Transcript for
Healing the past by nurturing the future
Narrator [00:00:02] Welcome to the Emerging Minds podcast.
Dana Shen [00:00:11] This podcast is part of a series called ‘Listening to the stories of healing’. Within the series, you will hear stories from Community and the very diverse experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and how these narratives have shaped the amazing work that is happening in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia. Here at Emerging Minds, we like to call it the ‘Secret garden’, the stories and experiences that non-Aboriginal people don’t always get to see or hear. Whilst these stories include sadness and hurts and sometimes can feel uncomfortable to listen to, it is through listening to these narratives that you will get a glimpse of the deep wisdom, knowledge and healing practises of families and communities and understand why our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are part of the oldest continuing culture in the world.
Dana Shen [00:01:02] Welcome, everyone. This is Dana Shen, an Aboriginal cultural consultant working with Emerging Minds. Becoming a parent is exciting, but it can also be hard, particularly for parents who have experienced difficulties in their own childhood, which can have long lasting effects on physical, social and emotional wellbeing. The effects may be triggered during pregnancy and the transition to becoming a parent, causing distress and challenges for creating a nurturing environment for the new baby. On the flip side, growing research shows that becoming a parent offers a unique lifetime opportunity to heal from this childhood, hurt and provide a nurturing environment for children. Catherine Chamberlain is an associate professor with La Trobe University and currently leads a large community-based participatory action research project called ‘Healing the Past by Nurturing the Future’, which aims to co-design perinatal awareness, recognition, assessment and support strategies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents experiencing complex childhood trauma. So firstly, thank you for joining us today and welcome. Do you want to tell me a little bit more about yourself?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:02:09] Yes, sure. So I’m a descendant of the Truwana people from the north east coast of Tasmania around the Bay of Fires area, beautiful beaches. I trained as a paediatric nurse and a midwife about 30 years ago, and I’ve really worked all over the place in disaster settings like Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, as a midwife where I met my partner. And then we worked in the Kimberley for a while and with the Royal Flying Doctor Service. So really right around Australia with that job. And then I moved to Melbourne to start a family and had my two beautiful boys around 20 years ago. And that’s when I started getting involved in public health research and mainly around this pregnancy and birth and what we can do during this really critical parenting time to improve the health of parents and babies.
Dana Shen [00:02:58] Can you tell us a little bit more about the Healing the Past project and why it’s been important for you to work on this project?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:03:06] It’s been a hugely important project for me. As I said, it’s been a culmination of different threads of information coming over over the years that it’s a Lowitja Institute National Health and Medical Research funded project, working with incredible bunch of colleagues that are with a psychological background or mental health background, social work statistics, research, maternal and child health, parenting, you know, really exciting. And the aim of the project is to work with communities and community organisations to co-design strategies to identify and support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents experiencing complex trauma. They’ve been working really hard the past three years to look really carefully at the international evidence, talk with elders and parents who had three really amazing workshops, co-design workshops to co-design on an assessment tool and different strategies to support parents. And at the moment, we’re working through some in-, we’ve got parents that are currently helping us to validate an Aboriginal complex trauma and stress questionnaires and we’re really hugely grateful for that. I guess it’s been important for me to work in this area for both professional and personal reasons. So professionally, as an epidemiologist and the evidence for this compounding intergenerational effects of complex trauma impacting on health of our mob is just overwhelming. The more we learn, the more important it clearly is and it shows up in the numbers all the time. You know, about a quarter of people who smoke is attributed to childhood trauma, a huge proportion of people with obesity, a huge amount of violence, and some studies are suggesting that the effects of adverse childhood experiences or complex trauma may be as much as poverty or being poor, which has always been the huge thing that’s had the biggest impact on public health that is the elephant in the room, and that it clearly looks as though childhood trauma is also another really big issue that we need to be understanding a lot more about. But personally, it’s always very important. Look, I really struggled when my kids were young and I ended up having an acute psychotic episode, involuntarily admitted to hospital, which was huge for me. I hadn’t ever imagined anything like that would happen. I had like six months of work and 12 months on antipsychotic medication. I was just like being hit by a bus I didn’t see coming. I never expected it. And it was when I was in the recovery phases, the psychiatrist was asking lots of questions about my history. And because I had been removed from my family, I was told that was likely to be a contributing factor. And I was really shocked because I was working in this area of public health and thought that I knew all the risk factors and things like that but I’ve never even heard of this is an issue at that time, and it was actually quite opposite to what my lovely case manager at the time. She would say lovely, reassuring things like, ‘if you can get through this, you can get through anything’, that kind of, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ type thinking. But now I’ve learnt that actually that wasn’t true, even though it probably helped me to feel like that. And I’d really love to do now what I can with this project so that other parents and hopefully, you know, not get hit by that bus. And, you know, it really was a pretty terrible time, awful experience. So really important to do what we can to try and make that transition as less distressing as possible.
