Introduction
While many indigenous Australian families live in happy hopes, there are those who are victims of domestic violence and partner abuse. Some families are still unable to deal with past generational trauma that resulted from family abuse, and it is passed to their children. Children from this indigenous community are exposed to violence, family disintegration and financial stress. This program will examine these effects and explore how they can be tackled. It will focus on design and delivery of trauma services and care (Bradshow et al, 2005, p.28).
Steps that the program will take to ensure that it is culturally sensitive, safe and appropriate
A culturally sensitive program respects the community’s beliefs, values and cultures. I will ensure the program’s strategy is based on respect and dialogue while promoting inclusiveness and providing services that reflect on the community’s beliefs, language and other cultural aspects. I will make sure the program understands the cultural norms of this particular community hence respecting their values, beliefs, traditions and listening to them without trying to disregard their perspectives and points of views. The program will see to it that it doesn’t go against the community’s fundamental values, by identifying the community in ways that make them (the community). This will be achieved by the steps outlined below;
Step 1: Understanding the Identified Community
Recognizing and identifying any misinformation about this community and trying as much as possible not to generalize, since this is one of the key barriers to reaching out to community facing sensitive issues such as domestic violence/partner abuse.
Understanding how decisions are made in the community in question, by figuring out their core values about gender and family relations.
Step 2: Seek out key People in the Australian Indigenous Community
This will be achieved by meeting leaders and stakeholders who are already informed and are familiar with the issue and hand and are interested in finding socially and culturally accepted solutions to their people.
Step 3: Building Relationships with anti-Violence and the Australian Indigenous Community.
The program will identify key individuals in this community, prior to launching. It will achieve this by conducting a participatory action research that looks at the victims of family and partner abuse, interviewing key people from both the community and the mainstream anti violence agencies in the area. In this process, mutual trust, transparency and personal relationships will be built.
Step 4: develop a tool that will help improve the program’s understanding on this community.
There is a tool suitable for this and it is called FAST (Four Screening Aspect Tools). This tool will be used as guide for asking the community questions that will help us understand the better. The tool will bring to light the following aspects:
Universal aspects: these will strategize the program in a manner that approaches the community in universal perspective. Questions to be asked with this aspect are open ended ones about gender, marriage, family relationships and social roles. Such like questions will help the program build information on the context of family violence and partner abuse this community.
Migration Aspects: since experiences during a community’s migration process significantly affect their behaviors, it is vital to understand the Australian indigenous community’s experiences during their migration. Questions that will be posed under this aspect are open minded and quite sensitive. Thing like, “can you tell me what your life was like before settling in Australia?”, and “what is it living in Australian like?”
Ethno-cultural Aspects: in order to build a clearer picture on the community, the program will ask questions that probe on the ethno-cultural background of this said community. Questions will include thing like, “where do your people seek help from when facing marital problems?” and “do women who face partner abuse ask for help outside the community?”
Religious Aspects: from this aspect the program will understand the role of this community’s religion on gender and family relations, and figure out whether or not it is the base f their beliefs regarding family. We will ask questions like, “how important is your religion in resolving family conflicts?” or “how do religious groups deal with family violence?”
Step 5: Building Mutual Understanding
In order for mutual understanding to exist, the program will see to it that both the anti-violence agencies and the community in question look at each other as people who share the same goals, despite any differences that might be between them. Building mutual understanding will help the program identify the community’s priorities and build short and long term goals relating to the program. In order to achieve mutual understanding the program will;
Be transparent about our roles, goals and limitations.
Start statistics that can help collaborate in addressing partner abuse.
Draw information on actual numbers and studies and draw facts on how women are domestic abuse victims.
Based on facts, ask the community’s key members what they see as the best ways to address partner abuse and how they want to curb the vice.
Create a safe platform for the victims and community at large to share their fears and concerns in regards to partner abuse.
Step 6: Develop a Collaborative plan of Action
The program will Use knowledge gained earlier to involve representatives of victims, leaders and other neutral members of the community to ensure all voices are heard. We will also come up with a common ground that puts into consideration the community’s core values, ethics and beliefs. Lastly, for the collaborative plan to be effective, the program will pick appropriate ways of reaching out to the Australian indigenous community in an effort to address partner abuse.
Step 7: Naming and Launching the Program
The program will be collaboratively named, making sure the chosen name is sensitive to the culture of the community and the community feels comfortable with it. I will ensure launching the program will takes place in a central geographical area within the community; preferably where they always hold other social and cultural functions.
