-establishing traditional child-rearing practices and beliefs, reintroducing cultural structures of male societal norms (holding men), bringing in healthy traditions of reciprocal practices, within a framework of oncountry programme delivery. RECOMMENDATION #4: That government and other investments take community direction, backed up by research provided by the George Institute, on what family support and other services need urgent funding in order to prevent ELT and FASD increasing exponentially to approximately 90% of the total population of the Fitzroy Valley by 2050 (see figure 1). SUPPORTING PEOPLE IN PAIN RECOMMENDATION #5: That Christabel Chamarette is invited to work in with the development of Community Healing Circles in order to train and support community people in the Fitzroy Valley to be able to develop and deliver approaches within their communities for overcoming experiences of childhood trauma. That appropriate funding and resources be made available for this work to begin as soon as possible. RECOMMENDATION #6: that agencies and community leaders in the Fitzroy Valley demand that all mental health practitioners and all other allied health service providers use systemic approaches based on trauma and recovery. That not only continuity of care across services be achieved, but even more importantly, continuity of concept underpin all service delivery. RECOMMENDATION #7: That WA Country Health Services take direction from Nindilingarri Cultural Health and the Fitzroy Valley Health Partnership to provide sufficient services to meet the comprehensive mental health needs manifesting in the Valley.
RECOMMENDATION #8: That Indigenous Mental Health First Aid training and awareness be made available to communities at regular 3 month intervals for the next 3 years. RECOMMENDATION #9: That government recognise mental health as a significant issue affecting Indigenous youth and collaborate with the Fitzroy Valley to direct funding to successful Indigenous community developed and led programs with a focus on healing, culture, emotional wellbeing and reconnection with family. That government support the Yiriman programme and other similar initiatives such as Yiramalay and The Girls Academy. RECOMMENDATION #10: That schools across the Valley be encouraged and supported to deliver their curricula through frameworks that match local needs, including those of students with ELT and FASD, and that foster cultural continuity. RECOMMENDATION #11: That pre-vocational courses be sufficiently expanded and resourced so that they can be accessed by all at-risk young people across the Fitzroy Valley. RECOMMENDATION #12: That government and other investments implement the recommendations of the recent Parliamentary report Doing Time, Time for Doing with respect to building and staffing an expanded number and range of safe and genderappropriate accommodation options for Indigenous children and youth. These options should include access to coordinated and holistic intensive care services. A housing or accommodation plan needs to have been identified for every youth leaving detention. The accommodation options should include extended family houses, identified safe houses, hostel and school accommodation, foster and respite care, and emergency refuge accommodation. RECOMMENDATION #13: That government take guidance from the Mens Group on what specialised services and infrastructure will be required for men both in terms of their behaviours around substance misuse and for their other needs and requirements. RECOMMENDATION #14: that further Family Counselling and Relationship Services which draw on Bowlbys attachment theories and address profound trauma and pathways to reconnection between people be funded as a matter of urgency. RECOMMENDATION #15: that all means possible to provide and increase adequate housing stock in the Fitzroy Valley be pursued as a matter of urgency. That some housing be prioritised for local people taking up community sector positions. RECOMMENDATION #16 That Nindilingarri Cultural Health be funded to continue their Spiritual Health programme in order to make recording facilities available across the Valley as a way of encouraging people to share stories of pain and recovery, and importance of culture.
RECOMMENDATION #17: That language teaching in schools and through community activities be taken up as a therapeutic, cultural and artistic response to overcoming trauma and suicidal despair in the Fitzroy Valley. That the Kimberley Language Resource Centre be invited and resourced to develop further language development and performing arts programmes. RECOMMENDATION #18: That Government Departments working with children and young people establish a budget to fund community elders and mentors to teach them about their culture and assist to reconnect them to the cultural life of their people. The size of the budget should reflect the numbers and proportion of Aboriginal children and young people who receive services from the agency. RECOMMENDATION #19: That government take direction from the Fitzroy Futures Forum on what additional sport and other youth-focused infrastructure will be required for the Fitzroy Valley. BUILDING THE FUTURE RECOMMENDATION #20: that all agencies revise their strategic plans to take on the longterm implications of the Marulu project as they impact on each agencys core purpose, and especially in terms of building community resilience and cultural continuity as best practice suicide prevention strategies. RECOMMENDATION #21: That a Community Consultation process for designing, developing and implementing Social Enterprise models be commissioned. RECOMMENDATION #22: That those recommendations for family support services coming out of the Marulu Project be considered for Social Enterprise models of delivery to ensure cultural continuity, and local involvement and ownership. RECOMMENDATION #23: That government and other investments support the development of a viable local economy in line with the 2005 Kimberley Appropriate Economy Roundtable Plans, and which seeks to include people with profound and disabling levels of trauma.
Dear friends I am writing this document in the form of a letter. It feels more personal. That seems fitting, given that this Community Recovery Plan needs to outline the inner journey towards community recovery. This letter is about how to build on the inner resilience and capacity for healing within the Fitzroy Valley community itself. This letters purpose is to describe and define Community direction to Government and other investments aimed at preventing suicide. The audience for this letter is firstly the Fitzroy Valley Community itself, and secondly those Government and other investments who aim to contribute to preventing suicide. I hope that this letter will present organising ideas that make sense. I hope that these ideas will make enough sense to enough people that they can be seen as a thread of hopefulness around which organisations, community leaders and everyone else can all draw on their courage, shape their energies and increasingly build for the common good. Those organising ideas need to lie within a framework or a broad storyline that makes enough sense so that individual experiences and observations can somehow fit together into a more-or-less coherent wholeness. Both this letter and the submission to the senate inquiry into suicide prevention (available from http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/clac_ctte/suicide/submissions/sub120.pdf) are about realising the conditions necessary for being able to achieve a good life well lived in the Fitzroy Valley. The submission to the senate inquiry was about the outer political and other structures necessary for that process.
INTRODUCTION - The Art and Science of Recovery

Recovery is both an art and a science. The science is easier to find there is a fair amount of research about it. The art is harder to find its about creativity and passion and conviction and the power of love. Both are needed, and this document will aim to draw on both disciplines knowing that only where they are combined can they really bring lasting healing and sustainable recovery. Recovery is also a story. It draws on remembered or imagined wellness and uses adaptive strategies in order to build back that inner sense of wellness, even though the outer circumstances may be very different. Most scientific thinking in Australia, particularly in the Community Service Sector where its known as evidence-based practice, is linear and incremental. It tends to describe a defined pathway to success. People try not to notice that it really doesnt happen that way, so the terms of success get smaller and smaller. The solutions are often nothing more than bandaids for a range of symptoms: think of services for family violence and sexual assault that are
contracted to provide short-term safety for women and children, but which, for ideological reasons, are not given either the mandate or the resources to work with perpetrators. Current funding policies do not provide the same investments for working with men as they do for supporting women. People caught up in family distress, whether men or women, who try to get help can find themselves in a whirlpool from which there seems no sane way to get out. There are many other examples that you can probably think of. However, an approach based on principles drawn from quantum science and whole-ofsystem thinking matches not only wisdom of country and healthy ecological systems but also the enduring wisdom of societies strong in their culture. Its about weaving all the elements together so that the community vessel necessary for a good life well lived can be created again from the ground up and from within the community, supported as necessary by other services, and not just through imposed dominant society structures and norms. Its about working with causes. Its about slowly walking along together through the landscape of recovery. It is likely to take the form of an upwardly spiralling gesture, moving among agreed outcomes in an apparently random manner and as determined by emerging need. The Australian Public Service Commission has a document on their website dedicated to such complex issues and how to solve them. They are known as wicked problems and the document can be accessed at http://www.apsc.gov.au/publications07/wickedproblems.htm.
See Appendix A for the forward to this document.
The art of recovery fits well with whole-of-system thinking because more than anything its about rebuilding the heart space of the community. Its about rebuilding the capacity to care for and love each other and the land on which you live. This can only happen experientially and indirectly, most obviously through shared creative processes. If you focus on it directly, it doesnt happen. Its like a seed or young plant which needs certain conditions in which to build a strong root system before it shows much above ground.
HEALING THE PAST naming the issues

