BADAC Chief Executive Officer received a state-wide award

BALLARAT and District Aboriginal Cooperative Chief Executive Officer, Karen Heap, has received a state-wide award for her work for the wellbeing of young Aboriginal people.

Ms Heap was the winner of the Walda Blow Award – established by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) in partnership with the Victorian Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People, in memory of Aunty Walda Blow – a Yorta Yorta and Wemba Wemba Elder who lived her life in the pursuit of equality.

She was nominated by her regional office for the work that she does with aboriginal children in out of home care.

“We are currently looking at lots of different areas in out of home care for aboriginal children because it has been
an issue and a lot of children are put into care,” she said.

“No-one has kept any track of them or they can get lost in the system.

“A review of 1000 children in out of home care, across the state, and the things that came out of that review was pretty horrendous.

“There were things like siblings were placed but siblings didn’t know siblings ten feet down the road from each other, all that sort of stuff.”

Since a review, BADAC has been able to implement some things through the DHHS such as cultural support plans which is a growing document for each child that is in out of home care and includes information such as the child’s genealogy, which tribe they belong to, their family members (aunts, uncles, cousins). The document also helps the kids stay connected to their country and family.

“We found a lot of children weren’t connected to their family or country and that made us really worried that we would have another stolen generation on our hands,” Ms Heap said.

“In saying that these kids aren’t stolen, they are put into care because they need to be safe and looked after but we could
have a lost generation because we didn’t know who the children are or who’s got them.

“There have been a lot of things that I have been involved with but I certainly didn’t expect this. I see it as part of my role. I just want to make sure that our children our connected and keep connected.”

Ms Heap is also pleased to see works on the new health building progressing rapidly.

She said the $6 million received form the state government would bring all the health services under the one roof, including mental health and drug and alcohol counselling.

“Our services are culturally appropriate services. We understand what aboriginal health is about and we understand how much more services we need to provide to our people because of the needs that they have,” Ms Heap said.

“Some people still go to the public hospitals and see public doctors, and that’s fine, but what we try to do is look at the whole person rather than just their health issue – mental health, home life, do they need support getting kids to school, just general support, we look at it in a different way.”