Indigenous men's healing work up for men's health award
Steven Torres-Carne, Senior Project Office at the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation, has been nominated for the 2019 NT Men’s Health Awards for his work in designing, developing and implementing healing programs for Indigenous men.
Steven’s work helps to address a range of issues including family and domestic violence, child protection issues, social and emotional wellbeing/mental health issues, suicide risk, problems with alcohol and other drugs, poverty, unemployment and incarceration.
Steven’s healing programs focus on cultural and spiritual connection with the aim of empowering and strengthening men to reclaim their leadership and fathering roles in the family and community.
The programs work to build communication, collaboration and networking between services to better address the health and wellbeing issues of the men he works with and their familiers.
Steven says he consults with Indigenous men as they are the experts on how best to lead, design and develop programs for Indigenous men and take ownership of them. He also ensures that safe and culturally appropriate ways of working with men are used and observed to create ‘male friendly’ safe spaces.
The Wurrumiyanga and Ngukurr men’s healing programs facilitated by Steven have been successfully evaluated and revealed a reduction in family and domestic violence and suicidality. Men involved with the program report being more engaged in culture, with women and children feeling safer and more men participating in their community.
Steven has also been involved in the establishment of Darwin Indigenous Men’s Service Aboriginal Corporation and us involved in the development of a national framework (and network) for Indigenous men & boys violence prevention.
Steven says the men’s healing programs address many of the social determinants that are known to shape the health and wellbeing of Indigenous men.
His work is also helping to bring men together working in the government and non-government services sector to support each other, exchange ideas, discuss current issues, share stories about their work and collaborate to address some of the key issues that Indigenous men's health.
Steven Torres-Carne has been nominated for the NT Men's Health Awards, to be announced in Darwin next week.
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ABOUT THE HEALING FOUNDATION
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation was formed to address the harmful legacy of colonisation, in particular the history of child removal that continues to affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. You can read a report on Steven's work with men through the Healing Foundation called Our Men Our Healing here (PDF).