Child and Family Health
Support clinically integrated and culturally safe care across the first 3,000 days of life and improve coordination of services supporting health and wellbeing of children and their families.
Teddy Bear Care
Teddy Bear Care was developed as a health and wellbeing program for children prep to year six, following low take up of COVID-19 vaccines in this age group.
It uses fun play-based activities and an RFDS teddy to help children understand something they cannot see and consolidates positive messages of healthy hygiene habits to minimise the impact of viruses like COVID-19.
The program was trialled in the previous year in multiple Mount Isa sites and in 2022-2023 five schools in the region successfully ran the program. An evaluation will be complete in December 2023.
Healthy Outback Kids
The BUSHkids team continued to deliver face-to-face services to the families in the Cunnamulla community including supporting “The Mums and Bubs” playgroups, schools and their educators.
Scheduled visits to Cunnamulla continued over the past 12 months with the aim of setting goals and meeting outcome measures of the visit, to ensure all children that required follow up support and ongoing assessments were met.
The following activities were facilitated and delivered within the Community:
- Kids Health Expo;
- The inception of the New Directions Team provided an insight to families providing tip sheets and strategies in identifying children requiring extra support and assistance;
- The delivery of assessments and screenings within the community provided allied health professionals (Occupational Therapists and Speech Pathologists) enough information to identify children with significant delays.
- Ongoing connection with local and outreach services and stakeholders in the community including relationship building with Principles at the Cunnamulla State School, Kindergarten and Early Leaning Centre.
95.6% Children across the region are fully immunised at 5 years of age
Big Buddy Program
Goondir Health Services continued to provide a well supported and developed program identifying social and health issues affecting Indigenous youth within the South West communities of St George, Dirranbandi and surrounding towns. The four domains of the program provided by Goondir staff includes social inclusion, mentorship, promoting life skills and education.
Over the past 12 months a number of activities were delivered included music sessions, social and sporting events, educational sessions, including the partnership arrangements with the local Police Liaison Officers on the Road Safety Program that has shown a great interest from local participants.
Alcohol and Other Drug programs continue to be provided as an early intervention program through the delivery and facilitation of workers through group sessions focusing on support mechanisms and referral process for participants.
Goondir has also established a Research Oversight Committee comprising of UQ Rural Clinical Schools, UQ Centre for Online Health, CSIRO and Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation which is developing an evaluation framework for program activity outcomes from the Big Buddy Program and other activities which is run from the St George Community Wellbeing Centre.