Living in two worlds
As many of you reading this letter know, and face as a daily challenge, people living in the Fitzroy Valley come from several distinct Aboriginal language groups, including the Bunuba and Gooniyandi people who identify yourselves as river and range people, and the Walmajerri and Wangkatjunka people from the southern deserts who moved into the Valley over the last 60 years first onto pastoral leases and then, after the Equal Pay Act, into Fitzroy Crossing itself. Many Nyikina people from towards Derby also live in the Valley. In all these groups, culture is strong.
Culture for you is very different from how the dominant society understands it. The closest parallel with the dominant society is to think of it in similar ways to how we used to view our religious practice. Since most of us live in a much more secular society now it makes it hard for us to really understand how important culture continues to be for you. Its how you make sense of the world around you, how you organise your relationships with each other and how deeply you connect with your country. It inspires you to serve much more than personal status or indeed merely human ends. It instils in you moral obligations to country and to the spiritual world. Your cultural practices are about what Jung would describe as death of the lower self in order to bring about the birth of a higher Self, one that works to achieve a greater and more inclusive good. Because of this understanding that the lower self needs to die in order for this higher Self to born, suicide was unknown in your societies (See book by David Tacey: Gods and Diseases Appendix D). The recent showing of Jandamarra the legend of the Bunuba resistance hero drew some 4000 people to its performances across the Kimberley. The language, the singing, dancing, art work, the laughter and the sheer joy of being Bunuba were all on display during the Jandamarra performances. This story clearly resonates with all Aboriginal people, telling as it does the story of invasion and dispossession but also a deep and compelling truth about how you as Aboriginal people responded to such incomprehensible terror. Senior Bunuba leaders have always believed that the Jandamarra legend tells a larger story that can awaken a spirit in us all that can transcend hatred and conflict. You continue to believe in reconciliation, not conflict. The community resilience of the Fitzroy Valley based on commitment to culture, strong leadership and innovative thinking has been frustrated by the incapacity of government to reform its governance structures and deliver services that are relevant to people of the Valley who are a people living within two worlds. Government and external representatives choose not to recognise this reality. This forces people to continuously juggle two competing world views that of the dominant and individualist society norms as against traditions based on enduring and continuing communitarian and collectivist norms. Local people call it switching codes and, while it is a skill which has to be learnt early, you are clear that the norms of the dominant society remain foreign territory throughout your lives. This lack of respect and acknowledgement for the reality of a very different world view continues to perpetuate the trauma and pain that so many of you live with on a daily basis. This blind arrogance by government puts your cultural authority under great pressure and means that your young people struggle to live authentic lives within the conflicting world views in which they find themselves they struggle to make sense of who they are, or how they can fit in the world around them. Too many of them find it too hard.
Those people in your communities who are carrying the additional burden of profound trauma-related disabilities such as Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and Early Life Trauma have to negotiate yet a third reality that which has been imposed on them through their disability. Multi-national companies across the globe manage to successfully engage with and employ people from many diverse societies and cultures. They have built up a body of research based on acknowledging cultural difference and finding creative ways to engage with people from many different backgrounds. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner were two pioneers in this field of research, which has grown immensely over the past decades. Australian government policymakers would do well to consider embedding these approaches and findings into their own departmental policies and procedures, as this shift in thinking towards true respect for Indigenous ways of thinking is long overdue. Canadian research carried out by Lalonde and Chandler (see appendix D) shows just how important cultural continuity is for protecting against suicidal despair. RECOMMENDATION #1: that government and other investments commit to taking direction from community leaders in upholding those culturally determined approaches that match existing cultural frameworks in all service delivery contracts with the Fitzroy Valley.
Shared Leadership as the first step

