Transcript for
Mental health support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families
Narrator (00:02): Welcome to the Emerging Minds Podcast.
Dan Moss (00:08): Hi, today I’m really privileged to be joined by Lou Turner and Nancy Jeffrey. Lou and Nancy have recently joined the team here at Emerging Minds, supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s social and emotional wellbeing. Lou and Nancy, it’s so great to have you both on board and thank you both for joining me today. Lou, I’m wondering if I can start by asking you as an Aboriginal man and a father and someone who has many years of experience in working with families. What are the important things to you in supporting Aboriginal children?
Lou Turner (00:40): Yeah, certainly it’s always that first question but an important opener when I’ve got to remind myself about the importance of identity in working historically with sovereign generation survivors and their descendants, where that searching for and re-establishing identity is so important. So when I think about myself, how do I frame myself? I would say, firstly, that I’m an Aboriginal father of three beautiful children, privileged to be stepping into this space within Emerging Minds and to be able to contribute to the rich work of supporting practitioners, organisations, and hopefully informing the sector and the systems change areas in supporting children and young people around mental health and social and emotional wellbeing.
Dan Moss (01:24): Thanks, Lou. Nancy, as I was saying, you’re of course no stranger to us here at Emerging Minds, having spent time on our board and also as a founding member of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Consultancy Group. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what has brought you to this work?
Nancy Jeffrey (01:42): Hi everybody, my name’s Nancy Jeffrey. I’m a proud Woolwonga woman from the Northern territory, I live and work on Larrakia Country, I have two daughters and four grandchildren with one more on the way and I come from a really big family of 12. Really excited about the new work, especially in the social and emotional wellbeing section because it’s a holistic approach and that’s the way I like to operate in a community development role. It’s not just about the child, it’s about the whole family, the community and everyone else that’s surrounding that child. So, that old saying, “It takes a community to raise a child.” Well, that’s how our mob operate and a lot of government bodies don’t understand that.
Dan Moss (02:25): Yeah. So Lou and Nancy, you both obviously come into this position at Emerging Minds with a great depth of experience in the area of working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families. I’m just wondering if you could give us a brief rundown of your own history and a little bit of the work that you’ve done previously?
Lou Turner (02:44): My history has taken me on a bit of a journey predominantly working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled organisations, from working with the Aboriginal Legal Rights space here in Adelaide with the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movements to working at Tandanya, the National Cultural Institute. And then I think where things really grounded me was working at NACCHO, which is a Community Health Aboriginal Controlled Organisation where within that setting, we support holistic health through many streams for social health, primary healthcare and a really wonderful program called Linkup, which supports stolen generation survivors and the descendants to, I guess, reconcile the experiences of grief, loss and trauma through the impacts of colonisation and reestablishing their line of story and identity.
(03:34): So that process of family tracing and reunification was such a rich experience, personal life and professional experience of grounding me. That’s why I speak highly of identity and also the aspects of building relationships with individuals and then relationships with identity. So I think I sit within that. And then when I think of working with supporting infant and child mental health and social and emotional wellbeing with communities, it’s an extension of that impact of colonisation through the experiences of trauma. And I’m talking about intergenerational trauma where there’s been a long lineage and a continuing cycle and impact. And for me, I see the beginning and the end of that cycle is children and young people as an opportunity to end that cycle and also to begin a cycle of intergenerational healing.
Nancy Jeffrey (04:28): Okay. So because I was born and raised here, it’s quite easy for me to visit the urban communities around Owen. There are protocols so you’ve got to let people know you’re coming on there, even though I’ve got family living there or not. You just can’t, that’s not our way and because I’m not part of that community as such, I have to go by protocols. And remote is even harder, if I’m going to go remote and I’ve done it quite a lot in my years of working here in the territory, you have to map out the people who are the leaders in there and you have to get permission from them. It doesn’t matter what government money is going to throw at it, they still have to go by protocols, that’s the way we operate. One of the complexities is understanding the layout and knowing the protocols and not assuming that people are going to just give because our people have been giving for so many years for nothing in return really.
(05:28): So now it’s about remuneration, I guess, helping them. And I reflect back on The Intervention and what it did to our men and it still has affected our men mentally, physically, emotionally and we’ve got a lot of catching up to do with that. I watched them at Water Air, come in, the army and everything and it was just so sad, those women were so frightened, they thought they were going to come and take their children from them. So they went bush, not because they were guilty or anything but because they were frightened of their children being removed for no reason. I’ve got some Yolngu nieces and nephews and they are such amazing kids, you can’t put them in a room, you need to get them out there, they need that space, they need to be connected to country.
