Victoria is supporting refugees to find a new life and a new home

Sousan Hawalla:
Plenty Valley Community Health has a refugee health team which is newly formed. I speak Arabic so I help lots of the Arabic refugees that are in the area. They normally are not aware of who we are, what we are, what we do so I explain all that in their language which puts them at ease and then we book them an appointment with a refugee health nurse.
Ros O'Toole:
Being able to identify what those health needs are. Being able to identify gaps in health care that they've previously accessed so it might be chronic illnesses that suffered for a long time. It might be dental care, it might be audiology, so their hearing, it might be their eyesight that needs checking. They may have never had their eyes checked before. They've often come from backgrounds of torture and trauma or from war torn countries where those experiences that they've had have a huge impact on their mental and emotional health. So being able to refer them to appropriate services is really important.
To sit with people and hear their stories and understand where people come from and being able to use that information to help to guide their health needs, and being able to work with their story to help them in the best way that we can. And that work is so rewarding, to be able to work in that way is the most rewarding kind of nursing work I've ever done.

Victoria's community and mental health services offer safe and welcoming places for refugees to share their stories, to recover and restore hope.

Reviewed 23 September 2016

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