Moving Forward Together in Aboriginal Women's Health: - Theses ...

Moving Forward TogetherJanet Kellydecisions and have equal say in the budget and expenditure of group funds wasincredibly important for them (WFG M2).The significance of a supportive groupThe women discussed how attending the group enabled them to cope with theeveryday issues in their lives, and to prioritise their own heath and well-being.Toward the end of the year one of the women had a pap smear after a twentytwo year gap since her last screening. She said that what was important for herwas that she had the freedom to seek screening when she was mentally,emotionally, physically and spiritually ready, and that she could go to theprovider of her choice. We all supported her but no one pushed her. One dayshe came in and asked me to do her pap smear, and so I did.Another woman found that the group enabled her to cope with the difficultsituations she was dealing with as a parent of teenage child who was indifficulties. I refer to my reflective journal.One of the women came into the women’s group this morning sayingthat over the weekend her child was at an incident that involved thepolice. She had been worried about her child’s activities for months andhad been trying to get help, with little success. She asked if she coulduse the phone in the group room to try to arrange assistance for herchild. There were only a few of us at group today and we quietly wenton with craft work while she made the calls to police and youthservices, and to her family. In between calls she came over and talkedwith us, we made her hot drinks, and then she went back and mademore calls. By lunch time she looked flat and drained and said she haddone as much as she could. We ate lunch together and talked aboutwhat we would like to do for the afternoon. We decided today would bea good day to go out and purchase material for sewing (we hadallocated this on our group budget). We all got in my car and went to anearby store. We had timed it well, as there was a massive sale withmany ends of rolls of materials. We wandered around selecting hugeamounts of material for very cheap prices. On the way back in the carwe talked about what we would make; children’s bedroom curtains,185