Dana Shen[00:06:48] Such an important thing. And and thank you for sharing that, Cath. Why is understanding the perinatal period really important for parents during this time?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:06:58] Well, it’s hugely important that having a baby is a huge life transition for both mums and dads and importantly, of course, also for babies. So birth and death are the biggest events that we celebrate. We’ve known this for thousands of years as part of all of our history. It’s critical for every dimension of our wellbeing, both physically, spiritually, emotionally and relationally, as we welcome this new baby into the world. And people who have that experience and knowledge of traditional knowledge talk about it being a gift and a connection to our ancestors. And from a research point of view, there’s overwhelming evidence that pregnancy in the first couple of years after birth or the first thousand days as Kerry Arabena talks about is absolutely critical for a time for healthy start in life and what we, what happens at this time can have lifelong consequences for the health and wellbeing. And the World Health Organisation certainly talk about the critical importance of nurturing care in this time. And it’s more effective, you know, any support we can provide at this time is way more effective than if it’s provided later in life. So it’s a hugely important time and worth it. Anything that can be done.
Dana Shen [00:08:11] Well, you’re setting a foundation, aren’t you?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:08:14] Absolutely. That’s a good way of putting it.
Dana Shen [00:08:16] So do you want to talk to me a little bit more about complex trauma and expand on what that means?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:08:23] So most of the trauma research that’s been done has been around post-traumatic stress disorder and more. But there’s growing recognition that most people are not traumatised by war, but by their own childhood experiences. And there’s been recently been international consensus to recognise a cluster of distress symptoms that people may experience following what’s described as traumatic experiences of a prolonged nature or repeated adverse events from which separation is not possible. And most commonly, this is childhood maltreatment and it’s called, and they’re calling this complex post-traumatic stress disorder or complex trauma. It’s only been included in the ICD-11, the International Classification of Diseases, Version 11 by the World Health Organisation in 2018. So it’s all quite new in terms of Western scientific understanding, but of course it’s been something that Aboriginal people have been talking about for a long time and Judy Atkinson and others have been talking about for decades. So these symptom clusters include what they call them is a technical term, so that I’ll describe as sort of effect or emotional dysregulation. So having blowing up easily a negative self concept of low self-esteem, so not feeling good about ourselves and relational disturbances, so having trouble keeping meaningful, deep relationships that are so important for us. So in addition, and these those three things, in addition to the previous recognise PTSD symptoms from other one-off events such as the re-experience events or reliving the memories that keep coming back, the flashbacks, avoidance. So that’s trying to avoid anything that resembles that initial threat and having this constant sense of threat that the world’s a dangerous place to live in. There’s still a little bit of disagreement. So we don’t know exactly how many people are experiencing complex trauma. And there’s lots of different terms being used, such as relational developmental trauma, but we think it’s possibly somewhere around one in five people in Australia might be experiencing this based on some studies of PTSD symptoms that we’ve read.
