Phone: Off campus
Thesis & Topic: Impacts of Housing on health in Aboriginal communities in North-West Queensland
Concepts of health and well-being have multi-layered meanings to different people. As an Aboriginal person my research interests come from being a community member and also professionally, as an Aboriginal educator. My professional background has been predominantly in the field of Social work. This experience has enabled me to identify and draw on the frustration of the dysfunction and challenges relating to the lack of understanding by successive governments, which has resulted in a void of culturally appropriate services to Aboriginal communities throughout Australia.
This research will be conducted within the framework of a formal partnership between Aboriginal Housing Studies (AHURI) and CRC Desert Knowledge who will both contribute their own collaborative frameworks to highlight and underpin vital concepts within the research process. The Indigenous Housing Studies (AHURI), encourages the implementation of innovative research initiatives that are a vital factor in the development of an evidence base to inform housing policies and programs for Indigenous people and communities. CRC Desert Knowledge – Core Projects aims to identify and implement strategies towards the development of infrastructure and capacity for consumers, service providers for the viability and sustainability of community well-being.
This research would incorporate and illustrate the inter-relationship of building capacity to improve the provision of housing services, planning and problem solving, provide a framework that we can utilize to check our strategies against, and identify the core elements of a program that are missing or need to be strengthened between housing service provision and delivery. With an overall focus on emphasising the value of proactive policy, evaluation and research methods, which are dealt with as integrated elements towards Indigenous housing promotion and sustainability.