Some of you know I designed and supported a project in Wangkatjungka to slow down alcohol-related family violence through culturally determined mediation. It took as its starting point that both alcohol abuse and family violence are expressions of profound and unaddressed trauma, and in the context of the Fitzroy Valley most probably connected to the trauma of colonisation. It was about building circles and layers of leadership throughout the community so that everyone could feel involved and included in sharing the process of healing and in creating a better future: it was about them organising themselves to begin to achieve a future they all want. It was led by Jane Bieundurry and Rodney Rawlins who were later joined by Olive Knight. They called it Breaking the Spear of Trouble and they have been amazingly successful. It started shortly after the Wangkatjungka community had agreed to make their community free of alcohol (Section 175). Within 18 months they had pretty much taken out family violence and child neglect and more than a year later that is still the case. There are many stories to tell about their success, some of which you may already know. We started our journey together by going to the Mawul Rom peace building ceremony of the Yolngu people in Arnhem Land. This was not only so that we could get to know each other, but also so that they could believe that I was genuine in supporting them to manage
such radical change through their cultural processes and not mine. I had realised since a while, through working with many AOD clients as well as former child soldiers and other young refugees from conflicts in Africa and Asia that people cut off from their cultural heritage and exposed to profound and ongoing trauma are as if they have been cut off at the knees. They struggle to be fully grounded and present in themselves and also struggle with knowing and doing whats needed in the moment. I believe that to have experienced significant trauma is to have lived in one of the loneliest and most disconnected regions of the human condition. [An extraordinary book to read on this is called Radical Hope: ethics in the face of cultural devastation by Jonathan Lear. Its about how the Crow nation in North America survived the loss of the bison and their traditional way of life. Their leaders maintained close contact with the spiritual dimensions of their culture and drew on stories of change and survival that came through their own history and cultural knowledge. They went through a terrible period of loss and darkness but have successfully emerged into a very different world with their core cultural values intact.] One of our early major discussions which continued in one form or another for several months was about which should come first punishment or healing? I had wondered for some time if the traumatic experiences of colonisation, which after all are well within living memory in the Valley, had become internalised and were now seen as cultural. The change process really started to happen when they took on this idea and Jane in particular started yarning in the community about the timelines of recent history including colonisation and its aftermath. They began to understand and speak about where their experiences of trauma came from. My sense was that this shared understanding reduced both shame and that aching sense of loneliness. In one time of crisis within the community during this period, Olive drew on her early memories of travelling through country in a family group and remembered the role of social healer. She took on that role herself with transformative effect. Blaming and punishment became much less common and all sorts of people engaged and took on tasks to strengthen their community in different ways. Rodney Rawlins worked hard to reintroduce male norms of holding and of acting as role models to younger men thereby rebuilding the process by which men reach eldership. This work brought men fully into the processes of change and their emerging responsibilities and played a key role in diminishing family violence. It is well documented that Aboriginal men have suffered a catastrophic loss of role, both through the establishment of the pastoral industry in the 1880s and through the Equal Pay Act which mostly excluded them from that same industry. It is also well known that loss of role and status is a major determinant of male violence. Many international research projects by criminologists have definitively linked male violence and assaults to income and
status inequality in the broader society. *See The Spirit Level Why Equality is Better for Everyone by Wilkinson and Pickett; 2010:135+ The project was also strongly supported by Jo Wraith, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Worker. This was very necessary as the change process and the unravelling of trauma lines inevitably caused deep anxiety in many people at different times. Wangkatjungka has more or less won peace, and is mostly maintaining its stability. (Stability is about family members feeling connected with each other in positive ways.) The third necessity for building a vessel in which to create the conditions for a good life well lived is overcoming poverty. Overcoming poverty, together with valued status and roles for adult men in the community, has still to be won and this lack is, I think, a threat to holding that peace and stability. I will come to that later. I think its worth noting here some of my founding thoughts for that project: that Aboriginal societies generally place more importance on the group outcome than on individual success and therefore shared leadership processes - which match and support cultural frameworks - are much more able to build community strength than the prevailing dominant society model of individual leadership styles; that shared leadership processes necessarily build on the informal networks within the society, which means that everyone can come to feel included; that the processes for building shared leadership centre on dialogue or yarning, so they match and support cultural ways of doing business. Those other communities in the Fitzroy Valley currently implementing Section 175s urgently need the sort of support that was available for Wangkatjungka. They are undertaking major change processes. An equivalent undertaking in a public sector agency or business setting would automatically call for mentors for those people leading the change processes and Employee Assistance Schemes for all other employees and people impacted by the change. RECOMMENDATION#2: that, as a matter of urgency, community leaders request that there be the necessary support for developing and strengthening shared leadership processes which match cultural frameworks for those communities in the Valley currently implementing a Section 175. That such support be made available to all other communities who wish for it. NB: this issue was raised in the Alcohol Management Group meeting on 16 August 2011. Grant Akesson reports that he is looking for possible funding sources and will report back to the Group when they next meet.
Recognising Trauma
What I learnt from the change process in Wangkatjungka is that developing shared leadership and a shared storyline is a relatively safe and supportive pathway through trauma. However, high levels of trauma in the Valley are so deeply and widely experienced that for some considerable time to come there will be a critical need for additional skilled support services. There will be those people who may at different times experience severe anxiety and depression and other mental health concerns, including suicidal thoughts and feelings, as a result of historical and current experiences of trauma. I want to talk more specifically about trauma now, as well as its consequences. But first, by way of setting the scene, I would like to talk about John Bowlby, a UK psychiatrist whose life work was on Attachment, Separation and Loss. This may seem like an unnecessary diversion, but bear with me because I think it has real importance for the recovery storyline in the Fitzroy Valley. You can look John Bowlby up on an internet search engine. Put briefly, he was born into a family where he was raised by a lot of different people who were paid to do it. When he grew up he studied medicine and also began to undergo analysis by Melanie Klein who was closely associated with Sigmund Freud. She specialised in childhood difficulties. Bowlby came to have a major disagreement with both Klein and Freud because they insisted that emotional difficulties are caused by internal processes, whereas he felt that such difficulties were at least in part caused by the environment. In a more nurturing environment distress may not have occurred, and change and healing can happen. He went on to become a psychiatrist and, as a result of his own lived experience, to do research on wellness and on what upset wellness. It was one of his assistants in the 1950s that filmed children in hospital in deepening distress because they were not only ill but separated from family: because of this work it is now the norm for family to go with children to hospital. Another of his assistants did similar work on childrens attachment needs in Uganda in the 1960s, proving that the responses and outcomes in young children of not getting constant and predictable nurture and love are common across all societies and cultures. He and his assistants found that, without a systems-breaker, these conditions of emotional un-wellness repeat across and down the generations. In my own therapeutic practice I have found that approaches based on his work were both the most respectful and had the most enduring long-term outcomes. They can be used at any time in the life cycle. These approaches specifically address the loneliness of trauma and seek to rebuild emotional bonds between people in healthy and nurturing ways they work on strengthening that heart space and connectedness that is so necessary for recovery. They have been used with extraordinary results with people suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorders because of war and other disasters. Such healing can also happen in community
contexts when people begin to do creative things together, and yarn while they are doing them. Put simply, his research found that in most populations about two thirds of people will have what he called secure attachment. As children, they will have had close and constant bonds with their primary care giver(s) and will see the world as fundamentally a good place. Even when unpleasant things happen to them during their lives, they tend to keep their belief that the world is fundamentally a good place and their ability to maintain strong and healthy emotional bonds. About a quarter of people will have what he called insecure avoidant attachment which means that, as young children, they have not experienced reliable nurturing their primary care givers were emotionally not very available to them and failed to respond to their needs. Throughout their lives they often experience high levels of anxiety and depression, particularly around emotional bonds and intimacy. They may use alcohol and other drugs to try and manage those feelings of anxiety and depression. They struggle to engage as parents and to provide a necessary level of nurturing. Their stress levels are often high, leading over time to a range of chronic physical illnesses. The remaining 8% or so have what he called insecure ambivalent attachment which is where their care givers are sometimes loving and sometimes hostile and angry and the child has no means of guessing which or understanding why. Such children tend to grow up very confused. They may at times be inappropriately close and at other times bewilderingly aggressive in their behaviours. They may easily become very threatened and show many defensive behaviours including anger and violence. Profound insecure ambivalent attachment is thought to cause the borderline personality disorders. It may also contribute to psychosis and schizo-affective disorders. In traumatised populations such as those that have experienced war, dispossession and other catastrophic events the whole spectrum of attachment styles gets shifted towards the insecure. Instead of a majority with secure attachment styles, there develops a majority who do not see the world as a fundamentally good place. The levels of suicidal despair and other mental distress in the Fitzroy Valley would point to that shift as having already taken place. The challenge now, and for many years to come, is to shift it back towards a majority with secure attachment styles. Many Aboriginal community leaders over the years have pointed to the ongoing impacts of Stolen Generation policies in their and their families personal and professional lives. They talk of how much of Aboriginal society has lost its ability of knowing how to care for and love each other. They say that turning this around is the single biggest need facing them in order to achieve recovery. The Bringing Them Home report (available from http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/bth_report/index.html) made many recommendations, several of which still wait for implementation.
Judy Atkinsons book Trauma Trails tracks the impact of trauma in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies across history and across generations. She shows how it becomes compounded and comes to penetrate every area of life. Rosemary Wanganeens Grief and Loss workshops, based on her life experience, track the stages of grief and loss through shock, tears, anger, depression, apathy, guilt and finally to physical illness. Drawing from history she shows conclusively that populations who experience profound trauma become increasingly violent. These workshops and other similar initiatives have the possibility of supporting people across the Valley to begin to have conversations about difficulties experienced in their own lives and how the colonial experiences and resulting trauma continue to impact on them. They could be the sort of conversations which, pioneered by Jane Bieundurry, have contributed to such profound change in Wangkatjungka. Pathways to recovery need to be an integral part of these conversations, in order to avoid re-traumatising individuals and communities. In Western Australia the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) use Bowlbys findings among others: they describe their approach as psycho-social. They see mental difficulties as having a lot to do with the environment and that change, healing and recovery is possible. However, the Adult mental health services generally adopt a pathology model more in line with Klein and Freuds position mental illness is not reversible as such though it can be alleviated by medication. At best, it may go into remission. The Valley has been very fortunate in its adult mental health workers to date who tend to work from a trauma and recovery model sometimes at odds with mainstream Community Mental Health approaches. I think it is worth mentioning here the recent developments in mental health treatment models. Neuroplasticity of the brain where the brain changes and so remarkable healing can happen - is emerging as the best practice treatment model for a whole range of brainbased difficulties, spanning anxiety and depression, addictive behaviours, stroke rehabilitation and the overcoming of brain-based disabilities. (The work of Norman Doidge and colleagues, outlined in his book The Brain that Changes Itself is extremely relevant see Appendix D.) Additionally, a new approach to people who hear voices has emerged over the last few years which aims to work with those voices and see them as helpful rather than try and silence them. All these point to recovery as being very achievable. The Community Service Sector works under contract to several government agencies including Health, FAHCSIA, Attorney-General, Corrective Services and others. Despite the best efforts of the FFF and ROC to develop approaches based on solving wicked problems, service contracts for recovery and community safety continue to focus on symptoms such as violence against women and children, or substance misuse, or anti-social behaviours. At best, these services offer band aids, not pathways to holistic recovery. As leaders of community organisations in the Fitzroy Valley you are aware that you receive generous levels of funding compared to many other remote areas. However, you recognise
that you have a duty to direct funders attention to true community needs. Both symptoms of distress and their causes need addressing. Historical funding agreements have only met symptoms. Obviously this symptom-based funding needs to continue for the present, but unless similar funding is made available to address causes, then efforts to overcome Indigenous disadvantage in the Fitzroy Valley will continue to fail. However, taking community guidance on how to address causes now will significantly reduce future need for funding that focuses on symptoms. It therefore follows that without widespread acknowledgement and engagement with the historical and systemic causes and consequences of these trauma-related behaviours i.e. searching for the truest storyline based on lived experience, developing continuity of concept, bringing in neuroplasticity findings to treatment and recovery models, and taking on wicked problem methodologies, its going to be really hard to develop the partnerships that can build those storylines for the future which can give everybody the chance to experience a good life well lived. RECOMMENDATION #3: that community leaders and agencies in the Fitzroy Valley develop and implement culturally based healing programmes that explicitly draw on concepts of cultural continuity. That these programmes aim to protect young people in particular from suicidal thoughts and feelings. The focus of these programmes may include re-establishing traditional child-rearing practices and beliefs, reintroducing cultural structures of male societal norms (holding men), bringing in healthy traditions of reciprocal practices, within a framework of oncountry programme delivery.
See below in Figure 1 for a schematic representation of levels of trauma within the Fitzroy Valley together with some of the origins of this trauma.
100
River and range people: White settlement, invasion, disease, loss of Elders, loss of culture, human rights abuses leading to mixed-race births and subsequent stolen generation policies.
% of population with trauma
Equal Pay Act and forced exodus from Pastoral leases to Fitzroy Crossing. Increased access to alcohol.
50
75
Desert people: Translocation, loss of connection to country, human rights abuses leading to mixed-race births and subsequent stolen generation policies.
Children under 14yo born into chronic poverty and intergenerational trauma. Often exposed to family violence substance misuse and incarceration of key family members.
25
1850
1900
1950
2000
2050
Year
Figure 1: Schematic representation of Percentage of Fitzroy Valley Population exposed to trauma 1850 2050 NB: The green line represents the impact of chronic oversupply of alcohol on children living in an already traumatised community.
Implications of the Marulu Project and the Lililwan Prevalence Study

