Healing journeys: experiences of young Aboriginal people in an urban Australian therapeutic community drug and alcohol program

ABSTRACT

Disproportionately high numbers of Aboriginal young people access residential alcohol and other drug programs in Australia. While demand is high, these programs often have low numbers of Aboriginal staff. Residential programs, however, generally offer supports that reflect features of Aboriginal health care – holistic, group-based, connected to local communities, and addressing determinants of health. The qualitative research outlined in this paper was a collaboration between a mainstream residential therapeutic community program and two Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, and Aboriginal young people and researchers, with Aboriginal research leadership. It used an Aboriginal healing framework to understand the experiences of 12 young Aboriginal people in the program, triangulated with 19 key informant interviews. This provided an opportunity to understand how Indigenous knowledge about healing related to mainstream programs and the experiences of Aboriginal young people. This moves beyond individualist and deficit-focused conceptions of youth alcohol and drug use and centres Aboriginal cultures as healing. Findings point to the need for critically self-reflective mainstream organisations, a larger Aboriginal workforce with leadership roles, partnerships with Aboriginal Elders and organisations, and an investment in Aboriginal community-controlled alcohol and other drug services.

KEYWORDS:

• Aboriginal
• youth
• drug and alcohol
• rehabilitation
• therapeutic community
• healing

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the staff and residents of the Ted Noffs Foundation for their commitment to the research. We acknowledge the Aboriginal Advisory Committee for their time and participation. We also acknowledge the support of the Research and Information Unit, Youth Justice NSW, Department of Communities and Justice.

Disclosure statement

Kieran Palmer is an employee of the Ted Noffs Foundation, which operates the treatment programs which provided the client data for this study. Ted Noffs Foundation staff were not directly involved in data analysis. Kieran Palmer contributed to the write-up of service provider insights. The Ted Noffs Foundation is a signatory to an Australian Research Council Funding Grant (LP140100429) and associated contract. In this, the Ted Noffs Foundation stated their commitment to acting on the findings of the research. No other authors have a conflict of interest to declare.

Data availability statement

Due to the participants’ young age and the sensitive nature of this research, datasets are not able to be provided to other researchers beyond those named in ethics applications.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage Projects funding grant (LP140100429) and the Ted Noffs Foundation.