Facilitating Empowerment: The Family Wellbeing Program in Alice Springs

Abstract

There are no easy strategies to manage complex challenges (so-called wicked problems) such as colonial dispossession of Indigenous people of their lands and the associated prejudice, discrimination, poverty, trauma and loss. As a researcher working in environments such as these, you must understand the importance of trauma-informed approaches in enabling people not only to heal from past hurt and pain but also to be able to live flourishing lives. Trauma-informed interventions such as the Family Wellbeing program address the psychosocial dimensions of trauma. They take a strengths-based approach whereby people regain a sense of empowerment and control over their lives. In this story, I describe my early efforts to measure the extent and degree of change possible with personal empowerment programs using social research in Alice Springs. I learned many lessons, often through frustration, about the nature of personal empowerment and the ways in which empowerment programs and research might be used more effectively to generate wider-reaching structural and political change in communities.