The Marulu project for overcoming Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and Early Life Trauma (ELT) in the Fitzroy Valley will have far-reaching implications which need to be taken up by all agencies and services. FASD is a wide-ranging disorder and its effects include learning difficulties and significant damage to social functioning abilities as well as organ damage. But it seems that the numbers of children experiencing ELT could be of far greater concern for community recovery. It is increasingly recognised in medical circles that ELT causes the brain to develop in very distinct ways, different from normal brain development pathways: this means that ELT also results in learning difficulties and significant damage to social functioning abilities. What this means in practice is that it almost doesnt matter whether people have a diagnosis of FASD or were exposed to profound ELT: the outcomes are much the same and they will need
high levels of support if they are to have the experience, as far as possible, of a good life well lived. This support may well be needed for the whole of their lives. Without these high levels of support throughout their lives, international evidence and local experience clearly demonstrates that this group of people are, as adults, at huge risk of substance abuse and other anti-social behaviours. Currently these problems lead to prolonged contact with the justice system, incarceration and ongoing need for mental health services. It is worth noting that there is increasing concern among leading members of the judiciary on why Australian Society condones the use of prison for vulnerable people who, because of brain based difficulties, act in anti-social ways. In addition, their social relationships are likely to be so difficult for them that they are at enormous risk of suicidal thoughts and feelings, and completion. US research studies into the pathways from FASD to mental illness and suicide have conclusively demonstrated this link (see Appendix D). Their families, partners and children will continue to suffer severe stress until these support services come into place. There are a number of adults presently living in the Fitzroy Valley who know they have FASD. Some of them hold down jobs, but many perhaps most - of them struggle with their social relationships. Those that are already parents often struggle to provide the nurturing to their children that they themselves so often didnt experience. Because I have been involved in gaining effective control of alcohol within the Fitzroy Valley I have had many conversations about alcohol use over the last few years. What emerges from these conversations is that in around the mid-1980s more and more young people, including young women, began to drink heavily. There are many historical reasons for this, linked to both gaining citizenship and the legal right to consume alcohol, forced exodus from the pastoral stations and minimal infrastructure (appalling living conditions and lack of government services) in the Fitzroy Valley, progressive weakening of the authority of traditional culture, unaddressed trauma from Stolen Generation policies, among other reasons. Despite many community attempts and initiatives over the years, effective control of alcohol only began in 2007. This sudden and ongoing increase in alcohol consumption by young men and women from that time forward has resulted in a steep increase or a ballooning of numbers of children exposed either to alcohol before birth, and/or to increasingly chaotic living conditions after birth: the sort of conditions that cause profound trauma, including ELT. Even if no other pregnant woman drank alcohol from now on, that existing tsunami and the shadow it casts on future generations of children exposed to the living conditions that cause ELT and other traumas cannot level off until community healing begins to happen and the ability of both men and women to provide care and protection to each other and to children returns as the normal basis of stable family life.
At its widest point, possibly sometime between the mid 1990s to 2007 or so, and taking into account reports from Fitzroy District High School, it seems possible that rather more than half of all children born in those years will have one or the other condition. That is a growing group of children with unique and complex difficulties in social functioning and forward planning who will progressively reach adulthood over the next 15 to 20 years. The group is now approximately 30 years long (those born between the early 1980s and the early 2010s) and may include well over half of all people in certain age groups. This problem will be with the Valley for at least the next 70 years. Local people are saying that the Valley has already lost one generation to alcohol abuse. Without decisive action now, it stands to lose a second generation. Its very confronting. This timeline is something that the whole community needs to take on board, and on which Government and other investments need to take community direction. Its the ultimate wicked problem, mind-blowing in its complexity and ability to repeat itself: the effects extend across all disciplines, time periods and scales of impact. BUT you in the Fitzroy Valley have already shown as a community that you are not only taking it on, you are pioneering this whole issue within Australia. Its a huge threat, but it could also represent the best possible opportunity for creating those conditions identified as necessary for a good life well lived and outlined in the rich picture presented to the Senate inquiry on Suicide Prevention - see page 4. Solving this will call on all your courage and ingenuity, your cultural traditions and capacity for putting group outcomes ahead of individual gain. It will demand that you bring not only peace and stability but also a solid economic base that brings this group of people into your recovery storyline. Wangkatjunka was a beginning. It showed that with a storyline and organising ideas that are true to lived experience and match core cultural frameworks, and which involve everyone, extraordinary things can and will happen in astonishingly short time frames. RECOMMENDATION #4: That government and other investments take community direction, backed up by research provided by the Marulu Project team, on what family support and other services need urgent funding in order to prevent ELT and FASD increasing exponentially to approximately 90% of the total population of the Fitzroy Valley by 2050 (see figure 2).
Equal Pay Act and forced exodus from Pastoral leases to Fitzroy Crossing. Increased access to alcohol.
Figure 2: Chart showing cumulative effects of trauma from the time of the Equal Pay Act and forced removal from pastoral leases to 2050 if no effective action is taken now to support community owned paths to creating the conditions necessary for a good life well lived. The uppermost (blue) line shows predicted total population growth The thick (green) line shows the increasing numbers of children under 14yo predicted to experience profound trauma including ELT and FASD to 2050 The steeply curving (red) line tracks the dramatic increase in people disabled by trauma, as a proportion of the total population Note the narrowing gap between the top blue and climbing red lines which show the steadily decreasing number of people not incapacitated by trauma and who will be able to take up leadership roles, relative to the total population of the Valley.
FOCUSING ON CURRENT CHALLENGES supporting people in pain

The mental health system is filled with survivors of prolonged and repeated childhood trauma. Abuse in childhood appears to be one of the main factors that lead a person to seek psychiatric help as an adult. (Hermon, J. Trauma and Recovery 2001:122) As you who live in the Fitzroy Valley know, your community organisations have been trying for several years now to inform governments of what your true needs are. There are already some wonderfully innovative and responsive programmes within the Valley: Marninwarntikura Womens Resource Centre runs a very important Mobile Playgroup to communities across the Valley, together with an Indigenous Parenting Service. You are developing a Community Garden concept which has huge potential for engaging people with profound trauma in both healing and production. Nindilingarri Cultural Health Service has a strong emphasis on early intervention through cultural frameworks and is a passionate advocate of environmental health. Kalacc and Yiriman together run vital on-country programmes which make it possible for many of you to visit your country and draw strength from doing so. Marra Worra Worra endeavours to support people to live with dignity within your homes and communities, despite appalling levels of overcrowding. Together you offer lifelines to people across the Valley who have felt the full brunt of trauma.
Childhood Trauma, Adult Pain Supporting Community Healing Circles

This is a very difficult subject to write about. However, I think this is one of the key issues for overcoming suicidal despair in the Fitzroy Valley. Like suicide and unsanctioned sexual contact, child neglect and victimization is remembered as being unknown and unthinkable in your traditional societies when you were strong and secure in your culture. It could well be that your societies first experienced these behaviours as a result of your involvement with the pastoral industry many of your older people have stories of unwanted sexual encounters followed by the trauma of giving birth to a mixed-race child who was then forcibly removed through Stolen Generation policies. Unfortunately, these issues have been known though often not talked about - for a long time in Australian mainstream society, perhaps because so many populations have come to Australia as convicts and refugees as a result of trauma in their place of origin. There is a telling story from one of the main psychiatric inpatient units in Perth. When this unit started asking those women who were so seriously mentally ill and feeling such deep suicidal despair that they needed to stay in hospital, whether they had ever experienced forced sexual encounters including childhood sexual abuse, they found that nineteen out of every twenty female patients said that this had happened to them.
As one of your community leaders said in a recent Alcohol Management Group meeting, in Australia men are not allowed to cry. This means that the journey for boys and men who have experienced similar trauma and tried to manage its effects in their own ways - often through antisocial behaviours including substance abuse, becoming offenders in turn and becoming violent in their families - tends to end in prison and in suicidal despair. Freda Briggs AO is a researcher and lecturer in sociology, child protection and family studies for the University of South Australia. She won the Senior Australian of the Year award in 2000 and the Order of Australia in 2005. She has done ground-breaking research on experiences of childhood abuse and neglect including sexual assault in childhood, and subsequent life pathways. In particular she has researched the link between childhood experiences of sexual abuse and sex offending behaviours. She found through structured interviews held with prisoners in both WA and SA that more than nine out of ten of all inmates gaoled for offending against children had themselves been abused as children. Her key question was about their first sexual experience, which overwhelmingly turned out to have been abusive. The three hallmarks of future offending that she identified were: when this experience was seen as the only positive experience in a sea of violence and neglect, when the experience had been buried because it was so traumatic, or when the experience had been normalized and unrecognised as abuse because everybody did it. The research shows that boys abused by older boys and men are the most likely to offend in turn; and girls abused by older boys and men become repeat victims of older boys and men. In addition there is strong evidence that experiences of childhood trauma lead to other offending behaviours which result in prison sentences. And of course, there is a very strong link between experiences of childhood trauma including sexual abuse and later life pathways of substance misuse and mental illness leading to suicidal despair. There is a clear need for a circuit-breaker that focuses on healing experiences of childhood trauma and victimisation which include sexual abuse, observation of violence and profound experiences of neglect. Without such a circuit-breaker, these cycles of trauma and loss resulting in both imprisonment and disabling levels of mental unwellness - including suicidal despair - can only continue. Despite compelling research in this area (Infant Losses, Adult Searches see Appendix D) there are as yet very few models of treatment. Christabel Chamarette (who founded SafeCare) is a world-recognised pioneer in developing treatment and support processes based on Bowlbys attachment theories. Her processes are broadly similar to those used to support Stolen Generation people in telling their stories: through structured and supported
healing groups. She has offered to develop these groups together with local people in the Fitzroy Valley in such a way that this work of healing can continue safely wherever the need arises. RECOMMENDATION #5: That Christabel Chamarette is invited to work in with the development of Community Healing Circles in order to train and support community people in the Fitzroy Valley to be able to develop and deliver approaches within their communities for overcoming experiences of childhood trauma. That appropriate funding and resources be made available for this work to begin as soon as possible.
Mental Health Service Provision

