Development,
Social change, Transition societies, Role of youth, Entrepreneurship development,
Governance and people strengthening practices, Volunteers development
Asset Based Community
Development Micro credits and finance
Ignorance of Ability Brings Disability
"This is a short film I did in 2005
and it was nominated for
India-International Film Festival on disability
......"
5.4 million
Australians volunteer with that figure representing
approximately 35% of the population. The estimated value
of volunteering is
$70 billion. The complete survey report is available on the
EXPLORING FAMILY RESILIENCE
IN FAMILIES LIVING WITH ADDICTION
Dr. Bee Teng Lim, Helen Moriarty, Maria
Stubbe, Sarah Bradford & Sophie Tapper
Impacts
of addiction are complex and pervasive on
affected families. How do families cope,
living with a family member with a drug,
alcohol or behaviour addictions? What
characterises a resilient family? How can
helping and counselling services contribute
to enhance family resilience? An exploratory
study, was conducted to address these
questions, the findings of which suggest
that addictions, regardless of the
underlying problem being alcohol-, drug-, or
behaviour-related, lead to widespread and
ongoing problems for non-addicted family
members. Common barriers were societal
stigma and lack of access to helping
services that deterred the affected family
members as well as the addicted family
member. Four common coping strategies used
by non-addicted family members were
minimizing, making allowances, turning away
and carrying on, all appear to short term
solutions to adversity but did not imply or
foster family resilience, were identified.
The need for increasing the understanding of
resilience among the families and the role
of helping and counselling services as
collaborators in identifying family
strengths and resources are discussed. Biodata: Dr Bee Tee Lim is a post-doctoral
fellow at Victoria University of Wellington,
New Zealand. Bee is currently researching in
the field of positive psychology and related
areas of human strengths as opposed to
deficits. Bee.Lim@vuw.ac.nz
PSYCHIATRIC PROFILING OF THE INDIAN
GERIATRIC POPULATION: IMPLICATION FOR
POSSIBLE INTERVENTIONS - Dr. Braj Bhushan
The
primary objective of this study was to
explore the prevalence of psychiatric
disorders among the elderly in India and to
find the mediating and moderating role of
different coping strategies in dealing with
them. 390 subjects with an age ranging from
50-90 years (M = 64.85, SD = 9.63)
participated in this study. Results
indicated that the main effect of resilience
and religiosity was significant, but the
interaction effect did not turn out to be
significant. Resilient elderly people used
proactive coping technique in order to
achieve anticipatory preparedness. By using
preventive and strategic coping techniques t
heywere able to handle anxiety, depression,
psychoticism, fear of aging, somatization,
paranoia and cognitive competence whereas
those using reflective coping technique were
able to handle depression, psychoticism and
fear of aging only. The findings have
implication for intervention programme. Of
all the factors, resilience and proactive
coping strategy seems more important
variables for mitigating the psychiatric/
psychological issues. Resilience and
proactive coping may be construed amenable
to training, and hence have significance for
intervention. Besides, religiosity seemed to
enhance the effect of resilience in dealing
with the mental health issues. Biodata: Braj Bhushan is Asst. Prof of
Psychology at the Indian Institute of
Technology Kanpur. Braj has 5 chapters in
books & 25 articles, and held a Visiting
Professorship at Kyushu University, Japan.
His books are: Bhushan, Communication in
Perspective. 2010, Amani International,
Kiel-Germany, and Statistics for Social
Sciences.,2007,Prentice-Hall, brajb@iitk.ac.in
SOME EVIDENCE-BASED STRATEGIES TO BUILD ON
CULTURAL STRENGTHS FOR BETTER MENTAL
WELLBEING - Elvia Ramirez and Farah Suleman
The
strengths of people arriving in Australia
with and without a refugee background have
been underestimated. This paper will focus
on the strategies that selected cultural
groups use prior and following migration as
identified by a study and the implementation
of community engagement and education
activities. In addition, it will focus on
the key components of three versions of a
group program designed to build resilience
in culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD)
children, adolescents and adults to learn to
cope with acculturation stress. The findings
of different programs implemented by the
Promotion, Prevention and Early Intervention
Program of the Qld Transcultural Mental
Health Centre will also demonstrate how
existing CALD community strengths have been
enhanced by evidence-based programs.
Examples of programs are: the Building
Resilience in Transcultural Australians (BRiTA
Futures), the Depression and Chronic Disease
Self-Management and the Multicultural Mental
Health Literacy programs that use bilingual
and bicultural community mental health
promoters for effective community engagement
and program implementation. Biodata: Elvia Ramirez coordinates the
Mental Health Promotion, Prevention and
Early Intervention program at the Qld
Transcultural Mental Health Centre, and is
also involved in the BRiTA Futures, Stigma
Reduction and the Building on Cultural
Strengths mental health literacy programs.
