2 results
Healing through ICT: Enhancing wellbeing in an Aboriginal community
- Dianna Madden, Yvonne Cadet-James, Felecia Watkin-Lui, Ian Atkinson
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- Journal:
- Journal of Tropical Psychology / Volume 2 / June 2012
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 10 December 2012, e6
- Print publication:
- June 2012
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- Article
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Many Aboriginal Australians report a diminished sense of wellbeing in their everyday activities due to racism and separation from their traditional lands and culture. Our research sought to discover whether access and use of culturally appropriate Information and Communication Technology's (ICTs), could have an ameliorative benefit, enhancing participants’ sense of support and engagement with their culture. While multiple studies have shown that access and use of ICTs can provide real benefits in regards to empowerment, few studies have focused specifically on the well-being aspects. The research in this project was a Participatory Action Research (PAR) study with women and girls of the Gugu Badhun (an Aboriginal Australian language group) to explore ways to better support their familial and cultural activities associated with identity and group sustainability. The research was divided into three action-research cycles: group interviews and focus groups, use of a technology probe, and feedback from the participants. The technology probe was a web-based application with access limited to the women in the study. Use of the probe enabled the participants to mentally revisit scenes that had been highly significant to them and to reframe these incidents in ways that enhanced their feelings of wellbeing. The probe site allowed the women a platform to discuss concepts intrinsic to their lives, and how these ideas interlink and enmesh with each other, such as the importance of connection to country, and offline activities surrounding identity and sustainability as a group thereby enhancing their wellbeing.
11 - Preventive social work intervention and health promotion
- Edited by Paul Bywaters, Coventry University, Eileen McLeod, University of Warwick, Lindsey Napier, The University of Sydney
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- Book:
- Social Work and Global Health Inequalities
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 July 2022
- Print publication:
- 16 September 2009, pp 163-190
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
One dimension of social work's contribution to tackling health inequalities is to focus on preventive interventions which both build and build on the resources of disadvantaged local communities to benefit their health. This chapter offers three contrasting examples of this kind of intervention drawn from very different social contexts in Australia, China and Hong Kong. These show how social workers, acting alongside public health and other professionals, can develop and support grassroots action for better health by members of geographical communities and communities of interest in the face of the rapid social, economic and environmental changes accelerated by globalisation.
Section 11.1 analyses the context in which Indigenous Australians experience an average life expectancy of some 17 years less than that of the majority population (CSDH, 2008). A substantial distrust of social workers and health professionals has resulted from their involvement in oppressive and discriminatory social policies including the removal of children. However, this analysis of a group work intervention based on a transdisciplinary, Family Wellbeing empowerment programme shows that social workers can help to strengthen Indigenous people's own sense of control and their capacity to take prominent roles in local public policy making with the aim of reducing health damage.
Section 11.2 discusses a joint Canadian–Chinese development programme, particularly focused on women's health, in rural Mongolia where one response to poverty has been a large-scale exodus of men to seek work in cities. Rooted in a training programme based on basic social work methods and values, this project recruited local women to be leaders in health education and promotion work with a number of expected and unexpected consequences. Trainers came to recognise the expertise of rural women in analysing and addressing the barriers they face to health, including the inadequacy of health care provision. This has produced a shift in the approach of the All China Women's Federation to its task of nationwide health promotion.
Finally, Section 11.3 reports on an intervention to build health-related social capital in Hong Kong through the Community Investment and Inclusion Fund, with social work leaders. Although a strategic intervention led by the Fund's managers, the core principle of the model was the building of social capital through a fundamental change in welfare approach from service provision to participatory grassroots action.