Needs of Families and Communities During Recovery and Healing from Family Violence
Family violence can define most types of violence; emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual, sexual, sociological and economic. People who have gone through domestic violence are all in one way of the other in the process of healing physically and emotionally from different types of trauma. The traumas carry with them various effects on the victim’s body, spirit and mind. It is normal to go through it and accept and acknowledge the effects, which can be a vital first step in embarking on the healing and restoration process. Victims of domestic violence most times experience mental, spiritual and physical changes. If not addressed, their condition can worsen. Even though the victims may experience similar types of abuse, the recovery and response to trauma may vary from individual to individual. There are several factors that can influence an individual’s response to the short and long term effects of the abuse. The overall impact of domestic violence also depends on the victim’s natural reaction to stress and stressful situations (Briere and Scott, 2006, p. 45).
Needs that I Would Cover in the Program
It is very important to note that the effects of domestic violence can be overwhelming to the victim. Handling victims of domestic abuse requires special care and treatment. It is natural for a victim of domestic violence not to remember several important aspect of their persona especially if they had been exposed to for a long period of time. Many a times, it might even be seen as violence defining their identity. The needs of victims of domestic violence may vary but there is one factor that stands, they all need help. Help can be offered in a range of ways. Although the most common route is always counseling, it is more practical to think about the end result of the intervention. There may be a need to improve safety of the victims especially the affected, both directly and indirectly. The interventions should be focused on making sure in there is a decrease in the effects of trauma and an improvement in the emotional and physical health. For children who are affected, counseling support and group work involving caregivers is likely to work (Green, 1999, p. 56).
There should be shelters for the victims of domestic violence where specialized care and support are available. For victims of domestic violence, the community needs to establish a 24 hour toll free line where anyone can report a case. There are specific ways that people can ensure the wants and needs of the victims are met; a creating of programs for victims, some form of compensation program also needs to be established for the victims – this is to enable provision of financial assistance for specific item the victims might need. Friends and family members also need to be ready to step in to offer help and support. For a community to fully help in the healing process of victims, first and foremost they need to that violence happens because of the choice the perpetrator made not because of something the victim did.
Trauma wreaks havoc in the body and soul of the victim, the more protracted it is, the more entrenched in the body the impact is. The end result of living with trauma is that it takes up the victim’s energy and the scars stick with them. Living with ongoing traumatic events is life altering and requires a special means of coping. It changes one to become extra vigilant, always on alert and ready for danger. Although this is bad, it does act as an insurance policy that can at times offer emotional protection. Victims of domestic abuse constantly require support and encouragement. Those around the victim need to understand that it might be difficult and challenging for victims of domestic violence to leave their abusers and therefore they need not to be judged but need constantly encouraged. Another step in helping the victims of violence would be by helping build the victim’s confidence and maintaining support for the victim even after they’ve left the abusive space they were in.
Victims of domestic abuse have various needs, even to those who don’t’ realize they do; they should feel a sense of emotional and physical safety, there should be a strong bond between those offering help and the victim. What the victim need most is a community or people who don’t judge them, they need people who believe them and believe in them. People who have witnessed domestic abuse need to educate themselves about domestic violence, its effect on the victims and on the people around them, this need to happen while they respect the victim’s right to choose. Victims of domestic violence may also encounter economical barrier that would challenge them, these barriers include; lack of available living-wage jobs and limited child care options. Instead of suggesting victims just leave, the community or those around the victim instead need to collectively break down barriers and make addressing domestic violence a priority while urging relevant figures in the community to do the same.
Domestic abuse affects people regardless of their race, age, sexuality or disability. It is paramount for the victims to be treated as individuals and at no one point are assumptions to be made about what the victim will or will not need because of their status or orientation.
Addressing Trans-generational Trauma
Although the experience and transmission of trauma are not restricted to people from a specific race or cultural group, religion, or socio-economic level, there exists significant proof that behaviors related to trauma and attitudes are common in the disadvantaged and disengaged communities of Australia. The transmitting of trauma may be specific to a family suffering a loss such as death, or can be a shared response to societal trauma. Legacies or more than often passed down through unconscious cues or effective messages that flow between child and adult, many a times, anxiety falls down from generation to generation. Traumatic transmissions carry unacknowledged grief along many vectors, groups get ‘stuck’ in time and together in collective solidarity it occurs in the process. The next generation and the one after it grapples with the trauma, finding ways of making it seen and spare bringing the experience of the torture back to one’s parents. The main task is to resist disassociating from the family heritage in order to escape it. Often an offspring within the family gets caught up and gets to carry and communicate the grief of their predecessors.
Trans-generational trauma transmissions takes on life take on life in the victims’ dreams. Discovering and accepting it means coming to know and to tell a larger narrative, one that comes from the preceding lineage of the family. The bonds that connect the child and its ancestor are very important in the process. They most time determine the answer to identity and personality questions. It can be a challenge detaching one’s self from these transmissions; this entails a process of separation. Breaking an emotional bond can lead to serious identity crisis. Many people from the onset wonder why indigenous people won’t move on from the ties or why they are stuck in it. An example is, due to colonization, Australian citizens have been experiencing trauma. The secondary exposure to trauma in kids can occur through them witnessing post traumatic experiences. Most kids also go through trauma as a direct impact to exposure to family violence.
