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

Moving Forward TogetherJanet KellyThink and Discuss and Take Action. Some of the co-researchers were able tobe involved in meeting Stringer and understand his interpretation of PAR moreclearly. They saw possibilities for high impact with the minimal resources andtime available. As identified by Dana Shen, Aboriginal Executive Officer ofHuman Services, any effective actions needed three aspects; the communitywould want to be involved, staff would have the capacity and the system wouldsupport it (Shen 2006).Supporting each other through the difficult timesIt was important to address co-researchers’ immediate issues and concernsbefore trying to focus on increasing client access and health care programs.Stringer (2007) describes a process beginning with the co-researchers highestpriority, and then working outwards in a spiral pattern. Eventually, and moreeffectively, the process will touch on the issue that the action researcher is coordinating(in this case Aboriginal women’s health and well-being). Byfollowing this process, many of the personal priorities, issues or circumstancesthat can prevent collaborative action from succeeding are attended to along theway.Co-researchers were concerned about the lack of resources, support and shortterm contracts that were leading to such a high turn over of staff. Withoutimprovements, it was difficult for them to maintain current services much lessmaintain any form of collaborative action. They felt that unrealisticexpectations were placed upon them, and when they could not meet these, theywere blamed (or blamed themselves) for their deficiencies. On one level theyknew that their organisation could not meet complex client needs, and that onany given day, their services could be, and often was, thrown into chaos.Unfortunately such realism is not often written into local, organisational, statewide and nationally health policies. They felt that there was an unspokenassumption that health strategies can be successfully implemented as directedfrom above, if workers only tried harder or worked better.Co-researchers spoke of feeling excluded from decision making and strategicplanning processes. One said ‘our requests go up; they think about it, thedirective comes down. There is not much discussion’ (AH FG3). There was236