Elvia_Ramirez@health.qld.gov.au Biodata: Farah Suleman has been with BRiTA
Futures since 2008. Farah coordinates
training, provides support to trained Group
Facilitators and delivers the program in
schools and community settings and deals
with the marketing of BRiTA Futures.
Farah_Suleman@health.qld.gov.au
GRIEF & LOSS COUNSELLING WITH PERSONS WITH
INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY - Judith Pagan
People
with an intellectual disability have been
disenfranchised of grief and bereavement due
to perceptions that they do not have the
capacity to grieve, understand the concept
of death and form attachments in
relationships with family, friends and the
wider community. Research has dispelled
these myths and there is increasing
professional and social recognition of the
value of supporting people through the
normal expressions of grief, participation
in bereavement rituals and cultural customs,
and providing therapeutic intervention
following indications of complex grief
impacting on the person's behaviour and
psychological and spiritual well-being. Biodata: Judith Pagan works in the area of
Program Management in SE Qld Region,
Disability Services, Department of
Communities This is her 19th year of working
in the public sector providing specialist
disability services. Judith has physical
disability from Cerebral Palsy, enjoys
horse-riding & travelling and is currently
completing the Master of Social Work at
University of Queensland. jpagan@communities.qld.gov.au
A MODEL FOR INTERPROFESSIONAL EDUCATION FOR
HUMAN SERVICE PROFESSIONALS - Maria Julia-Billups
An
interprofessional approach to practice in
the human service professions is needed in
order to effectively intervene with the
challenges that social problems present to
us. Human resilience promotion and hope
building are better understood and applied
from an interdisciplinary perspective.
This paper reports a unique approach and set
of experiences in the development and
implementation of a multidimensional model
for the understanding, practicing, and
evaluating interprofessional practice and
education. The aim is to examine problems
precipitating the need for interprofessional
education; discuss limited
interprofessioanal education arrangements;
methodology of an alternative model;
underlying assumptions, implications,
limitations, and strengths of the proposed
model. Conceptual framework, contents,
references, and other educational resources
and techniques are presented and analyzed.
Underlying values about the significance of
a human-in-the-environment ecological
approach serve as the foundation for the
model presented. Biodata: Maria Julia-Billups, Professor,
Ohio State University has over 100 scholarly
publications, including 3 books; more than
100 worldwide presentations. Actively
involved in the academic, national, and
international community, providing services
in multiple organizations, boards,
commissions and consortium. Julia.1@osu.edu
SILENT, SILENCED AND POWERLESS - RESILIENCE
AND AGENCY IN RURAL GAY MEN - Dr Ed Green
This
paper presents “empowering alternatives” in
a cohort of marginalized individuals who are
usually considered to be silent, silenced
and powerless: The gay men who have chosen
to stay and live their lives in rural areas.
It cites a largely unreported aptitude and
adeptness by men to live contented lives in
areas well away from urban cosmopolitan
milieu. It argues that their resilience
allows them to deploy a multiplicity of
actions and reflective processes that,
despite their apparent subordinate position
in the rural communities, continues to give
them, determination to live their lives as
and where they choose.
But these men's personal strengths can also
be seen through other conceptual frameworks.
The notions of 'agency' and 'resistance',
when applied to these gay men, also shed
light on their empowerment in the face of
omni-present difficulties. It is the
realisation of their own capacity for action
to improve their lives and to live them as
they wish for agency that is their
springboard to resistance. This paper
demonstrates that seemingly subordinate
individuals can express counteractions to
the hegemonic ideology, in this case
represented by the 'countrymindedness' which
underlay the structure of social domination
in rural communities. Biodata: Ed is Dean at the Australian
College of Applied Psychology. In 2008, Ed
took the Post-Doctoral Fellowship under the
Australian Government's Endeavour Program.
at Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in
Yogakarta (Indonesia) where he researched
the lived experience rural men who have sex
with men and the implications of their lived
experience for local HIV education programs.
ed.green@acap.edu.au
WANTING TO HOPE: NEGOTIATING LOSS WHEN
SOMEONE IS MISSING - Julie Clark
Family
members of long-term missing people struggle
to cope with the consequences of “missingness”,
sometimes for decades. Many demonstrate
resilience in difficult circumstances
despite finding little support accessible to
them, as too little is understood about the
issues they face. The voices of people
affected by 'missingness' are beginning to
be heard and their stories of resilience to
be told. From qualitative research with
siblings of long term missing people, a
trajectory of loss is proposed that explains
common themes in efforts to negotiate loss.
Notions of ambiguous loss and
disenfranchised grief for people 'left
behind' are discussed.
This paper discusses issues for people
affected when someone goes missing and
positions “missingness” as an issue that
overlaps with many fields of practice, none
more clearly than mental health. It
challenges workers to recognise 'going
missing' as a consequence of a complex set
of interconnected issues including coping
difficulties and to consider the risk of
someone going missing in their assessment of
people who may be vulnerable. It suggests
the needs of family and friends, and missing
people will be better met when existing
services recognise the issues and shape
service responses within existing services. Biodata: Dr Julie Clark completed her PhD on
the Experience of siblings of long-term
missing people in 2006. She is an
experienced social worker and has worked in
a range of roles with children and families.
