Journal
AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
Volume 44, Issue 2, Pages 102-105Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/1753-6405.12953
Keywords
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health; strengths-based practice; community development
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Objective: To understand strengths-based practice as articulated by urban Indigenous community workers and to consider its application for public health approaches to Australian Indigenous health advancement. Methods: Semi-structured interviews with community workers from an urban Indigenous community. Interviews were video and audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using thematic analysis, using an Indigenist research framework. Results: For our participants (11 Indigenous and one non-Indigenous), a strengths-based approach was fundamental to their practice. This approach reconfigured the usual relationship of client and service provider to fellow community member. They understood the strength of Indigeneity that empowers individuals and communities. They were not blinkered to the challenges in the community but resisted defining themselves, their community or their community practice by these deficits. Conclusions: Our participants had a sophisticated experiential understanding that a strengths-based practice is not simply a 'culturally acceptable' way for non-Indigenous peoples to work for Indigenous peoples, but rather it is the only way of working with Indigenous people.
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