Trauma awareness is key to helping those suffering 

Larrakia Nation in collaboration with the Palmerston Indigenous Network have just successfully finished delivering the Trauma Training Session at the YMCA Palmerston Youth Centre in Palmerston.

The three day workshop was about identifying cultural and intergenerational trauma on the body and on our community.

 

Building a better informed community 

Kay Villaflor is the coordinator at the Larrakia Nation Palmerston Family and Culture Centre, and explained the workshop was delivered to community members who want to be better at understanding the effects of trauma and to strengthen our support networks around trauma. “We want to create a trauma informed network who understand the terrible impact of trauma and what can be done to help those suffering” said Kay.

 

We want to build a network of people who want to work together

Palmerston Indigenous Network is a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous members serving community needs in Palmerston. They group chose the participants for this first workshop because of their role in the Palmerston community.

“Facilitators may come out of the workshop and that is great, but it might also be grandmothers who will go home and use their skills to identify trauma effects on their family, that is also great. The goal of the workshop is to give participants the power to understand trauma and start a conversation about it” said Kay.

The Palmerston Indigenous Network and the Trauma Group is already established and people who have done the training can come into the conversation about how we want to create a trauma informed community.

 

Understanding trauma isn’t new, building a community who understands trauma is 

The acknowledgement of trauma having a long and far reaching effect isn’t new. What is new about this workshop is the act of selecting community members who can help to build a more trauma informed network.

The Palmerston Indigenous Network want to get more people involved with the same thinking around healing and to understand this process needs to start before babies are born and certainly throughout the schooling years.

“It was very clear in the workshop that people want this information in the schools. They want their kids to have access to this information. They want the people in jail when they come out to be able to access this sort of training. We want to spread the understanding as thick and as fast as we can” said Kay.

 

Next steps

Next steps are to analyse the workshop and what can be done to improve it. Palmerston Indigenous Network is community led, so long as there is a need for this kind of training, we will work to deliver it said Kay.

“We need to keep the training and the momentum going so that everyone is working together in this space so that we have an understanding of what happened and how we can try to work towards real wellbeing” said Kay.