The Valley currently has one Child and Adolescent Mental Health worker and one Adult Community Mental Health worker. It has received funding for two Indigenous Mental Health workers, but housing them is likely to be a problem. However, the need is so great that any resource (until an effective and wide-ranging response is crafted) will be consumed, swallowed up at once. The current resources are awakening people to their own need to access support and understanding professional help for their experiences of trauma and feelings of worthlessness, neglect and suicidal despair. Mental Health workers are recommending a service minimum of 4 clinical practitioners who work from a trauma and recovery model and are able to focus equally across Child and Adolescent and Adult presenting issues, paired with 4 Indigenous Mental Health workers. They are looking for gender balance and for a model where its two-way learning and support. It is to be hoped that more and more local people will be able to step into these and other roles, not least to provide cultural continuity within the framework of mainstream mental health service provision. Several other agencies are currently engaged in offering counselling and support to the Fitzroy Valley. Their service contracts need to specify that they also work from a trauma and recovery model. The recent appointment of Suicide Prevention workers, based on what has seemed to be successful in the metro area, may not be the most helpful intervention that government and other investments are making in their efforts to support the community to overcome suicidal despair. Because need for therapeutic support in the Valley is so high, regular delivery of training in the Indigenous Mental Health First Aid course for anyone who was interested would help people begin to understand and be less fearful of what they and their family members might be going through.
RECOMMENDATION #6: that agencies and community leaders in the Fitzroy Valley demand that all mental health practitioners and other allied health service providers use systemic approaches based on trauma and recovery. That not only continuity of care across services be achieved, but even more importantly, continuity of concept underpin all service delivery. RECOMMENDATION #7: That WA Country Health Services take direction from Nindilingarri Cultural Health and the Fitzroy Valley Health Partnership to provide sufficient services to meet the comprehensive mental health needs manifesting in the Valley. RECOMMENDATION #8: That Indigenous Mental Health First Aid training and awareness be made available to communities at regular 3 month intervals for the next 3 years.
Youth Perspectives
Many young people speak of how they suffer through trying to bridge competing world views the one intensely secular, and the other, strongly cultural. They say that differences between older and younger people mean that they handle stress differently. They talk about how they hold deep feelings of loss and loneliness and neglect, which sometimes lead them to criminal behaviour and subsequent contact with the justice system, including incarceration. They also report finding it very hard to know whom they can share their deep sadness with, including their feelings of suicidal despair. This leads to them often not talking, for fear of being shut down or told to get over it. What comes across is a mix of boredom and lack of direction, fear of not being able to make a worthwhile future, together with deep hurts around relationship breakups in the family, substance abuse and experiences of family violence and sexual assault. They are beginning to ask questions: whose job is it to prevent suicide? What is community? And even: What role can culture play in supporting me to be able to lead a good life well lived? Lalonde and Chandlers work on preventing youth in Indigenous societies from becoming suicidal is relevant here. They point to the great strength that cultural continuity and cultural connectedness bring as protective factors for Indigenous youth. The strong and continuing interest in the recent showing of Jandamarra more than backs this up as direct, lived experience within the Fitzroy Valley. Schools across the Fitzroy Valley have a major contribution to make in overcoming suicidal despair in young people. For many of them to be able to realise this contribution, there needs to be a major reappraisal of their role in the community. Most obviously, their
curriculum needs to be delivered through therapeutic frameworks that match the learning needs of students with ELT and/or FASD. In terms of fostering cultural continuity, there is a need for students to learn through their cultural heritage, rather than about it. This will require extensive on-country and language learning. Schools also have a role to play in engaging parents as full partners in their childs education, and in becoming community resource centres for whole-of-life learning opportunities. The current need for innovative school refuser programmes may diminish over time, if these approaches are adopted. The pre-vocational courses currently offered in Fitzroy Crossing through Kimberley TAFE (the GATE programme) and Karrayili Adult Education Centre offer crucial support for those disengaged young people most at risk from suicidal despair. These pre-vocational courses need to be long-term and focus on rekindling young peoples motivation for engaging with their own futures. They need to be lifestyle based and support young people to develop the confidence and skills to maintain their own lifestyle and to negotiate with mainstream society and services. Above all, they need to be sufficiently resourced so that they can be accessed by young people from all communities across the Fitzroy Valley. The Parliamentary Report on Doing Time, Time for Doing into Indigenous juvenile justice issues (http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/atsia/sentencing/report/fullreport.pdf) recommends that there are . . . an expanded number and range of safe and gender-appropriate
accommodation options for Indigenous children and youth. These options should include access to coordinated and holistic intensive care services. A housing or accommodation plan needs to have been identified for every youth leaving detention. . . . The Committee suggests that the range
of appropriate accommodation options should include extended family houses, identified safe houses, hostel and school accommodation, foster and respite care, and emergency refuge accommodation. They also recommend that . . . the Commonwealth Government recognise mental health as a significant issue affecting Indigenous youth and collaborate with the states and territories to direct funding where possible to successful Indigenous community developed and led programs with a focus on healing, culture, emotional wellbeing and reconnection with family. Because of the severe lack of youth services and opportunities in the Fitzroy Valley, young people who are deeply affected by their own and surrounding trauma too often end up in the justice system. This is a tragedy, not least because young people are everyones future. RECOMMENDATION #9: That government recognise mental health as a significant issue affecting Indigenous youth and collaborate with the Fitzroy Valley to direct funding to successful Indigenous community developed and led programs with a focus on healing,
culture, emotional wellbeing and reconnection with family. That government support the Yiriman programme and other similar initiatives such as Yiramalay and The Girls Academy. RECOMMENDATION #10: That schools across the Valley be encouraged and supported to deliver their curricula through frameworks that match local needs, including those of students with ELT and FASD, and that foster cultural continuity. RECOMMENDATION #11: That pre-vocational courses be sufficiently expanded and resourced so that they can be accessed by all at-risk young people across the Fitzroy Valley. RECOMMENDATION #12: That government implement the recommendations of the recent Parliamentary report Doing Time, Time for Doing with respect to building and staffing an expanded number and range of safe and gender-appropriate accommodation options for Indigenous children and youth. These options should include access to coordinated and holistic intensive care services. A housing or accommodation plan needs to have been identified for every youth leaving detention. The accommodation options should include extended family houses, identified safe houses, hostel and school accommodation, foster and respite care, and emergency refuge accommodation.
Mens Perspectives:
As a member of the Alcohol Management Group said at the recent meeting on 16 August, men are not allowed to cry in Australia. Mens ways of managing their trauma are too often seen as bad or sometimes mad, but rarely as sad. Men are quickly seen as perpetrators, but rarely as victims. Their ways of coping tend to bring them into contact with the justice system. Those men who do try and access rehabilitation for their substance use face long waiting lists and services far from family and country. And for those men who wish to build stronger family relationships, there is almost no support available for them at present in the Fitzroy Valley. This last meeting of the Alcohol Management Group undertook to focus on mens needs and take direction on what those needs are and how best to meet them as its focus for the next two years. RECOMMENDATION #13: That government take guidance from the Mens Group on what specialised services and infrastructure will be required for men both in terms of their behaviours around substance misuse and for their other needs and requirements.
Healing Family Relationships

