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Minister for Aboriginal Affairs launches Wadamba Wilam Practice Approach Report

09 July 2021
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The Hon. Gabrielle Williams, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and representing the Minister for Mental Health, launched Neami National’s Wadamba Wilam Practice Approach Report during NAIDOC Week.

Wadamba Wilam provides intensive outreach support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experiencing homelessness and enduring mental illness, in Melbourne’s Darebin and Whittlesea councils. 
 
People supported by Wadamba Wilam have typically presented with very high rates of homelessness, substance use and contact with the justice system, as well as poor physical health, and experiences of psychotic illness. 
 
The launch of the Report highlighted Wadamba Wilam’s successful approach to supporting this group, who have been chronically left behind by systems and services that have not reached them effectively or provided culturally safe support to improve social and emotional wellbeing.

It is a recognition of the hard work and the outcomes that this program is achieving. We want to give certainty because we know it’s achieving really wonderful things.

The Hon. Gabrielle Williams, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs
In addition to launching the report, the Hon. Gabrielle Williams announced an additional $3.1 million of funding for the program over three years, reflecting, “It is a recognition of the hard work and the outcomes that this program is achieving. We want to give certainty because we know it’s achieving really wonderful things.”
 
For many people, accessing support with Wadamba Wilam has been the turning point from which their lives have begun to transform. People who have engaged with Wadamba Wilam have experienced vastly improved physical and mental health, enjoy stable accommodation and have an overall increase in their social and emotional wellbeing. 
 
Key to the services success is its approach, which integrates trauma-informed practice with Aboriginal mental health and social and emotional wellbeing principles, and provides a coherent theory of change based upon Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal practitioners’ experiences of supporting community members.

I highly recommend this report to practitioners, researchers and those involved in policy related to Aboriginal mental health and social and emotional wellbeing services.

Dr Graham Gee, Psychologist and Senior Research Fellow at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
In his foreword to the report, Dr Graham Gee, Psychologist and Senior Research Fellow at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute reflected, “Wadamba Wilam was the first non-Aboriginal organisation that I encountered where it was clear from the outset that the staff understood these fundamental needs to put relationships and cultural safety front and centre of their practice.”

“I highly recommend this report to practitioners, researchers and those involved in policy related to Aboriginal mental health and social and emotional wellbeing services.”