Kate Senior

Walkin' about at Night: The Background to Teenage Pregnancy in a Remote Aboriginal Community.

In Australia, Indigenous young women are more likely to become pregnant while in their teens than non-Indigenous young women. Factors such as poverty, educational outcomes and unemployment play a major role; however, there is little understanding of the attitudes of young women themselves with regards to pregnancy. This paper explores young womens decisions regarding their sexual relationships and pregnancy in a remote Australian Aboriginal community, called River Town. It focuses on young womens motivations to pursue sexual relationships and the information about sex and male behaviour to women that informs their decision-making. ‘Walkin’ about at night’ is the term that River Town residents use to describe the nocturnal activities of adolescent females. The focus of this activity is for a young woman to find and maintain a relationship with a boy. Although it is considered by the young women to be one of the most exciting parts of their lives, it carries with it the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Young women are very aware of the first of these risks, if not the second, as teenage pregnancy is the norm in the community.

Improving sexual health for young people: making sexuality education a priority

How well do young people understand their developing sexuality and what this means? This paper reports on findings from the Our Lives: Culture, Context and Risk project, which investigated sexual behaviour and decision-making in the context of the everyday life experience and aspirations of Indigenous and non-Indigenous young people (16–25 years) in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and in South Australia. Using qualitative data, this paper focuses on what participating young people thought was necessary to improve the quality of sexuality education. Participants suggest that current forms of sexuality education are too clinical, didactic and unengaging, and are missing in relevant content. Young people requested more information on relationships, first sexual experiences and negotiating condom use. These requests indicate that young people realise that they need more knowledge in order to have healthy relationships, which conflicts with the popular belief that providing young people with open, honest information around sex will encourage them to have sex or increase sexual risk taking. Making sexuality education more of a priority and listening to the needs of young people could be a positive step towards improving sexual health and well-being.

‘Young clean and safe?’ Young people's perceptions of risk from sexually transmitted infections in regional, rural and remote Australia

This paper examines young peoples perceived vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and their efforts to create a sense of personal safety within an environment in which risks may be high and where STIs are highly stigmatised. The paper reports on findings from research involving both Indigenous and non-Indigenous 16- to 25-year-olds from remote, rural and regional Australia, including communities in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia. The study used qualitative methods, including body mapping and scenario based interviewing, to explore how young people made decisions about potential sexual partners and how STIs were understood within the context of young peoples everyday social worlds. The paper has important implications for the design and implementation of sexual-health education programmes by documenting the stigmatisation of young people with STIs and the protective mechanisms peer groups employ to create perceptions of personal safety.

Boyfriends, babies and basketball: present lives and future aspirations of young women in a remote Australian Aboriginal community

This paper explores the aspirations of a group of young women in a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory of Australia. It examines how their hopes and expectations are influenced by the reality of their everyday lives and the extent to which they are able to influence the course of their lives and become agents for change in their own communities. As with adolescents in lower socio-economic groups, the majority of young women in River Town have not developed life goals or clear strategies of how to achieve these goals. The choices that young women have are constrained by their narrow range of experience, which is characterized by early pregnancies and the potential threat of male violence. However, young women have articulated specific domains where they are able to control and structure their lives. This paper discusses the experiences of young women in this remote Aboriginal community.

Those young people all crankybella: Indigenous youth mental health and globalization

The subject of mental health has been discussed for some time in the literature on Australian Aboriginal peoples, although the volume of this work has been relatively small. This literature can be separated into two main approaches. The first has been concerned with documenting and analyzing disorders that are culturally specific to a particular group. The second, more recent body of literature understands mental health issues as resulting from a combination of factors related to the effects of colonization, such as loss of land, poverty, and the destruction of families. This literature is often aimed at diagnosis and the provision of appropriate services for Indigenous people without a comprehensive ethnographic understanding of the cultural specificities of certain mental health disorders. Although mental health problems are discussed, such as suicide, depression, and anxiety, little analysis is undertaken of how such states are locally experienced and understood. This paper reports the complexities involved in understanding mental health from the perspective of youth in a remote Aboriginal community in northern Australia. We argue that it is necessary to understand mental health within the broader context of the lives of Indigenous youth and, in particular, the interaction between their marginalization from participating in the opportunities that globalization offers with issues related to poverty, substance misuse, and specific cultural beliefs.

Health services research and development in practice: an Australian experience

While there is a growing literature on how health services research can inform health policy decisions, the practical challenge is for health services researchers to develop an effective interface with health policy-making processes and to produce outputs that lead to outcomes. The experience of the Centre for Health Service Development at the University of Wollongong, Australia, is used to illustrate the issues so commonly described in the literature and to reflect on our experience of trying to remain viable while producing relevant and valid research. A case study in a specific policy area - namely, the development of case-mix classifications and information systems to inform policy and funding in the subacute and non-acute hospital and community care sectors - is used as a practical example of the research-policy interface.

Stuck Nose: Experiences and Understanding of Petrol Sniffing in a Remote Aboriginal Community

While petrol sniffing amonge Australian Aboriginal youth has received significant public and academic attention, the experience of petrol sniffing as articulated by sniffers themselves and communitys perceptions of petrol sniffing have been underexplored. Through an ethnographic analysis of a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory Australia, a range of perspectives on petrol sniffing are elucidated in order to understand both the experiences associated with sniffing and non-sniffers’ perceptions of the activity. We argue that contextualizing sniffing within the community is essential to understanding petrol sniffing, and hence to providing appropriate health interventions. It would be incorrect to presume a causal connection between the introduction of a petrol sniffing intervention, described in this article, and the sudden cessation of all petrol sniffing activities in late 2005. Rather, a number of factors and occurrences within the community combined with the effects of the intervention were associated with a significant decrease in petrol sniffing.

Health Beliefs and Behavior

Recently, social determinants of health frameworks are receiving some criticism in that they do not engage with questions related to individual subjectivity and agency as they relate to health decision-making behavior. This article examines the different ways in which people living in a remote Arnhem Land community in the Northern Territory of Australia, take responsibility for their own health and the extent to which they are able to prevent illness. A number of related sub-questions are explored relating to how people perceive their health and their role in health care in their community, including their engagement with the health clinic, traditional medicines, and the influence of sorcery on ill health and sickness.

Treating Indigenous Australians with Alcohol/Drug Problems: Assessing Quality of Life

This study investigated the quality of life (QoL) of clients in an Indigenous Australian residential alcohol and drug treatment center. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from a random sample of Indigenous clients utilizing the Self Evaluated Individual Quality of Life–Direct Weight tool. The findings from this study provide support for the inclusion of QoL as important in understanding the recovery process from substance misuse. A discrepancy was found between the self-reported aspirations of clients and the focus of the treatment provided, and recommendations were provided for inclusion of new areas in the education provided to the clients of this service.

‘Stopping sniffing is our responsibility’: Community ownership of a petrol-sniffing program in Arnhem Land

Abstract This is an account of various unsuccessful efforts to combat petrol-sniffing in River Town, a remote Aboriginal settlement in north Australia. The paper provides insights into the dynamics of remote Aboriginal settlements, highlighting the dissonance between non-Aboriginal service providers and the Aboriginal residents. Attention is drawn to the need for more involvement of Aboriginal people in policy making and program implementation. The paper suggests also that there is a need for adequate resources to resolve the problems experienced in settlements such as River Town.