Dana Shen [00:10:45] Could you share with us a little bit about why it’s important for parents to understand trauma in relation to parenting?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:10:52] So there’s three main reasons why it’s really important to understand parents trauma in relation to parenting. First of all, there’s an increased risk of both complex trauma related distress symptoms being triggered during the transition to parenting, to having a child might stir up some of those childhood memories and responses. There’s a lot of things that happen when we’re pregnant and we’re giving birth and breastfeeding, particularly in maternity care settings that can be triggering. Women can also have heightened fear responses due to the physiological changes during pregnancy and that’s actualy a naturally, a protective response to protect the baby. They may have had read previous birth trauma that can also be triggered. There may be increased risk of family violence that is well described in the increased financial insecurity of people losing their jobs and all those additional stresses like housing and things like that. And some parents actually describe their experiences of maternity care as being reminiscent of some aspects of childhood trauma. And it’s really important that we understand this and as care providers, that we do what we can to recognise and minimise those risks, but also as parents to understand that we’re not going crazy, that these are natural responses that can happen at this time, because otherwise, if you’re not aware of it and most of the time people haven’t linked these experiences to those early childhood experiences because it happened such a long time ago, so it can be experienced, as you know, distressing. The most important thing, of course, is that despite all of these risks, which are huge, becoming a parent is the absolute best time for healing from complex trauma. So parents we know from studies they almost exclusively report post-traumatic change at this time to be positive rather than negative, which other times of life people describe it in different as both positive and negative. And we know from longitudinal studies of youth in detention centres that have been done in America, not in Australia, that this is a real, really once in a lifetime blip, that people can really turn their lives around and really have some positive change. And there’s lots of possible reasons for this and still some really exciting research being done that it’s really around the love that babies bring into the world with them that we’ve always known as midwives and we’re all geared to attach and to love our babies and babies have all these magical things that they do to make us want to look after them and love them. That’s that’s how they survive. And it’s this mutually reinforcing process of nurturing love that is the healing salve for trauma. And that is really the inspiration for the project, we call it the Healing the Past by Nurturing the Future, because it’s that process of healing through loving and nurturing that we want to really try to support during, during this work. And the other third thing, of course, is that it’s the first time since childhood that people see care providers and service providers. So we really want to, you know, make the most of those opportunities to make sure that they’re positive and helpful, not distressing and damaging.
Dana Shen [00:14:03] Yes and reinforcing past bad experiences with services.
Catherine Chamberlain [00:14:07] Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
Dana Shen [00:14:09] Could you tell me a little bit more about attachment from an Aboriginal world view perspective?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:14:14] So attachment or bonding is a really, it is a bit of a controversial thing. Not everybody quite agrees with the Western ways that is described but in the Western way that it’s described as, you know, the important survival mechanisms for our babies are dependent on adults for a long time. And this increases you know, chances of survival. And that’s, and there’s all the different things that babies do when they come in. It’s just magic if, you know, they’ll literally climb up a mum’s tummy and find food and do all these things and goo-ga and and, you know, it’s really lovely. So that is the sort of Western construct of attachment. Essentially, you know, they say in a secure, nurturing relationship, parent responds sensitively to the baby and responds to all their needs for food and security and comfort. And if it’s confusing or hostile, this can create problems. But it’s it’s around that secure attachment that’s really important. The concept of connectedness is more of an Aboriginal concept, and it’s seen as absolutely essential to social emotional wellbeing for Aboriginal people. So it’s this connectedness to our body, our spirits, our ancestors, each other, country and Community. And really, it’s something I’m learning about myself in this project, because coming from Tasmania, I don’t have that traditional knowledge or Aboriginal knowledge. And I’m really grateful to be learning a lot about it. But it seems to me to be more of a sophisticated and nuanced understanding about a lot more than the, the attachment explanations that I’ve had with all the scientific things, it’s really as a deep, rich spiritual understanding and a feeling about how important all this is, that’s really poor. And there’s so many cultural practises that have built in to help this important process of connecting just happening. I’m really interested in, you know, I think in relation to complex trauma, it’s essentially a relational trauma. So this deep wisdom, expertise and knowledge about connectedness is something that’s essential to healing. And I really believe it’s something that is useful for, obviously it’s critical for us as Aboriginal people, but it’s something that Aboriginal people really are the international experts in. And, you know, we should really be celebrating this and everybody needs to know this, learn this.