(06:13): They came around to visit me one day and low and behold, I’m sitting there in the lounge room and I’m watching them and they’re outside and they’re making these pretend guns out of a plastic bottle and a piece of stick, imaginations, even though I don’t agree with the gun thing. But that’s kids at its best and exploring and hunting. And I do try to speak the language but they just laugh at me so that doesn’t work. But yeah, we really need to do more men’s programmes and more mothers but then bringing them more back as a whole. And that’s what I’m looking forward to with Emerging Minds is to be able to come up with and assist the organisation in rolling out some of these tools that we are doing for our mob.
Dan Moss (07:02): Thank you, both. Lou, as an Aboriginal father and as someone who works with and for Aboriginal children, what are your thoughts about some of the ways in which children’s identities, which may have been taken away or stolen through particular institutional processes? How can they be restored, do you think, with children?
Lou Turner (07:21): I guess in this sort of contemporary setting and understanding the impacts of intergenerational trauma, we are looking at a deficit space story that’s of no consequence and fault of any family or community that a child may sit within. So it’s about really clearly understanding that story of the impact of colonisation and the story of intergenerational impact and how trauma has been, I guess, placed and embedded and plays out in our communities. But there’s also that layer of contemporary trauma as well, which can impact and dysfunction and oppression that is an extraordinary mix cycle that we have to place ourselves in to understand before stepping into a relationship and building relationships to support.
(08:11): And here at Emerging Minds, the creation of resources to support practitioners to step into that space, critically important and significant to understand that. So for me, I see my role is one of not a light footed role but supporting a team to enable the voice of lived experience of communities and the multitude of experiences. We can’t help but think of this as a homogenous sort of experience, although individually impacted and a collective experience with an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities that’s individually placed within families and in a child’s story and their story of hope and aspiration to grow up in a healed family, in a healed society, in a healed country to thrive.
Dan Moss (09:01): I guess, Lou and Nancy, so much of Emerging Minds’ resources have come from the acknowledgement that many Aboriginal children and their families are connecting with mainstream services and with non-Aboriginal workers. So in your role in working alongside non-Aboriginal workers in mainstream services, what sort of advice might you have for them? Or what sort of support may you feel that non-Aboriginal workers need in being able to help children and families with that identity that you talk about?
Lou Turner (09:32): Really critical question there and important question. And one again, where I would probably have to reflect and say, not accepting the burden just upon myself to carry that responsibility but to understand as one person of many in a First Nations community of this country. To convey the diversity of experience and the diversity of impact and the diversity of opportunities that you can create when you are working with a person that might present with a trauma story but also presenting with strengths and the ability to overcome that story as well and aspire to achieve a preferred story of hope.
(10:15): Yeah, look, I think I would always think of my elders, I would always think of my Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander colleagues and the leadership within this country, in this nation who stand up really proudly and loudly and lead a way of understanding and a way of working across both worlds. I’m thinking of levels within government, engaging within government at that systems level but right down to the service level of being fortunate enough to be carried on a journey of understanding. It’s walking alongside and so it’s not going to be my voice that leads out, it’s going to be the voices that I hope to carry of community when I engage with non-indigenous practitioners.
Dan Moss (11:01): Nancy, I’m wondering what sort of advice you might have for non-Aboriginal workers in supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families.
Nancy Jeffrey (11:10): Okay. Being open-minded and not assume. No assumptions, that’s really important. And also, if you’re going to do a good job, you really have to scope the community out, you have to know who’s going to help you on that community as well. You can go out with all the resources you want but it isn’t going to work if the community aren’t behind it. So you really have to go in there with an open mind. You have to have your boundaries as well. You have to set boundaries as they would know, as psychologists and social workers that I quite often see people that they cross those boundaries in our communities and then our people aren’t getting lifted up, they’re just getting helped and that’s not the reason behind it, we want them to do it themselves. And that’s what they’ve got to understand.
Dan Moss (11:56): Thank you both. Yeah, that’s a really comprehensive answer. So in noticing your titles, I’m seeing that there’s a social and emotional wellbeing component to them both. So can you talk to me a little bit about language and what’s important for us to understand, for example, in the difference between mental health and social and emotional wellbeing for Aboriginal children and their families?
Lou Turner (12:21): I guess it’s understanding the definitions and how that definition sits across cultures. Though there is common ground of understanding cross cultures but then individually in the cultural setting between indigenous and non-indigenous, without Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. When I think of and when I see and observe social and emotional wellbeing, it’s holistic, it’s that connection with each other, it’s the ecological component of connection that supports each other and the relationships with country, with people. It’s also your identity within all of that as well and it’s your obligations of holding that identity with self and others. So I see social and emotional wellbeing as a relational holistic framework, where I see mental health as only focusing on maybe one or a couple of particular streams to do with psychology and emotion and with no regard to the spiritual, the cultural sort of elements and environmental as well.
