Dementia in Aboriginal Communities: Culturally appropriate training to support your Aboriginal clients
On 25th and 27th November, the WA Dementia Training Study Centre (WA DTSC) in collaboration with the Curtin University Centre for Aboriginal Studies (CAS) delivered their new train-the-trainer workshop for health professionals caring for Aboriginal clients with dementia and their families.
The half-day workshop promotes the use of existing resources ‘Looking out for dementia’ and ‘Dementia learning resource for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities’ which aim to raise awareness of dementia in Aboriginal Communities.
It uses a cultural competence approach to show attendees how they may use these resources to raise awareness of dementia with their Aboriginal clients, their family and community.
The workshops were presented by lecturers from CAS: George Hayden, a Noongar man from Western Australia, and Michelle Webb, a descendant of the Pallawa people of Trouwerener (Tasmania).
Feedback from the workshops was universally positive, comments included: ‘Stories and examples given by other participants gave me a better understanding’, ‘The importance of finding out about the “mob” in your area before you engage’, ‘Increased awareness of cultural background’, ‘Acknowledgement, how to identify self and others’, ‘Importance of family’, ‘The influence of my cultural background on my current clinical practice’, ‘Greater understanding of resources available in the community-good networking opportunity’, ‘Flexibility of resources’, ‘Absolutely no time to deliberate-urgent health and social issue’, ‘Reminders-spiritual connections’, ‘Ownership and sharing-cultural identities’, ‘Great resource for practical application, we have commenced using this kit in…Broome’
Each workshop attendee was given a complete copy of the two resource suites.
The resources are available to purchase (and some components can also be downloaded) from the Alzheimer’s Australia website:
Looking out for dementia
Dementia learning resource for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities
The WA DTSC will be running another workshop in March 2016 in Broome. Registration will be available on the DTSC website in January, 2016.