Dana Shen [00:16:55] You speak about a deep, ancient wisdom in Aboriginal parenting. Could you tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:17:03] Yeah, so, again, this is stuff that I’m still learning about too myself, but from people like Michelle McMahon and Lauper Mile Pillemer and others. But, you know, it’s really important to remember that prior to colonisation, Aboriginal children were far healthier and happier than European children were at the time. So we didn’t send our kids down to work in mines. We didn’t send them off to go to boarding schools where they were harshly punished and treated quite cruelly for just behaving naturally. These were things that Europeans brought with them, with colonisation, these practises. So when I think this is an area that’s been really seriously suppressed that we really need to try to relearn, I mean, there were huge punishments for practising culture that have been one of the threats for practising it was in Victoria I know that I’ve heard about is having the youngest child taken away. And those have really seriously undermined people’s confidence. And it’s done a huge amount of damage, and I think it’s an area that we desperately need to be reclaiming and relearning because there’s so much wisdom there. And like I mentioned, there’s Aboriginal scholars in this area now, like Yorta Yorta woman, Michelle McMahon and Mal Polymer who are really exploring this and this in more detail, which is really exciting. And we’re learning more about, you know, from from the Aboriginal scholars so when babies are born, there’s rich practises around caring for parents in pregnancy and birth, many of which were centred around nurturing that strong relational development. So that included things like babies literally being born on to country, into the earth, being placed into a coolamon that’s been carved by dad and smells of dad, which is really and when I talk about the wisdom, I find it really interesting to read all of this, because I always think about the what we also know from the western science around children’s development and what they’re ready for. And when they’re born, they can only say about 30 centimetres, but they have really strong hearing and smell in particular, smell’s really important for a newborn baby. And a lot of those traditional practises were centred around smell and sound. And so each family member often talks about people having a sound that each family member would make so they can become familiar with the sound of that person. And when you think about it in terms of the baby feeling secure, that repeated security, the familiar sounds of people around building connections with people, key people in the family in a sequence and organised sequence that again is around security, not bombarding them with all strangers on the first day, celebrating milestones around people, what children do in recognising people, other people, the sounds that they make about recognising the country, the milestones that are celebrated, not putting a red block on top of the blue block. They’re really these rich relational developmental milestones that are really critical. And yes, I think that’s the, when I’m thinking about, the Aboriginal wisdom it’s those really deep and thoughtful, long held traditions that have worked for such a long time and re-learning them now, recognising how rich and important they are and bringing that you know, back.
Dana Shen [00:20:40] And giving it value, making sure that we respect and honour that. And the families, you know, it’s so important.
Catherine Chamberlain [00:20:46] Absolutely.
Dana Shen [00:20:47] What have you found to be the factors contributing to parent’s anxiety and seeking help?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:20:53] I think there’s quite a few. One of the biggest things that comes up for us has been fear of losing their child and child protection services being involved, which is really concerning, ’cause that is yet another threat that’s being posed in there and it’s not always helpful. I mean, we’re all really concerned about child safety, obviously. But I think that the way that the involvement of the moment, it’s not worked out, it’s not thought through, we don’t have enough wisdom in it. I think we need to really be thinking through how to do this a lot, lot better than it’s been done now. It’s really concerning. I think services not being culturally, emotionally safe is really important as well. And shame, and shame’s such a big thing. So we know that parents have got so many hopes and dreams for having a happy life with a new baby. It’s really a chance for a fresh start and for their child to have a different life to what they might have had. So that’s a big thing. I think another thing that is important is that often parents feel that they have to be perfect, as this thing, and particularly parents, if they’ve experienced childhood trauma themselves. You know, we feel like we have to do everything perfectly and parents have described this thing of not knowing what not to do, but not knowing what to do, if that makes sense. So, which sets us all up for trying to be perfect, which is not realistic. It’s not achievable, creates a lot of anxiety and stress and really, you know, good enough parenting is what we’re all aiming, we’re all human. And actually, kids seeing that you’re human is all part of our learning as well.
