Strengths-based cultural care improves health outcomes for Aboriginal mothers and babies

Bridgette Kelly and Trish Ratajczak from Murdoch University’s Ngangk Yira Institute for Change are keen to change this. They are both addressing these gaps in their theses for the Accelerated Master’s by Research.

Kelly, a proud Kamilaroi woman, and Ratajczak, a proud Palawa Trawlwoolway woman, have years of experience in perinatal health care and hope their research will inspire other Aboriginal people to go to university and reclaim their right to culturally safe health care.

In Ratajczak’s theoremThe Baby Coming You Ready (BCYR) program, a model of care designed to overcome communication barriers between Aboriginal women and their health care providers, has been shown to empower women to make decisions and have a voice in promoting good perinatal care.

“The resilience and self-reliance of Aboriginal women is not recognised enough,” Ratajczak said.

Her findings showed that BCYR recognised and supported the resilience and self-reliance of Aboriginal mothers and strengthened women’s mental health during the perinatal period.

Implementing this strengths-based cultural care across the broader health care sector can help improve maternal and child outcomes while building trust and increasing continuity of care.

Lack of cultural understanding is something Ratajczak saw regularly in her work as a midwife.

“During my research, one mother told me that she wanted to take her baby to Country, to strengthen her baby’s identity and connection to Country, but she was afraid that if she told her midwife, her baby would be taken away, because bubba was a newborn,” Ratajczak said.

In Kelly’s Theoremshe investigated what contributes to strong, trusting relationships between childcare nurses, Aboriginal clients and their families.

Her findings highlighted an important gap that should be addressed by adapting BCYR in the area of ​​child health to better meet the needs of mothers with babies, child health nurses and community health services across Western Australia.

Further recommendations include a comprehensive co-design of BCYR, ​​capturing child health milestones and image and language adaptations.

“During my research, there were so many stories about women not feeling safe talking to their youth nurse,” Kelly said.

She found that strong relationships lead to culturally safe care, adding that it is important to support and care for mothers after their babies are born and throughout their first years of life.

Kelly and Ratajczak are not only passionate about increasing the number of Aboriginal caregivers, they also want to show other Aboriginal people that their life experiences matter and are enough to start studying.

“What people call research, the Aboriginal mafia has been doing for years,” Ratajczak said. “Truth telling, storytelling and chit chat are such big parts of our culture.”

“It’s just called something else. When you talk to other Aboriginal people about it, you hear ‘oh, I already do that’,” Kelly said.

Not only do Ratajczak and Kelly find it natural to tell the truth, but they also say that family and community are everything and the most important source of inspiration for their Masters.

Both women have families, work full-time and say they could count on each other during their studies.

“We never read any part of each other’s dissertations until they were published, but we sat in the same room and encouraged each other to keep going,” Ratajczak said.

“That’s just who we are, that’s our culture, the way we work and who we are.”

Kelly said she and Ratajczak often pushed each other to study, even when things got tough.

“We would both be like, okay – Masters time – let’s go. And we would both sit in the office and work, knowing that we were both there for each other.”

Shortly before her submission, Ratajczak faced another huge test of her resilience when her husband was diagnosed with a serious illness.

“I can’t tell you how much I wanted to give it all and give it up, but my husband, my supervisors and Bridgette motivated me to just keep going,” she said.

After their papers were published, Ratajczak and Kelly said the feedback from the community reinforced the importance of their hard work.

“People working in health care have recognized the importance of my dissertation, and women have thanked me for amplifying our voices in the research community,” Ratajczak said.

Kelly said she hoped their stories could inspire even one Aboriginal person to pursue their dream of a career and education.

“When someone looks at us and says, ‘If they can do it, I can do it.’ That’s awesome.”

Both women said the support of the staff at the Ngangk Yira Institute for Change was paramount and that their work continued to inspire change in healthcare.