A unified call to action from Australian nursing and midwifery leaders : ensuring that Black lives matter

Nurses and midwives of Australia now is the time for change! As powerfully placed, Indigenous and non-Indigenous nursing and midwifery professionals, together we can ensure an effective and robust Indigenous curriculum in our nursing and midwifery schools of education. Today, Australia finds itself in a shifting tide of social change, where the voices for better and safer health care ring out loud. Voices for justice, equity and equality reverberate across our cities, our streets, homes, and institutions of learning. It is a call for new songlines of reform. The need to embed meaningful Indigenous health curricula is stronger now than it ever was for Australian nursing and midwifery. It is essential that nursing and midwifery leadership continue to build an authentic collaborative environment for Indigenous curriculum development. Bipartisan alliance is imperative for all academic staff to be confident in their teaching and learning experiences with Indigenous health syllabus. This paper is a call out. Now is the time for Indigenous and non-Indigenous nurses and midwives to make a stand together, for justice and equity in our teaching, learning, and practice. Together we will dismantle systems, policy, and practices in health that oppress. The Black Lives Matter movement provides us with a ‘now window’ of accepted dialogue to build a better, culturally safe Australian nursing and midwifery workforce, ensuring that Black Lives Matter in all aspects of health care. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. *Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliates “Wendy Cross, Catherine Hungerford and L. Shields” is provided in this record*

Epilogue: Indigenous special editions - benefitting a community of scholars.

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Towards effective throughcare approaches for Indigenous people leaving prison in Australia and New Zealand

In 2018, the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Inquiry into the Incarceration Rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples concluded that a cycle of reoffending can result for those prisoners who are released from prison without support to transition into the community. It noted that incarceration leads to significant disruption in a person’s life that can include the loss of employment, housing, relationships and social support (see also Abbott et al. 2017) and identified the need for throughcare programs to be made more readily available (ALRC 2018). Although a large number of organisations, both government and non-government, now provide these programs, submissions to the Commission only identified a small number of programs that had been developed specifically for Indigenous prisoners – and these were diverse in terms of both the scope and the types of service that were offered. The purpose of this Brief is to consider the current status of throughcare programs in both Australia and New Zealand and to identify some key issues going forward

Amazingly resilient Indigenous people! Using transformative learning to facilitate positive student engagement with sensitive material

© eContent Management Pty Ltd. If health professionals are to effectively contribute to improving the health of Indigenous people, understanding of the historical, political, and social disadvantage that has lead to health disparity is essential. This paper describes a teaching and learning experience in which four Australian Indigenous academics in collaboration with a non-Indigenous colleague delivered an intensive workshop for masters level post-graduate students. Drawing upon the paedagogy of Transformative Learning, the objectives of the day included facilitating students to explore their existing understandings of Indigenous people, the impact of ongoing colonisation, the diversity of Australia's Indigenous people, and developing respect for alternative worldviews. Drawing on a range of resources including personal stories, autobiography, film and interactive sessions, students were challenged intellectually and emotionally by the content. Students experienced the workshop as a significant educational event, and described feeling transformed by the content, better informed, more appreciative of other worldviews and Indigenous resilience and better equipped to contribute in a more meaningful way to improving the quality of health care for Indigenous people. Where this workshop differs from other Indigenous classes was in the involvement of an Indigenous teaching team. Rather than a lone academic who can often feel vulnerable teaching a large cohort of non-Indigenous students, an Indigenous teaching team reinforced Indigenous authority and created an emotionally and culturally safe space within which students were allowed to confront and explore difficult truths. Findings support the value of multiple teaching strategies underpinned by the theory of transformational learning, and the potential benefits of facilitating emotional as well as intellectual student engagement when presenting sensitive material

Evaluation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health First Aid Program

OBJECTIVE: This study reports findings from an uncontrolled evaluation of a course designed to educate participants in how to recognise and respond to mental health problems until professional help is received. METHODS: Utilising a mixed methods design, participants in 21 different courses, delivered across two Australian states, were invited to complete pre-, post-, and follow-up surveys and provide qualitative feedback on their training experiences. RESULTS: Participants reported feeling more confident in their capacity to respond appropriately to a person presenting with a mental health need and believed they would be more likely to provide assistance. Satisfaction was attributed to the skills and sensitivities of instructors who had lived experience of mental health concerns in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. CONCLUSION: This course holds promise in improving mental health literacy in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health. Implications for public health: Few courses are available that address issues relating to the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People. This study illustrates how community engagement with primary health and specialist mental health services might be strengthened

“Taking our blindfolds off”: Acknowledging the vision of first nations peoples for nursing and midwifery

This editorial responds to a recent reminder from an Elder to acknowledge and respect First Nations ways of knowing, doing, and being as health professionals and researchers. This reminder asked us to critically reflect on our professional stance and practices as nurses, midwives and researchers in the light of the fire that still burns at the Aboriginal tent Embassy and recent dialogues for Australia Day. In light of the international Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, we discuss the importance of our shared roles and responsibilities to continue to challenge racism and oppressive practices in Australian health care. Decolonising nursing and midwifery practice, policy, research, and education approaches offer a clear transformational reform process to address oppressive practices and racism including attitudes, ignorance and bias, generalisations, assumptions, uninformed opinions and commit to developing and embedding cultural safety in the nursing and midwifery profession