Dana Shen [00:22:31] So what are some of the protective factors for Aboriginal families?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:22:35] So we’ve been actually talking a lot about this with families saying, you know, what keeps you strong. So it’s really pleasing to see this question and what parents have been saying that really keeps them strong is this connectedness, of course, comes off as, number one, being connected to each other as partners, to family, friends and community, having connection to country, being able to, a lot of people have that down as really important. Culture is definitely predictive. We’re seeing more and more research, research growing about how this culture and I guess if we think about it in a Western sense, how deprived people feel if they don’t have art, music and all that type of culture, it is the same for us Aboriginal people, you know, culture is rich and deep, and it’s a part of us that we, you know, that we all need. The other things that people say is really important is protective and that we really know is having somewhere to live, actually having a house, having enough money to eat and to feed your kids, to feed your- enough money to buy food and feed your kids and have an income. It’s really important to emphasise how important having stability and just like practical day-to-day support. Another thing is having something to have fun to enjoy, so being able to experience joy, something that you feel that you can do, that you feel good about yourself. So developing some skills and you know, if it’s playing the guitar or the some sort of musical instrument or being able to run around the block or whatever it is, but just having something that gives you joy and something that you feel that you can actually you know, do, so you’re feeling strong and develop that confidence. And one thing that one parent told us that just always resonates with me is, we just have fun and that’s what we do. And that actually having fun is we put that off as something fluffy sometimes and in science and research. But actually having fun is really important, I think, for keeping strong, they say the family that laughs together, stays together. And I think that is true. And the other things that have come up is, people do talk about having support. Being important too so professional support can be helpful and having role models in people’s lives, being able to set healthy boundaries is another one. But it’s important that we all need to be able to do and being physically and emotionally healthy, so having your attention to diet and exercise that I’m really guilty of not doing. But that is also important.
Dana Shen [00:25:10] Tell me a little bit more about birthing on country. Why is it so effective?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:25:15] So birthing on country is, it’s really should be understood I think in the modern day way, a lot of us live in the city as a metaphor or a model of care. So it’s a metaphor for the best start in life for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander babies and families because it provides an integrated, holistic, culturally appropriate model of care. It’s not just around the biophysical outcomes and the, how well the baby is. It’s much broader than just labour and delivery. You know, we deliver pizzas, not babies. It deals with the sociocultural risk as well as the sort of spiritual issues as well. And it’s effective because it brings in what we’re talking about re-learning that millennia of wisdom in birth and you can have birth on country. I mean, it is the dilemma now is, you know, if you need to have a caesarean section or you have a very high risk pregnancy and you need a lot of medical care, does that exclude you from being able to give birth on country? And we would say no. I mean, a lot of people living in urban areas are actually on country. And also we can adapt things to fit in with what we want. We don’t have to do things, we can still have culturally safe birth and a birth on country and modify that to peak people’s way they they’re living at the moment so we can, people can keep the placenta and have like a ceremonial birth back if they, if they’re living somewhere else. But again, this all needs to be worked out because it is a bit confusing, sometimes people say, you know, if you, birthing on country is about going out and giving birth in the middle of the bush somewhere with no medical care, and that isn’t always the case where people can do that as well, if it’s safe to do so. I think it’s really important to really respect people’s wishes to give birth a country for a number of reasons. I think it often is denied. I think people are sometimes afraid of it in maternity care settings, thinking that people are rejecting medical care when it might be lifesaving. But I think we need to be able to have that discussion. And if people are not wanting to come into maternity care, have an honest discussion, not be afraid of it and think about always making sure that people have choice. So if you don’t, if somebody is wanting to give birth on country, it’s like, well, why, and if you, if people are genuinely worried, I think we should be having that discussion to say, you