As stated above in the section on Shared Leadership, my experiences of supporting the Wangkatjunka project to slow down alcohol-related family violence led me to define Family Violence from a systemic perspective based on trauma. There are four main ways in which violence within families occurs violence towards vulnerable Elders as humbugging, peer violence including violence between women and violence between men as well as from men to women, antisocial behaviours by youth which impact on all family members, child neglect All of the above are complicated by high levels of severe mental distress and associated trauma. However, Wangkatjungka proved that levels of family violence and child neglect can very quickly drop when the whole community begins to understand and address underlying historical trauma. These processes of healing which focus on addressing issues before they reach crisis point, together with pathways to a different way of living, need sustained support. Marninwarntikura Womens Resource Centre has been a tireless advocate for services that support men. The DVD Be Happy, Be Strong profiles mens perspectives and mens deep desire for support to become better partners and fathers. RECOMMENDATION #14: that further Family Counselling and Relationship Services which draw on Bowlbys attachment theories and address profound trauma and pathways to reconnection between people be funded as a matter of urgency.
Housing issues
It has to be said that inadequate and overcrowded housing is a major contributory factor to family violence and other experiences of trauma including childhood victimization. It also contributes to intergenerational experiences of chronic poverty and loss of status and role for men living in the Fitzroy Valley. Many local people live in houses overcrowded at the rate of 4 or 5 per bedroom (i.e. 10 people in a 2-bedroom house, 15-20 in a 4-bedroom house). Services are struggling to house their staff and many positions remain unfilled due to these housing difficulties. Those local people who access challenging jobs in the community sector desperately need a good standard of housing if you are to do your jobs effectively and without adding to your private burdens.
The Department of Housing and Works is catching up on 40+ years of neglect and inappropriate design, and is achieving extraordinary things. However it has to be recognised that overcrowded housing contributes directly to lived experiences of trauma and mental distress, leading to suicidal despair. This is especially acute for young people who see 3 or 4 generations of their family crowded into a small house and see no hope for a different future for themselves. There urgently need to be housing alternatives for young people across the Fitzroy Valley if their levels of suicidal despair are to diminish. RECOMMENDATION #15: that all means possible to provide and increase adequate housing stock across the Fitzroy Valley be pursued as a matter of urgency. That some housing be prioritised for local people taking up community sector positions.
Healing through Culture and Creative Processes Language and the Performing Arts
The recent showing of Jandamarra made very clear how important creative processes are for recovery from trauma and for strengthening community resilience. Lalonde and Chandlers work echoes this in its strong support for cultural continuity as building effective protective factors against Indigenous youth suicidal despair. All this is confirmed by the newly emerging science of neuroplasticity or rewiring the brain. Nindilingarri Cultural Health runs a small programme for spiritual health that works in just this way, encouraging people to record your songs, stories and poetry. Most young people in the Fitzroy Valley yearn to have greater access to recording equipment so that you can use it to express both your hopes and your fears. Marninwarntikura Womens Resource Centre runs creative programme for women to grow pride in yourselves, including for pregnant women. These programmes provide just that vital opportunity for women to gather together and yarn deeply about your hopes and fears while doing something deeply satisfying: this builds reconnection and overcomes those feelings of isolation and despair that are the hallmark of trauma. The work of the Kimberley Language Resource Centre has a very important role to play in strengthening cultural protective factors against suicide, especially for children. Their work on keeping language alive needs to be taken seriously, not only for its cultural aspects but also because it is well known in neuroplasticity circles that speaking more than one language means that a persons brain is more differentiated and more able to recover from traumas.
The most recent report from the Indigenous Implementation Board (see http://www.dia.wa.gov.au/PageFiles/481/IIB%20Report%20%20to%20the%20Hon%20Peter %20Collier%20MLC_February%202011.pdf) strongly advocates not only for cultural continuity, but also for release of government agency funding to communities proportionate to the involvement of those agencies with children and young people from those communities. If adopted, their recommendations would go a long way towards redressing the over-involvement of government agencies and accompanying disempowerment of more senior community members - in the lives and aspirations of young people at risk of suicidal despair in the Fitzroy Valley. RECOMMENDATION #16: That Nindilingarri Cultural Health be funded to continue their Spiritual Health programme in order to make recording facilities available across the Valley as a way of encouraging people to share stories of pain and recovery, and importance of culture. RECOMMENDATION #17: That language teaching in schools and through community activities be taken up as a therapeutic, cultural and artistic response to overcoming trauma and suicidal despair in the Fitzroy Valley. That the Kimberley Language Resource Centre be invited and resources to develop further language development and performing arts programmes. RECOMMENDATION #18: That Government Departments working with children and young people establish a budget to fund community elders and mentors to teach them about their culture and assist to reconnect them to the cultural life of their people. The size of the budget should reflect the numbers and proportion of Aboriginal children and young people who receive services from the agency.
Sport and other youth-focused infrastructure

Geoff Davies from Garnduwa is currently undertaking an analysis of the Youth Co-ordinator role, yet to be funded, on behalf of the Fitzroy Futures Forum. Given the reported levels of concern at lack of recreation, lack of safe spaces and lack of a clear pathway for young people to a good life well lived, this analysis and its subsequent recommendations need to be acted on as a matter of urgency. RECOMMENDATION #19: That government take direction from the Fitzroy Futures Forum on what additional sport and other youth-focused infrastructure will be required for the Fitzroy Valley.
BUILDING THE FUTURE from healing to empowerment

Aboriginal people and their culture are critical to the future of our State. Their unique knowledge is the defining element in building a sustainable future for Western Australia. Indigenous Implementation Board 2011
Community-owned approaches to strengthening social recovery

Many state and federal government agencies are deeply concerned by the growing evidence of entrenched and deep-seated suicidal despair in the Fitzroy Valley and the chronic poverty that goes along with it. These include agencies dedicated to building employment opportunities for Aboriginal people. They are slowly beginning to grasp the wicked nature of the problems facing the Valley. As you all know only too well, current service provision for the whole-of-life impacts of trauma including ELT and FASD is, on the whole, limited to Police and Corrective Services, as well as Child Protection, Domestic Violence, AOD and Mental Health Services. This places a huge burden on the state. (The Indigenous Implementation Board reported that in 2006, 50% of all state government expenditure on Indigenous Affairs went to Corrective Services (AU$600 Million from a total state expenditure of AU$1.2 Billion. Figures for 2011 are likely to have increased significantly. See http://www.dia.wa.gov.au/Documents/IIB%20Public%20Report%20for%20website.pdf.) These approaches and associated costs penalise all WA residents. These services have yet to agree on the underlying causes and acknowledge the extent of intergenerational and transgenerational trauma. Their service delivery models, focusing as they do on symptoms and not causes, inevitably lack continuity of underlying concept and singularly fail to meet the complexity of this ultimate wicked problem. Without radical interventions, the lived trauma and associated costs to the state can only increase to truly frightening levels. See Appendix C It is therefore urgent that all agencies move to integrate the current and whole-of-life implications of ELT and FASD into their strategic thinking. Additionally and in response to this emerging humanitarian catastrophe, state and federal government agencies need to adopt models of engagement that seek to empower and resource communities in the Fitzroy Valley to craft those solutions that match their social and economic structures and which are based on cultural continuity see next section. RECOMMENDATION #20: that all agencies revise their strategic plans to take on the longterm implications of the Marulu project as they impact on each agencys core purpose, and especially in terms of building community resilience and cultural continuity as best practice suicide prevention strategies.
Developing Social Enterprise for a Therapeutic Economy

