Strengths-Based Approaches to Providing an Aboriginal Community Child Health Service

Adopting strength-based approaches reinstates power and control to Aboriginal communities, while nurturing decision making in the design and delivery of culturally contextualised approaches to addressing Aboriginal health and well-being. Aboriginal health policy and practice continues to address Aboriginal child health and well-being from a whole-of-population deficit discourse, exacerbating disadvantage for Aboriginal children and young people. Furthermore, population health-level data provides an opportunity to understand the complexities of health and well-being for urban Aboriginal children and young people, yet such information is rarely documented due to the size of the population of interest or the incapacity of services to undertake additional internal data analysis. This paper discusses the development of multi-disciplinary community-based Aboriginal child health services in an urban community using strengths-based principles. We highlight the opportunities and challenges in addressing Ab original child health over a 10 -year period and demonstrate that access to culturally safe, resilience-building services can produce measurable improvements in health-seeking behaviour, maternal health, and early intervention. We draw on holistic frameworks to demonstrate that optimal outcomes can be achieved through integrated interdisciplinary models of care that are responsive to the needs of the local community, understand the social determinants of health and build resilience-all critically important to addressing Aboriginal child health and well-being.