know, honestly, I would be worried if you didn’t have medical care for this birth. Is there anything that we can do to improve our services that you might want to come in? People might still say no, and you’d have to respect that. There might be things that we could actually do to make our service better, and that would be good. The other thing is sometimes if people are wanting to not come in for care, it might be for other reasons, like they might be worried about their kids having to stay at home, and especially if they have to come in for four weeks before the baby’s born, that can be a big issue. So these are the ways that we can improve the support at home as well as the care. So there really important things that we actually need to know because we’re not having those discussions at the moment. We’re not even working through them. And then if it’s still really important for people that that you might be worried about their medical risk and that’s not all women, what can we do to make having a baby away from medical care as safe as possible? So there’s a lot of things that we can actually do. So just not having a discussion, I think it’s missing out on a lot of it’s actually a placing people at more risk. And I think that regardless of, that sort of three levels that I think is important, regardless of all of that, I think we can still metaphorically provide a model of care that’s like birthing on country, bringing all of that into the care that’s provided wherever that might be, and bringing together the best medical care as well as the best cultural care, doesn’t have to be one or the other. And draw on that millennial wisdom that we have, focusing on excellence in care, usually from a known person that somebody feels safe with and trusted and it allows women to develop that relationship and to have that choice, control and culture to keep strong and to really enrich this experience as a positive thing. And we’ve seen from one study in Queensland the birthing in a community study led by Siku Day and others where they’ve implemented this model. They’ve had like a 50 percent reduction in preterm births, which is fantastic. You know, I mean it really does work, this stuff.
Dana Shen [00:29:47] So what strategies have families found helpful in their healing to prevent the transmission of trauma?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:29:53] Some of the strategies parents have talked to us about, it’s been helpful. This is, again, another question that we’ve been talking with parents about and just the wisdom of what people say is fantastic, just share some of that with you. They include things like counselling and therapy. But that’s definitely not all. They’re talking to somebody, having somebody that they can confide in. Having some group sessions can also sometimes help. That’s not for everybody. It is very, I would say with this, it’s all very individualistic. Everybody has their own journey, these are different things that different people have said. And it’s about having a choice of these things that’s important. A lot of people talk about self-care activities and certainly looking after yourself, doing stuff that makes you give you that sense of joy is really important. Art can be really therapeutic, and there’s lots of reasons for that. It just switches off that whole part of that side of your brain and switches on the other side of your brain. Yoga has been shown to be really therapeutic, and there’s all sorts of physiological reasons why that might be helpful as well. For some people, body work can be important. It needs to be at the right time. People talk about spirituality has been important and that’s where the cultural strategies and stuff can really be helpful as well. And the other thing that we get a lot from parents is how good it is to feel as though they’re contributing to something to help other parents. Actually being able to help others is really important way of helping ourselves as well. And people will often say that, you know, telling the story will help. I guess for me personally, that’s something that I find really helpful as well. Another thing that parents say they find helpful is being able to understand and make sense of the trauma. And that ties in a bit early to what we’re saying about reflective functions, so trying to mentalisation that and work out, this is about something that’s happened to me. It’s not what’s wrong with me, you know, you have that sense, if those triggers and I know I have had that, where you feel like you are going crazy, so to be able to actually understand where that’s all coming from and work out what’s happening. Mind you, I’m 50 now, it’s taken a long time to work this out, but I feel like, you know, that’s been really helpful to understand that. And of course, I think the other thing that’s really helpful in healing and it really is the healing self is love, but is just so critical for us all. So being able to nurture your baby, have your loving relationships around you, it’s really powerful. And many parents talk about that healing through nurturing as being a really important journey. And certainly for me, that’s also been amazing. I just feel so grateful to have my two lovely boys.