Local experience within the Fitzroy Valley has found that government money for community programmes tends to be available in very short funding cycles and can be withdrawn at short notice, well before sustainable gains have been made. Another major drawback, as outlined in the section on Living in Two Worlds, is that government thinking frequently fails to honour, much less match, cultural frameworks and community ways of doing things. This in turn contributes to largely ineffective use of taxpayer money and leads to much of the bad press that Aboriginal affairs attract in the wider Australian community. As indicated in Figure 2 backed up by the database in Appendix C, the levels of profound trauma among children in the Fitzroy Valley which are being revealed by the Marulu project have deeply worrying implications for all West Australian residents. Without a radically different way of engaging with the communities in the Fitzroy Valley and supporting local people to not only overcome suicidal despair but create the basis for a good life well lived, costs to the state in terms of policing, imprisonment, chronic health conditions including substance abuse, child protection and welfare payments will steadily increase to truly frightening levels. How much better would it be for everyone if, instead of these huge costs with little social or capital return, a radically different way of doing things was developed in the Fitzroy Valley? A way that reflects and honours deeply embedded cultural norms of loyalty to family and reciprocal and co-operative working practices? A way that seeks to create future opportunities for all local people through meeting current challenges? Social business structures would allow family support services to be truly locally owned and located within the communities they are designed to serve. They would have the ability to honour those local traditions around child-rearing practices that so ensure cultural continuity. These social businesses would be able to draw on the expertise that will come into the Child and Family Centre, currently being built in Fitzroy Crossing. They would be able to bring into their toolbox a whole range of programmes that prepare children for school and for living in two worlds with their dignity and their cultural heritage intact. Remote areas of Scotland which face similar geographic and climate challenges to the West Kimberley have developed extraordinarily successful models through which local community members are trained and supported to deliver family support, child care, disability services, to name just a few community services, within their own communities. Social business structures are known for their ability to deliver a wide range of outcomes, including training and economic benefits. In terms of building a solid economic base in which the economy serves community needs (as it did in pre-contact times) rather than the other way around, social enterprises offer a tried and tested way of meeting these needs.
If the Fitzroy Valley community is to build a viable future in the face of the devastation caused by the current levels of alcohol-related and other trauma manifesting throughout the Valley, economic structures which have the ability to include and engage with all residents of working age, no matter what their degree of trauma-related disability, need to be explored and developed. Models of economic activity that can contribute to overcoming the levels of chronic poverty currently experienced in the Valley and which significantly impact on levels of suicidal despair would complete what was so successfully begun in Wangkatjungka see section on Shared Leadership on page 11. This idea is explored further in the following section. RECOMMENDATION #21: That those recommendations for family support services coming out of the Marulu Project be considered for Social Enterprise models of delivery to ensure cultural continuity, and local involvement and ownership.
From Training to Employment without glitches

Too often economic development models focus on single bottom line achievements maximum return on shareholder investment. To achieve this, they focus on engaging the best and the brightest. However, this excludes many people from employment opportunities who, under a different philosophical approach, would be able to make significant contributions to an economic development model that seeks to serve community needs first and that honours sustainable land management practices. As you know, many adults in the Valley who are seeking work find that they are being trained several times over in different skills for which there are no local jobs. For many who have a history of profound trauma, these trainings require literacy and numeracy skills with which they struggle. Currently most jobs in the Fitzroy Valley are filled by outside people and are predominantly in the service sectors (see ANU CAEPR working papers 35/2006 and 39/2008) Some time ago I put together a proposal using social business models to weave the wholeof-life needs of those people so affected by trauma that they would find maintaining employment in the mainstream economy very difficult, into community aspirations for a local economy that draws on cultural heritage as detailed in the 2005 Kimberley Appropriate Economies Roundtable Strategic Plan. That Roundtable planning exercise demonstrated the viability of an arts, crafts and tourism-based local economy, drawing on cultural knowledge and practices and use of traditional lands. This economic development proposal would seek to bring an economic glue to strengthen the community through weaving business and community support services in with the aspirations of emerging entrepreneurs and young business leaders. I have connections to a UK college for young adults with complex and unique learning and behavioural difficulties (aged 16 24), where 7 out of every 10 students have a diagnosis of FASD. Other students are mainly diagnosed with Autism spectrum and conduct disorders.
Their curriculum draws heavily on neuroplasticity and is designed to rewire the brain partly through motor skills and partly through intensive social skills development. It is delivered by skilled and dedicated crafts-people and trained and supported families rather than generic tutors and support workers. Ruskin Mill Education Trust (http://www.rmet.org.uk/) has three campuses and over 300 students. Each campus is located in what was recognised as an economically depressed area. The colleges contribute directly to the vibrancy of the local craft-based economies which have developed around their campuses. The proposal didnt get traction at that time because I felt it was a basic requirement for success that leaders and entrepreneurs from the Valley went to see for themselves how best to adapt it for local needs. However, people within DEEWR and ROC are recognising that the urgency for innovative solutions is becoming so pressing that funding overseas travel for research and development for Indigenous arts and crafts-based economic enterprises may now be possible. The college is very keen to support any project undertaken in the Fitzroy Valley through hosting visitors and sharing their learning and achievements. They are particularly keen to meet cultural leaders in order to understand more about working with country in their respective contexts. Below is an outline of the proposal. Three Stage Training Curriculum for youth with ELT/FASD Tutors to be drawn as far as possible from local community members who have the necessary cultural, craft and artistic skills o Skilled mentors accessed through e.g. Arts Source or ICV to train up local tutors as needed Stage One: gaining gross motor skills through land management and animal husbandry Stage Two: developing fine motor skills through craft activity Stage Three: growing conceptual skills through artistic projects, including web-based media Ongoing living skills programme for managing social relationships and family and cultural responsibilities including supported accommodation, parenting support etc., to be provided by trained and supported families Training modules have commercial applications in their own right, leading to: o Ongoing opportunities for work experience and/or employment for students o Business opportunities for tutors and other community members This is a model that is able to generate its own culturally based training for Social Enterprises that contribute to a Therapeutic Economy. At the same time, other Registered Training Organisations can contribute to the overall success of these ventures. The priority is that this approach meets community needs for overcoming both trauma and chronic poverty and
is empowered to give direction to TAFE and other government agencies, including DEEWR and DWRT. Related social business opportunities include but need not be limited to: Gross motor skills: o Land management caring for country, water systems maintenance, Ranger programmes o Bio-fuel development, ethno-botany projects o Food security including animal husbandry and fruit and vegetable production o Tourism on country walking trails and other facilities and infrastructure Fine motor skills: o Craft activities including basket making, beading, fabric design, weaving, felting, woodwork, woodcarving, metalwork, sculpture, glass . . . o Bush food and bush medicine preparation, packaging and marketing o Food processing, bakery and caf activities, leading to retail opportunities Developing forward planning skills through artistic projects o Visual arts o Video and web-based media o Music and radio programme design and delivery Living skills and living support programmes o Mentoring and coaching, including parenting support o Recreational activities o Literacy and numeracy o Independent/supported living skills All Aboriginal agencies in Fitzroy Crossing already have programmes in line with parts of this model, so I am hoping that only a small shift in thinking will be needed to integrate it more fully into your existing models and frameworks of service. I hope you will see it as a major component of the recovery process, owned by communities and community agencies as well as commercially active leaders and other entrepreneurs from within your communities. Obviously it will need further consultation and development, which DEEWR have agreed to fund. RECOMMENDATION #22: That a Community Consultation process for designing, developing and implementing Social Enterprise for a Therapeutic Economy be commissioned. RECOMMENDATION #23: That government and other investments support the development of a local therapeutic economy in line with the 2005 Kimberley Appropriate Economy Roundtable Plans, and which seeks to include people with profound and disabling levels of trauma.
Conclusion
This has become a very long letter. It matches a very deep wound in the communities of the Fitzroy Valley that will take great courage and persistence to heal and close. However, you know only too well that you have travelled rather less than a kilometre on your long journey to creating those conditions necessary for realising a good life well lived within the Fitzroy Valley. May this letter enable government and other investments to join with you and support you on your journey. With thanks to all the many people in the Fitzroy Valley who shared your thoughts and concerns, hopes and fears with me. I hope I have faithfully represented your views. My particular thanks to Emily and Maureen Carter, June Oscar, Jo Wraith and Stephen Shelford for your generous insight and support. Maggie White Herculeia Consulting
APPENDIX A: Tackling Wicked Problems: A Public Policy Perspective
Commissioners Foreword
The Australian Public Service (APS) is increasingly being tasked with solving very complex policy problems. Some of these policy issues are so complex they have been called wicked problems. The term wicked in this context is used, not in the sense of evil, but rather as an issue highly resistant to resolution. Successfully solving or at least managing these wicked policy problems requires a reassessment of some of the traditional ways of working and solving problems in the APS. They challenge our governance structures, our skills base and our organisational capacity. It is important, as a first step, that wicked problems be recognised as such. Successfully tackling wicked problems requires a broad recognition and understanding, including from governments and Ministers, that there are no quick fixes and simple solutions. Tackling wicked problems is an evolving art. They require thinking that is capable of grasping the big picture, including the interrelationships among the full range of causal factors underlying them. They often require broader, more collaborative and innovative approaches. This may result in the occasional failure or need for policy change or adjustment. Wicked problems highlight the fundamental importance of the APS building on the progress that has been made with working across organisational boundaries both within and outside the APS. The APS needs to continue to focus on effectively engaging stakeholders and citizens in understanding the relevant issues and in involving them in identifying possible solutions. The purpose of this publication is more to stimulate debate around what is needed for the successful tackling of wicked problems than to provide all the answers. Such a debate is a necessary precursor to reassessing our current systems, frameworks and ways of working to ensure they are capable of responding to the complex issues facing the APS. I hope that this publication will encourage public service managers to reflect on these issues, and to look for ways to improve the capacity of the APS to deal effectively with the complex policy problems confronting us.
Lynelle Briggs Australian Public Service Commissioner
http://www.apsc.gov.au/publications07/wickedproblems.htm
APPENDIX B MATRIX OF SERVICE PROVISION AND GAPS YOUNG PEOPLE NEEDS SERVICES Psycho-social Yiriman Mooditj, Kidsafe: sexual health and safety CAMHS NCH Scuttergirls (town and Bayulu only) NCH Spiritual Health Standby Suicide
GAPS
Build and staff a range of safe and gender-appropriate accommodation options for Indigenous children and youth. Provide access to coordinated and holistic intensive care services. These accommodation options should include extended family houses, identified safe houses, hostel and school accommodation, foster and respite care, and emergency refuge accommodation. (See Recommendation #9)
Safety
Age to 17?? NO SPECIFIC SERVICES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE
Recreation
Yiriman Garnduwa Girls academy ?Clontarf Foundation at FX DHS
Participation, Identity, Purpose i.e. education, training, employment pathways including life skills, family support
TAFE GATE programme etc Karrayili, Yiriman, FXDHS, Yiramalay/Wesley College
Safe House to age 17 Open all night, place of safety, advocacy, resources, low stimuli Sleep, food, showers, role modelling For those children excluded from the Womens Refuge Youth Centre Activity based, proactive on texting and cyber safety, full IT facilities Focus on cohesion, anti bullying, anti feuding , Trauma recovery use specially designed youth camps etc Safe working space for Child and Adolescent MHS and related youth therapeutic services For youth with ELT/FASD and DSC clients, including those engaged by Karrayili, FXDHS, Yiramalay/Wesley College who require seamless transition from education to work
FAMILIES NEEDS Early parenting, including designated programmes for teen parents
Relationship Counselling and Support
Bereavement, Grief and Loss counselling
SERVICES MWRC early childhood programmes DCP Parent Support developing well DCP et al Strong Families (Vicki Sheridan) NCH Visiting Families Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services Standby Suicide? But mainly family support Boab Health general counselling Adult Mental Health picking up trauma-related mental health issues, but early intervention needed: NO SPECIFIC SERVICES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE Adult Mental Health picking up trauma-related mental health issues, but early intervention needed: NO SPECIFIC SERVICES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE
GAPS Specialised support for teenage parents Specialised support for parents with ELT/FASD Specialised suicide interventions
Specialised relationship counselling using inclusive (men and women) trauma-based models of Family dysfunction not Duluth. Community-specific Wangkatjunka-type programmes especially to support Section 175 change processes Specialised Grief and Loss counselling Kinway? Specialised Bereavement counselling Kinway? Rosemary Wanganeen?
Adult sexual assault
Child sexual assault
Respite Care
Adult Mental Health picking up trauma-related mental health caused by this issues, but early intervention and specialised counselling needed: NO SPECIFIC SERVICES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE Child and AdolescentMHS picking up trauma-related mental health issues, but early intervention and specialised counselling needed: NO SPECIFIC SERVICES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE Kifsa and Frontier Services provide limited respite for people with DSC disability and some mental health issues
Strong link to suicide therefore SARC-type or SafeCare service needed Strong links to criminal behaviour and incarceration
This issue may be another hugely confronting issue, or it may resolve itself through community healing efforts Role for Christabel Chamarette SafeCare? Needed for families struggling to care for family members with ELT and/or FASD
NB: Child and Family Centre due to open in 2012. It will provide specialised FASD and ELT services. It needs to include Family Therapy work which is intensive and long-term, offered by a variety of practitioners, for the empowerment of families including children and youth. Focus on treating attachment disorders, include therapeutic and practical approaches covering living skills, parent skills and delivered by dedicated family support workers. COMMUNITIES NEEDS Suicide Prevention Recovery support for FASD/ELT Environmental Health Community Leadership programmes Visionary LIPs
SERVICES NCH Standby Suicide none NCH none
No, or at best limited, support available Mangkaja, MWRC Karrayili offers business support NO SERVICES BUILT AROUND NEEDS OF PEOPLE WITH BRAIN BASED DISABILITIES MWW agreements? none
Economic activity
Dedicated community development workers across FV Section 175 implementation support
Healing Circles Community Policing
Informal, community-based but largely unsupported none
GAPS FASD ELT Yarning circles See Senate submission Need to be based on principles of shared leadership processes and self-organising principles People need opportunities to observe innovative and successful ways of doing things Could be filled over time by Social Enterprise for a Therapeutic Economy supported by MWRC, MWW, KALACC, Karrayili, and reemerging Mens Shed? Could be more comprehensive and filled by MWW Need to be based on principles of shared leadership and selforganising and community ownership Need to be supported by experienced clinicians Police need to shift from punishment to support. 2 x community policing officers to engage with women and youth
Legend: AOD Alcohol and Other Drugs CAMHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service ELT Early Life Trauma FASD Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders NCH Nindilingarri Cultural Health MWRC Marninwarntikura Womens Resource Centre MWW Marra Worra Worra KALACC Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre
SARC Sexual Assault Resource Centre
APPENDIX C:
Appendix D: List of books and articles consulted Books: Radical Hope: Ethics in the face of cultural devastation by Jonathan Lear The Spirit Level Why Equality is Better for Everyone by Wilkinson and Pickett Trauma Trails by Judy Atkinson The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge Gods and Diseases Making sense of our physical and mental wellbeing by David Tacey Infant Losses, Adult Searches by Glyn Hudson Allez Articles: - Cultural Continuity as a Hedge against Suicide in Canadas First Nations: Chandler and Lalonde, University of British Columbia - Suicide Attempts Among Adults with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: Clinical Considerations: Huggins et al; Journal of Mental Health Aspects of Developmental Disabilities: 2008, Vol 11-2 - Mental Illness in Adults with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or Fetal Alcohol Effects: Famy, Streissguth & Unis; American Journal of Psychiatry 155:4, April 1998 ANU CAEPR Working Papers 35/2006 39/2008
Appendix E: Brief Biography of Maggie White: Maggie has Australian and International experience in the Disability, AOD and Mental Health fields extending over 30 years. She has worked with adolescents and adults who are affected by FASD/ELT in therapeutic, training and production contexts. She holds Masters Degrees in both Couple and Family Therapy and Business Leadership. Her professional interests include systemic approaches to leadership and recovery. She has been working in the Fitzroy Valley since July 2007, initially to support the women in gaining adequate restrictions on the supply of alcohol. Since then she has continued to advise on many aspects of community rebuilding, including the need to address the whole of life implications of FASD. She was the programme designer and external trainer for the Wangkatjungka programme to slow down alcohol-related family violence through culturally determined Alternative Dispute Resolution and Leadership training. Further information can be accessed from her website www.herculeia.com.au