She has research interests in missing
people, supervision, ethics and child
protection. j.clark@griffith.edu.au
EMPOWERING INDIVIDUAL INHERENT COPING AND
RESILIENCE WITH NEUROTECHNOLOGY: AN
EXPERIENTIAL WORKSHOP - Jonathan Robert
Banks
Research
demonstrates that meditation, deep
relaxation, mindfulness, self hypnosis etc,
increase a person's coping ability,
resilience and hope building, physiological
healing and health. People appear to access:
innate wisdom, strength, confidence, hope
and reasonableness, and they begin doing
things in their life that are so much more
healthy and constructive without being
directly coached to do so. New fields of
applied behavioural neuroscience,
psychophysiology and neurotechnologies such
as brainwave biofeedback and brainwave
entrainment are enabling people to gain the
benefits of meditation with these safe,
natural and easy to use tools without having
to learn a technique.
When used repeatedly an accumulative effect
is created that access people to their
innate and natural inner strengths. There is
an immediate benefit at the acute stage as
well as long term benefits for ongoing
recovery. These tools generate the greatest
leverage to individual's inner strengths,
which substantially enhances family and
community recovery and hope building
directly and indirectly by improving the
impact of all behavioural/external
interventions directed at individuals and
groups at every stage. An opportunity in
this workshop to sit down and see if you can
fly through a virtual tunnel, race a car,
make a flower blossom with just your
brainwaves. Biodata: Jonathan Robert Banks has developed
leading edge personal development programs,
CDs and a neurotechnology device, utilising
state of the art technology for stress
management/rehabilitation and peak
performance. He has been Consultant for the
Royal Adelaide Hospital in South Australia,
BHP, SANTOS, Telstra, Australian National,
and DSTO amongst others. He has worked with
sporting teams and athletes including 1997
World Gold Medal Title holders. jonathan@neurotechcoaching.com.au
DEVELOPING COMMUNITY NETWORKS AND
PARTNERSHIPS IN PROMOTING POSITIVE MENTAL
HEALTH IN RURAL SOUTH AUSTRALIA - Abraham
Francis
This
paper is based on field practice. It
presents community work experiences and
reflections about how rural communities can
be engaged in the process of addressing
issues of mental health and specially in
challenging the myths of stigma attached to
mental health. The paper describes the
methods used in developing community net
works and partnerships in rural South
Australia and analyses how these methods
have supported in creating positive
environment in the local communities to
promote mental health. It also outlines some
of the challenges and issues faced in the
field.
The paper examines the strengths of rural
communities by exploring the nature of
existing safety net groups, and analyses the
partnerships and net works that were formed
during the tenure of author's employment.
This is highlighted with case examples to
illustrate how strength based partnership
models enhance creating supportive
environment in communities, under the
initiative of developing Mental Health
Support Groups and Mental Health Action
Groups in rural South Australia.
Additionally the paper examines the
strengths of the evolving role of
communities in promoting mental health and
suggests intervention strategies and raises
questions for further research in social
work practice with communities. Boidata: Abraham Francis is a social
activist and an academic employed with the
James Cook University. Prior to migrating to
Australia he worked as a social worker and
as a Lecturer in India. This paper relates
to his work in South Australia.
abraham.francis@jcu.edu.au
CREATING RESILIENCE IN THE COMMUNITIES FOR
CHILDREN POLICY - Antonia Hendrick, Susan
Young
Federal
government policy strategies to address
childhood and family disadvantage have
encouraged self-reliance and
self-responsibility over the past few years
with a focus on making family and child
friendly communities sustainable. There is
the expectation that even the most
disadvantaged families and communities will
be able to overcome the circumstances of
structural disadvantage, poverty and other
deficits such as poor health and become
fully functioning citizens. Such initiatives
presuppose that there exist strengths and
resilience within communities and families
without necessarily enacting practices
within the strategies to enhance people's
capacities. Action Research (AR) was an
original component of the Communities for
Children (C4C) Initiative and was designed
to address childhood disadvantage with a
focus on developing capacities in families
and communities in select rural and urban
regions across Australia. Although AR was
not continued as a policy priority, we argue
that its processes and practices can
contribute to long term effectiveness, with
sustainable outcomes, towards greater social
justice, inclusion and overall greater
standards of living for disadvantaged
communities. Examples of Western Australian
C4C sites, demonstrate this potential and
offer suggestions for future policy
direction. Biodata: Antonia Hendrick is a Social Work
Lecturer for Curtin University of Technology
and is also currently in the final stages of
her PhD. Antonia's interest lies in the area
of community development and social policy.
a.hendrick@curtin.edu.au