Step that should be taken to address trans-generational trauma include educating people (both affected and the unaffected), housing, employment health and most importantly incarceration. These programs are only important one has addressed the issue of having the need for healing in families. Evidence suggests that in order to go through and overcome trans-generational trauma, communities need to be supported and empowered to identify their individual problems and to have control of the leading process. It is very critical that healing programs focus on restoring and reaffirming a sense of identity and connection to the people around them.
A historical and sociological outlook is required for one to understand trauma within a colonized population, this requires new programs and policies that move from one’s personal treatment to the whole community’s healing process. Distress experiences are as a result of multifaceted contact between social, biological and psychological factors. Many people have claimed that mental illness such as PTSD doesn’t practically get the levels of unending stress which the Aboriginal populace goes through in their day to day living. The sources of this stress are numerous and recurring. The stress levels are said to be abnormally high. They are compounded by one’s ability or lack thereof to overcome and identify the source of their stress, it is also compounded by the presence of an accumulation of stress factors and the realization that these stress factors are inflicted by people mostly in authority or known well to the victims. Childhood trauma is most likely today’s most vital public health challenge which could be curbed via intervention and prevention. Childhood trauma violates a child’s sense of trust and safety in the world they live in.
In order to achieve a positive generational change, there should exist a good investment of resources. Some steps involved in the recovery of trans-generational trauma include educaring, which is a trauma-based mix of aboriginal traditional healing activities and therapeutic processes adopted from the West. It also uses experiential learning that enables participants explore their understanding of the long-term consequences of trauma in generations and tools for recovery. Educaring promotes mutual respects in the environment that one learns, and the learning process is via dialogue.
The other healing route is ethnical community engagement, which helps educate and inform the aboriginal communities of the effects of trans-generational trauma. Despite history being as it is, there are functionalities in those affected; productivity and creativity. There also exists generations or groups who have been marginalized in their own community. To be effective in such environments is stressful and requires certain trauma-recovery skills which are to be fully developed. Those is service of trauma affected parties need to acknowledge ethnical responsibility and conduct trauma assessments as a part of the assistance they offer before making any assumptions about trauma issues and problem.
Responding to People who Believe Aboriginals Should move on from the Impact of Colonization as they are in the past
As much as colonization happened centuries ago, the scars it left in the victims still live with them to date, and has been passed down from generation to generation. I would make an effort of reminding anyone who believes the victims of colonization should move on of the effect and damage it caused. The most immediate consequence of colonization was perhaps diseases. Most of them were epidemic illnesses such as measles, influenza, smallpox and chickenpox. These diseases were infectious and they did spread fast resulting in the death of many people. In bigger aboriginal communities, the diseases where spreading even quicker. I would also remind them of the other consequence which was the issue of land and resources. The colonialists drove the people away from lands they owned and by 1870 most of the productive lands in Australia was grabbed away from the owners and taken by settlers. Losing land and important resources like water and food became a risk to the aboriginal people as they were left homeless, and this reduced their chances of survival (Atkinson, 2008, p. 13).
The colonialists also introduced aboriginal people to alcohol which went on to have adverse effects on them. Also when the colonialists raised the stock in the ranches, many changes happened that led to most aboriginal people losing their lands. This long term effect of this was that aboriginal people had new supply of food and this led a change in their nutrition, eating habits and ways of finding food. The end result was aboriginal people depending on the colonialists for food and livelihood. In general, the impact of the colonialists’ settlement, there was an increase in conflicts between the settlers and the aboriginal community which led to massacres such as the killings of Caledon Bay in the Northern territory (Atkinson et al, 1999, p. 34)
I would remind my colleague that the affected generation is still living with trans-generational trauma and instead of disregarding their plight as that of the past, their offspring should be treated and helped to manage their trauma using a psychological approach. The affected people should be provided with support groups and survivor services that respond to their needs, they should have access to family therapy.
Conclusion
Available and relevant information argues that the silence around partner abuse plays a big role in trans-generational trauma, the victims suffer in silence and this is transferred t their next generations, who also continue to suffer in silence. I would suggest more study on the said issues be done to look at the connection between the occurrence of trauma in a generation and its poor effects on the following generations. Although trauma is a real problem and requires urgent action, it is important that we acknowledge strength and resilience of the indigenous group and their culture. Even though this paper has focused on partner abuse, other forms of violence in the society must also be acted upon (Danieli, 1998, p. 45)
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