Final - Pathways To A Good Life Well Lived

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Final - Pathways To A Good Life Well Lived

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Marninwarntikura Fitzroy Womens Resource & Legal Centre

NINDILINGARRI CULTURAL HEALTH

PATHWAYS TO A GOOD LIFE WELL LIVED

ATTACHMENT B RICH PICTURE: MAPPING A GOOD LIFE WELL LIVED

INTRODUCTION - The Art and Science of Recovery

HEALING THE PAST naming the issues

Shared Leadership as the first step

% of population with trauma

Implications of the Marulu Project and the Lililwan Prevalence Study

FOCUSING ON CURRENT CHALLENGES supporting people in pain

Childhood Trauma, Adult Pain Supporting Community Healing Circles

Mental Health Service Provision

Healing Family Relationships

Sport and other youth-focused infrastructure

BUILDING THE FUTURE from healing to empowerment

Community-owned approaches to strengthening social recovery

Developing Social Enterprise for a Therapeutic Economy

From Training to Employment without glitches

APPENDIX A: Tackling Wicked Problems: A Public Policy Perspective

Lynelle Briggs Australian Public Service Commissioner

Age to 17?? NO SPECIFIC SERVICES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE

Yiriman Garnduwa Girls academy ?Clontarf Foundation at FX DHS

TAFE GATE programme etc Karrayili, Yiriman, FXDHS, Yiramalay/Wesley College

Relationship Counselling and Support

Bereavement, Grief and Loss counselling

Adult sexual assault

Child sexual assault

SERVICES NCH Standby Suicide none NCH none

Dedicated community development workers across FV Section 175 implementation support

Healing Circles Community Policing

Informal, community-based but largely unsupported none

SARC Sexual Assault Resource Centre

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