Healing in Practice: Promising Practices in Healing Programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Families
Published 2012
About Healing in Practice
The Healing in Practice: Promising Practices in Healing Programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Families project aims to scope and showcase a few promising practices in the area of healing with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families.
These promising practices program profiles will provide communities with inspiration, ideas and examples that they can adapt to their local needs and circumstances. This work also builds on the practice-based evidence of what works and why, enabling community organisations to refine their practices and services, build their capacity to develop new ones, and to seek financial support.
In particular, this resource intends to showcase how services incorporate culturally appropriate, community-controlled healing approaches and highlight practices from which mainstream and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services can learn.
The resource is divided into two sections:
- PART 1: The need for Healing
Discusses the meaning of, and need for, healing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the critical elements required. - PART 2: Healing in Practice
Documents promising practices in healing programs from around the country.
How to use Healing in Practice
The Healing in Practice: Promising Practices in Healing Programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Families resource highlights programs that enhance Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families’ capacity for healing, to assist services that are looking to establish a new healing service or program, or strengthen an existing one.
This document is intended to be a practical and informative resource. It is not, however, a catalogue where programs can simply be plucked from its pages and expected to be relevant and effective in any situation or context. This resource illustrates that effective and sustainable programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families draw upon the local communities’ strengths and require community leadership, community ownership and community knowledge.
In part 2, all programs have been profiled under the four primary principles listed by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation as essential for successful healing. Each profile aims provide the reader with an example of how these principles can be applied in different settings.
The four key principles are:
- Address the causes
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ownership
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander worldview
- Strength based approach.