Indigenous Healthcare Services

This assignment discusses the profile and services provided by Victorian Aboriginal Health Service (VAHS), an organization developed to address the healthcare needs of indigenous communities. It explores the external factors that influenced the establishment of VAHS and highlights the services offered by the organization.

Running head: INDEGENOUS HEALTHCARE SERVICES
INDEGENOUS HEALTHCARE SERVICES
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:
1.Introduction:

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Aboriginal community controlled health care services can be explained
as the healthcare services that are developed keeping in mind the interests
of the aboriginal community within a particular region and adheres to their
healthcare needs. These are mainly developed for and by aboriginal
communities to overcome the health status gap that exists between
indigenous and non-indigenous people. The ongoing crisis in the indigenous
health is mainly because of the generations of neglect as well as lack of the
cohesive public policy and also failures in providing sufficient resources
ensuring that they all reach the people in the ground (Shipp & Gregson,
2015). Despite suffering from much worse health conditions than that of the
non-natives, indigenous people have less access to healthcare services.
Moreover cultural incompetency by western healthcare professionals also
acts as another external driver for creation of these services. This
assignment will describe the service profile of one such organization called
the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service. It will discuss the external factors
that had resulted in creation of this service and would also shed light on the
services provided by this organization.
2.1. Description of the profile of the health service:
The Victorian Aboriginal Health Service also called as the VAHs had
been established in the year 1973. This service organization was mainly
developed for addressing the various specific medical needs of the
indigenous communities residing in Victoria. This organization had had
expanded steadily over the last 40 years (VAHS, 2018). It has been found to
provide extensive and comprehensive ranges of dental, medical as well as
social services for the aboriginal communities. Another very interesting
aspect that had been found to be associated with this organization is that
besides healthcare services, they also ensure the well-being of the
organization through different types of contributions to various community
events as well as activities (Silbum et al., 2016). Moreover, it is also seen to
focus on the researches about the ongoing needs of the community and

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contribute to community empowerment in every ways possible through new
strategy development to meet the needs of the community.
2.2. External factors that help in influencing the healthcare services:
The Victorian Aboriginal Health Service also called as the VAHs was
established in the early of 1970s by a group of leaders in the region of the
Fitzroy, Melbourne. The main external drivers that had mainly influenced in
the establishment of the organization is poverty as well as the injustices
faced by the aboriginal communities in the hands of the non-indigenous
people in the nation. Reports of high mortality rates along with the increased
burden of the disorders among the aboriginal communities as well as the ill
health of the people had surfaced in the nation which had made the
aboriginal leaders to concentrate on saving their races from the oppression
and helping the people in their communities to live safe and better quality
lives (Shipp & Gregson, 2015). These conditions of the people of the
aboriginal communities can be attributed to the governmental policies which
had restricted the access of the Aboriginal people to the various essential
health services. Another important contributor to the development of the
necessity to establish aboriginal health service was the poor quality care
service they were receiving from the mainstream health care services of the
nation. The view of “whole of life” approach towards life of the native people
was not taken into consideration by the western healthcare services. The
Aboriginals put a lot of significance into the SEWB concept called the social
and emotional well-being of the people to help them live better quality lives
(Isaacs et al., 2017). However, the western healthcare services were
following the biomedical model of care only focusing on the biological causes
of ailments. This resulted in dissatisfaction among Aboriginals. It has been
also found that cultural biasness and discrimination and stigmatization
among the western healthcare professionals affected the self-respect and
self-esteem of the communities. Hence, there was urgency in developing
healthcare services which would align with the cultural traditions and

