The Strong Family Project – An Indigenous Designed, Indigenous Driven Approach to Working with Indigenous Communities

Cummings E¹*, Dean T¹*

1. Dept of Chief Minister, Northern Territory Government, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia

Indigenous communities in Australia face many challenges, and a range of methods have been used to address community issues. Many recent models have relied on community development approaches, but this project, which focuses on remote communities, is piloting a different model.

Many communities are torn by conflict between and within families. This can make it difficult to succeed with a traditional community development model. The Strong Family model focuses instead on harnessing the strength of the Aboriginal family, which even under enormous pressure has remained the core of Aboriginal life. The program proposes to develop community capacity by concentrating first on building the capacity of family members to identify and tackle the issues that face them. The families then form a core that can build community strength from the bottom-up.

The approach requires a different way of working with families, communities and services from traditional approaches – and has posed significant challenges for team members. The presentation will set out the team’s experiences in six remote communities, and some of the lessons learned so far.