Page 5116 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 17 November 2009
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access free general practice services at Companion House. I must say I was very pleased to visit Companion House in the last five or six weeks. It is really heart-rending, as well as heart-enlarging, to visit a place like Companion House and speak with people there who work for the refugee community. It is quite a heartening experience to be with people who are so devoted to helping their fellow citizens and fellow human beings.
The primary health service provided at Companion House includes health interventions through a general practitioner and nurse, including health screening, case reviews, vaccinations and referral to other services such as mainstream general practice, dental and allied health services. Through Companion House, ACT Health counselling services also deliver extremely valuable support to those clients who have experienced torture and trauma and whose complex needs mean they are not easily served by mainstream health services.
ACT Health also offers a varied range of other support services. It coordinates the female genital mutilation program, it provides interpreting services, it provides cross-cultural awareness training for health professionals and it funds the stepping out of the shadows project, which trains and supports bilingual community educators to help reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness among Canberrans from multicultural backgrounds.
In the area of housing, the ACT government supports newly arrived refugees through gateway services and the refugee transitional housing program. The capacity to communicate is, of course, essential for the new arrivals wanting to feel in control of their own destinies. It is also essential for full participation in the economic life of the community. Language barriers are as real for new Canberrans as any physical barriers to inclusion. The CIT also delivers significant services for refugees. It delivers the adult migrant English program. These free classes deliver not only proficiency in the English language but also useful information about Australian cultural practices, working in Australia and accessing settlement services.
Students are eligible for free childcare while at CIT English language classes and are helped with the cost of public transport in order to attend classes. I think it is the capacity to speak the language that is one of the major inhibitors to participating not just in the life of the community but in paid work. It is only through paid work and the capacity to be independent that many refugees have the capacity to integrate and to feel that they belong to the community.
I might say that I have visited annually—and I recommend it to members—the knit and natter class which is conducted as an adjunct to English language classes at the CIT. Again, it is a wonderful example of Canberrans holding out a hand of significant friendship, assistance and help to those—almost exclusively women—who have newly arrived in Australia, more often that not as refugees but not always as refugees. It is a very innovative way of assisting women, in that particular instance, through a social network to practise their English skills among other women who are also learning English.
The ACT government is determined that those who choose our community of all possible communities as the one in which they want to make a new life and a new
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