Nancy Jeffrey (13:28): It’s entirely important for the whole being because it’s our spiritual connection that we have with the land and the animals and the grass, everything. Dr. Miriam-Rose, she’s just an amazing Aboriginal woman from Daly River, who does dadirri. If you actually sit on country, on your bare feet and you feel it and you listen, you can connect to everything, even if it’s a little cricket that you’re hearing, you’ve got to really listen and take it in. And when we do, do that, that makes us feel really good. Makes me feel really good, anyway. And I experienced that when I was sick and I took my daughter and my grannys out there to country and we just sat there and said nothing, just sat there and felt my ancestors through the ground.
Dan Moss (14:17): So Lou, you talked really about that identity for yourself as an Aboriginal father. In doing this work and I suppose also personally, what are your hopes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the future in Australia?
Lou Turner (14:33): To live free of trauma, to live in a world where they can freely step out and aspire to create a life and grow and develop within family units, within care units, within communities free from this dominant story of trauma that still is perpetuated and is being experienced within our communities. So it sounds sort of deep and down but it’s a story of hope and aspiration and it’s the preferred story and the original story for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people because children are our hopes.
Dan Moss (15:10): And in your long experience working, as you said, in Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, do these stories of hope with Aboriginal children, do they stand out for you?
Lou Turner (15:22): Yeah, look, really strongly. Because with that story of hardship but looking forward, the line of sight to hope is there’s a rich story of resistance and building that resilience in knowing. We’ve got multiple generations, pre-colonisation of facing hardships, environmental and finding a way of being the oldest living culture in this world to find a way of restoring, to find a way of working through problems and remaining firm to a set of beliefs, principles and values, which is embedded in our cultures.
Dan Moss (16:02): So you obviously both really have a great level of experience and confidence and commitment to this kind of work. But your work with practitioners who are not so experienced and who may not be so confident in this way is also obvious. When you’re working with practitioners who are just learning or who might even be struggling for confidence in this area, what are some of the practical steps that you’re able to provide for them in those kind of first ways where they can start to build a little bit of confidence in supporting Aboriginal families and children?
Nancy Jeffrey (16:36): Yes. No assumptions, no judgement and everything like that. However, you really have to be mindful of how people aren’t used to these little boxes in an office, sitting across a desk with the practitioner over that side and him over here and looking into the eyes and there’re communities where you can’t do that so you need to know what you can do. And a way they can do that and get to where they want to be is to sit and talk with the elders, they need to do it that way the first thing they get there.
(17:11): It’s not about, “Oh yeah, I’ll set up my office and then they’ll come through the door.” They’re not going to come through the door. You’re going to have to go out there to them, whether it’s under a tree or wherever, as long as they’re comfortable and the elders have given you permission and opened the door for you and told you the ways to do it. Because every community is different, there’s no blanket for our communities, you know that. If I went to Tiwi Islands and I wanted to go to the childcare centre, I would have to meet with the Strong Women’s Group before I even thought about that as a childcare worker or same with a practitioner, that’s just good practice.
Lou Turner (17:54): Firstly, it’s understanding what their journey is and what their story is as a practitioner in whatever sector setting, what they’re supporting with working with others. Because I say and I see everyone that I encounter as an opportunity to learn but also everyone’s a teacher to me. So it’s that reflective sort of learning process. So to take a deep dive into provide advice and convey awareness, I have to understand where someone else’s story and someone else’s journey is taking them and to meet them where they are but also hopefully find a way of walking with them to construct, I guess, an outlook that enhances their journey but also enhances mine at the same time. And it’s through that shared knowledge and understanding that both parties bring, I think we can achieve a greater outcome than the sum of individuals. And in my Pitjantjatjara culture, we call that ‘Ngapartji-Ngapartji’ and that’s about pure, reciprocal processes, mutual, beneficial outcomes of encountering, negotiating and establishing a greater outcome.
Dan Moss (19:07): Lou Turner and Nancy Jeffrey, thank you so much for your time today, it’s been so wonderful talking with you both. We really appreciate your time. That concludes today’s interview but of course it’s only the start in our journey and we’re very excited to be working with both Lou and Nancy at Emerging Minds. For those of you who would like to know a little bit more about the work of Emerging Minds in providing online courses, papers, practice guides, podcasts and webinars, helping practitioners to work in culturally intelligent ways with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families, please visit our website on www.emergingminds.com.au.
Narrator (19:49): 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.