The Border’s health service is working on an Aboriginal employment strategy as part of initiatives to improve the relationship with the region’s Indigenous community.
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Chairwoman Nicki Melville outlined Albury Wodonga Health’s efforts in that space on Monday to the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition Relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
“We have got a (employment) strategy we’re attempting to fast-track a bit better,” she said.
“In terms of numbers of Aboriginal people employed by AWH, it would only be in the 20s of 30s, out of our total staff.
“We have worked extensively with medical, clinical and allied health staff around cultural safety and awareness.”
The inquiry heard 81 out of 1600 babies born through the maternity unit were Indigenous, and the biggest population of Indigenous people in their catchment was north of Albury towards Wagga, where about 3.5 per cent of the population identifies as Indigenous compared to 2 per cent in other shires covered by AWH.
There are four staff whose positions are dedicated to working with Indigenous patients, including an Indigenous hospital liason officer.
Queried on mental health, Ms Melville said it was an area the service “haven’t made the same amount of progress”.
“We’ve still got fragmentation in mental health,” she said.
“Access to community-based services is hard unless you know how to do it, so often for Indigenous people it’s almost inevitable they’ll front up at ED.
“We know that’s the long way round; we should be trying to prevent escalation of mental health issues.”
Ms Melville spoke of incidence of other health issues and said she would gather data for the inquiry of the representation of Indigenous people in localised statistics.
“We have the highest instance in the state for example of cardiovascular disease in one of our LGAs, we have the highest quintile for excessive alcohol abuse in two of our LGAs, and we also do have high rates … of mental illness, psychological distress and incidence of suicide,” she said.
“We understand the trauma and dislocation that contributed to ongoing mental health issues for our first nation people.
“You can have my assurance we are onto it and have every confidence that slowly we are making it better.”
The barriers presented by the state border to the service and to the implementation of a national representative body for Indigenous people were also discussed, with Indi MP Cathy McGowan suggesting any consultation should be cross-Border.
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