OWEN SOUND – Local aboriginals with complex health care needs now have a special outreach team at their disposal.
Owen Sound is the base for a new Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre, serving Chippewas of Nawash at Saugeen and Cape Croker, the Metis community and off-reserve aboriginals as well.
An official opening of the access centre was held Tuesday.
The outreach team, which will work out of Owen Sound and travel regularly to Saugeen and Cape Croker, includes a nurse practitioner, a patient navigator focused on helping seniors, two mental health and addictions case management workers and a traditional healing services coordinator.
“What we have here is an indigenous-informed model of care, which sort of acts as a navigational point in the system so that aboriginal community services are connected to the broader health system, and health supports for people with complex needs,” said Gertie-Mae Muise, aboriginal health lead for the South West Local Health Integration Network.
The clients, she said, may have multiple illnesses and face challenges and barriers to getting well. With an outreach team tailored to meet their needs, it should help keep them out of hospital and in their communities longer.
Muise said the access centre has been about a year in the making. She said there were previous gaps in the system for some aboriginals.
“What we find is there are barriers to that access,” she said. “Usually what we find is that the Western services are not necessarily oriented to understanding the complex nature of life within indigenous territory and communities, and the impacts of colonization, assimilation, the residential school legacy, and all the inter-generational issues that are in that.”
But Muise said she didn’t want to give the impression that aboriginal communities are not healthy.
“Our communities are well,” she said. “About 60% of our people have good solid mental health and are well and live good lives. For those that aren’t, there are a lot of complicating factors that require a specific and unique approach.”
That approach can include traditional native healing methods, she said, such as seeing a traditional healer, talking to an auntie, or participating in a drum circle.
For Complete Story : http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/2013/09/24/outreach-team-to-improve-health-access-for-aboriginals
