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October 22, 2015

$200K scholarship fund to help heal Indigenous trauma

Scholarship fund to allow more students to study Australia’s first Indigenous Trauma Recovery Program.

The Australian Minister for Rural Health Fiona Nash has announced a $200K scholarship fund to allow more students to study Australia’s first to be offered at UOW from January 2016.

The program will provide health professionals and others working within the social services, education and justice sectors with the knowledge and skills to effectively address multiple layers of trauma across Aboriginal and other Indigenous communities around the world.

“The Coalition Government is committed to closing the gap. This important education is one way of doing so,” Minister Nash said.

“I’m really pleased to be able to announce funding to this Scholarship Fund for the Indigenous Trauma Recovery Program and to a ¾«¶«´«Ã½ of the calibre of the ¾«¶«´«Ã½ of ¾«¶«´«Ã½.”

Professor Alison Jones, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health, said the program aims to help educate health professionals about generational trauma caused by colonisation to help close health and life expectancy gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous peoples.

Aboriginal health specialist Debra Hocking, herself a survivor of the Stolen Generations, coordinates the program, which is designed to address the alarming amount of trauma resulting from colonisation processes and the government policies which affected, and still affect, the lives of Aboriginal people in Australia.

“Family violence, substance abuse and child abuse are now being documented as symptoms of trauma resulting from loss of land, loss of identity and people being taken from their family,” she said.

“Health professionals need to know the statistics –for example the amount of youth who are suiciding in communities across the nation and what the underlying issues are. They need to understand how bad it is.”

The program has received a lot of attention, with a flood of applications from around the country.

Scholarships are available up to a maximum of $5,000 to support accommodation, study resource, tuition or other needs of successful applicants. Applications close Friday 30 October.