My name is Jenni McEwen. I'm a Bundjalung woman from the far northern rivers of New South Wales in a small community called Baryulgil in Grafton, was the main town.
I moved to the Central Coast back in 1977 and I've been here ever since so I've been on Dakinjung Country for as long as, I've spent most of my life on Darkinjung Country. I'm very conscious of anyone that comes into my house, I've got to feel comfortable with that person to start off with.
Being an Aboriginal woman I just feel comfortable having Aboriginal workers coming in.
I've been very lucky that I do have a workers that do come in here through Bungree and I've got a very good rapport with them.
The respect that you get from the workers, Aboriginal people look at you and you are one of us.
So that's why it's a service that has absolute cultural significance, importance, respect, and I can't say enough about them.
My name's Rani, my mob's from Bourke and I'm a Social Support Worker from Bungree. It's important that it's culturally appropriate because a lot of our, you know, their Elders they just want to be respected and understood Everyone's different, every client's different.
Some people need more support than others, especially the ones where they are at home and their family is far away.
We do socials, I help with medications, showers, personal care, taking people out into community and helping them be connected to their family. The break helps a lot with families and especially ones with, a lot of families still have children like if they have their parents at home and they have their children and they have to work, it's hard to keep up with, you know, their kid's schedules and then also their parents' doctor's appointments.
Or even if their parents are still very capable of doing things on their own but they aren't able to drive and things like that.
Just the extra set of hands that we have coming in. Communicating with the families as well and the participants.
As a group, as a community, it just helps make things go smoothly and they're able to, you know, still enjoy their lives while also knowing that their parents are being taken care of, you know, and supported.
By assisting with their personal care and transport, keeping them connected to community, we're actually giving them dignity.
We're giving them self-worth. We're actually helping the families also in that regard because there is carer, you know, concern of carer burnout.
So, coordinating those services to keep the client, the participant and the family getting the services they need to remain at home and having that dignity is something that we're quite big on I am in that section of the older Aboriginal people and I'm encouraging them, in saying to people, if you haven't got a service, just ring up.
So let's access what's available to us and do not be afraid, don't worry about being shame job because it's not a shame job.
While you're saying that, it also helps the service to ensure that they're looking after what their role is in this community.