My name is Sarah.
I am an Aboriginal Practice Lead with the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency.
I'm a proud Yorta Yorta woman.
Prior to working with VACCA, I worked with another Aboriginal organisation in an administration role.
I ended up doing a Diploma of Community Services over three years.
I had two babies within the mix of that and worked part time for two of those years with VACCA as well.
So an Aboriginal Practice Lead key role is to support Aboriginal practice within an Orange Door space.
My day looks very different each day.
It could be supporting a client depending on their needs with either a risk assessment and family violence supports.
It could also be engaging in child wellbeing assessments and referring into child wellbeing services.
It's also around supporting and educating my colleagues and building their lens for working with Aboriginal people.
Aboriginal people are best to work with Aboriginal clients.
We understand the intergenerational traumas, the past history.
We have our own lived experience that we can bring to the table.
Any mainstream practitioner that is working with an Aboriginal client can access a consult with myself where I provide a cultural lens and support on how to work with that client.
Many clients, they can find comfort within that that, you know, they're working with somebody who gets it.
To lead cultural understanding within an organisation we provide cultural reflective practice and as part of that I use these great Aboriginal milestone cards and on these cards it shows a number of different milestones that are significant to the Aboriginal community and talks to some of the impacts on our mob.
I have a passion for my community.
Working with children and families to not enter that service system any further.
We can see it from not just a professional lens, it's also a personal lens and the cultural lens that we're bringing to this space.
It's about giving agency back to each of the clients in line with their own self-determination as well.
Updated