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expectation of the Aboriginal people. Hence, development of this healthcare
service organization was proposed by the aboriginal leaders. The main
principles that had been guiding the establishment of the services of this
healthcare organization are Aboriginal community control, well-being and
healing of the mind-body and spirit, holistic healthcare, cultural integrity as
well as self-determined health (Kingsley et al., 2018). The main foundation
principle of the organization was to enable the right to self-determination by
the aboriginal people. Self-determination mainly means the on-going process
of choice that actually helps in ensuring that the indigenous communities are
able to meet their social, cultural as well as economic needs of the people
(McKenna et al., 2015). Hence, building of these services acted as the boon
for the aboriginal communities in the Victorian communities.
2.3. Descriptions of the services provided by the health organization:
One of the services provided by the VAS is the family counseling
services. These services provide culturally safe and social wellbeing and
mental health counseling, cultural healing and also recovery programs, care
coordination and also outreach supports. It is located in the Preston site and
is seen to provide services across the four main domains. These are the adult
social emotional well-being, Ice pilot program and the Koori kids, financial
well-beings. While the adult social emotional well-being mainly provided
access to counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists as well as drug and
alcohol counseling, Detox-treatment and various other such supports, the
Koori kids mainly included cognitive, language, developmental and
behavioral assessments, providing family therapies, play therapies and
others. Another category of their services are community programs (VAHS,
2018). These services are free and are made available to the community of
the indigenous people that help in empowering them and making them feel
encouraged to develop self-coping abilities and self-management abilities
(McLachlan et al., 2018). Vas makes sure that the community programs are
committed in upholding the cultural values as well as meeting the needs of

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the community that are seen to include people who have religious beliefs or
falls in the categories like straight, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, or
Intersex (GLBTI). Community services are mainly seen to target its services
mainly to the people who are in the greatest needs for the services or the
greatest capacity for benefitting them. The specific people group whom the
community services of Vas are aimed is the older and frail individuals who
have sever, moderate or profound disability, younger people with moderate,
severe or the profound disabilities and those living with severe chronic
health conditions that are impacting their daily lives and their capabilities of
remaining at homes. The Women’s And Children’s services is another
category of services that are seen to provide key wages as well as stages
checks as well as immunizations for the children and the adults as well as for
pregnancy care, women’s health, supporting parenting, child health and
development, and similar others. Therefore, it can be found that the
organizations had tried to introduce healthcare services for every cohorts
along with every researched and evidence based approaches that enable the
aboriginal communities to live better quality lives.
3. Conclusion:
VAS had been trying their best to meet the healthcare needs of the
people of the Aboriginal community. They are providing healthcare services
that match the worldviews of the community and act as per the cultural
traditions of the community. The services are indeed trying to ensure that
they are meeting the healthcare gap between the native and non-native
people and this is contributing to holistic health of human beings.
References:
Barbeler, D., & Abraham, T. (2018). People: Career pathways: Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander health services pharmacist. Australian
Pharmacist, 37(11), 14.

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Isaacs, A. N., Sutton, K., Hearn, S., Wanganeen, G., & Dudgeon, P. (2017).
Health workers’ views of help seeking and suicide among Aboriginal
people in rural Victoria. Australian journal of rural health, 25(3), 169-
174. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajr.12303
Kingsley, J., Munro-Harrison, E., Jenkins, A., & Thorpe, A. (2018). “Here we
are part of a living culture”: Understanding the cultural determinants of
health in Aboriginal gathering places in Victoria, Australia. Health &
place, 54, 210-220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2018.10.001
McKenna, B., Fernbacher, S., Furness, T., & Hannon, M. (2015). “Cultural
brokerage” and beyond: piloting the role of an urban Aboriginal Mental
Health Liaison Officer. BMC Public Health, 15(1), 881.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2221-4
McLachlan, H., Forster, D., Newton, M., McCalman, P., Kildea, S., McLardie-Hore, F., ... &
Andy, S. (2018). Partnerships and collaboration: Implementing continuity of midwifery
care for aboriginal women in four maternity services in Victoria, Australia. Women and
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Shipp, M., & Gregson, S. (2015). P03. 17 The victorian aboriginal health
service (vahs) conducted a young people’s sexual health and sexually
transmissible infections and blood borne virus (sti/bbv) knowledge,
attitudes and behaviour survey in november 2014.
https://sti.bmj.com/content/91/Suppl_2/A92.1
Silburn, K., Thorpe, A., Carey, L., Frank-Gray, Y., Fletcher, G., & McPhail, K.
(2016). Is Funder Reporting Undermining Service Delivery? Compliance
reporting requirements of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health
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Controlled Health Organisations in Victoria, viii.
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Vahs.org.au (2018), Victorian Aboriginal Health services, Retrieved from:
https://www.vahs.org.au/