Dana Shen [00:32:39] So if he had a magic wand and you could say something, you know, any intervention taking place in practice, what would that be? Do you have any final words of wisdom?
Catherine Chamberlain [00:32:50] Wouldn’t that be nice? We do have a long list because we’ve been working for four years with parents, or three years with families and communities to work out what might be helpful in this space. We have been putting in a wish list and keep putting in. But one of them is what Carlie Atkinson refers to as trauma integrated maternity care. So we really want to look at strategies that improve awareness for trauma for around mums and dads, having people working within our care services actually aware of what’s going on, recognising those flight or fight responses for what they are thinking about how to provide safe care and minimising the risk of trauma. We want to do some work around skills with talking about trauma, so how to do the yarning, the less intrusive questions, having those safe conversations that are meaningful, looking at the power imbalances and things like that, and hopefully be able to use the Aboriginal complex trauma and strength’s approaches where we’re actually using an Aboriginal developed tool that includes the concepts around connectedness and things that are important for us. And importantly, we need access to comprehensive, holistic support services. So like the ones that Kerry Arabena talks about in first thousand days is exactly what parents have described in this study, we really support that we’d see the kind of work around complex trauma fitting in under this kind of that kind of umbrella program. And critically, what I’d really love to see with all of this is to start to reclaim some of that ancient wisdom that we’ve had. So how do we provide care for parents who are experiencing complex issues? So in, as a midwife, you know, for thousands of years, we’ve had a really sophisticated system of mentoring young midwives to become those wise women. So we’ve had, we’ve identified somebody would be identified in the village as having those kind of aptitudes and interests to start of sweeping the floor and doing the gardening. And then you would gradually start to assist with the person as you were ready for more knowledge, you’d be given more knowledge. And then you would passed up the line and you’d be mentoring someone else. And you always have somebody more senior that you can go to if things become complex and if they become really complex, you might talk to the circle of elders and other people who are midwives. And now I feel like we work in maternity care and we have so many experts there. We have foetal medicine specialists, we have anaesthetists, paediatricians, we have psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, midwives, nurses, every type of ‘ist’ specialist that you could imagine. We can look after babies that weigh less than a pound of butter, it’s really, truly remarkable. If we get people with complex social issues, it still feels to me like it’s too hard, sometimes people think this is too hard and often refer to child protection services, sometimes without people’s knowledge, even, with unborn notifications, which is hugely distressing for everybody on a number of levels, including me who doesn’t even work there, let alone the staff that do and for the parents, it’s just horrendous to think about. But this is hard and I do get that people are afraid of this in a way because we’re all worried about children and we all want the best for children, of course we do. But I feel that we really need to embrace this. If anyone can do this, we can do this. We have to bring back that wisdom. We need to get really serious about this. We need to apply the same level of expertise that we have for looking after babies that weigh less than four hundred grams, as we do for looking after and supporting families that have dealing with distress and complex trauma and all of the complex issues that can come with that that have gone on for generations. I think that is my wish list, is to bring back and to somehow have a council of wisdom bring it, it doesn’t have to be just community members, although I think it’d be really important to have that community support involved, but to bring in that expertise around families. I know everybody’s doing the best that they can at the moment but I think and even people working in child protection services would say that they’re not getting the benefit, they don’t have of all the support they need, the expertise they need and all of that kind of thing. So how we can bring that back in, raffle that support around, put the best possible community expertise and all other types of expertise to really, because it’s so important and we know that it’s not always easy, particularly for families, but it can really make a huge difference. And that’s worth every cent of the investment time, investment in everything to pay back a million fold.
Dana Shen [00:37:57] Thank you for joining us in our podcast series, Listening to stories of healing.
Narrator [00:38:07] Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au to access a range of resources to assist your practice. Brought to you by the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, led by Emerging Minds, the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.