Public evaluation

Kungkaku Yangupalaku Healthy Relationships Project

The Ngaanyatjarra Health Service (NHS) is a community controlled health organisation that provides primary health services to 12 remote communities located over 250,000 sq kms of the Central  Desert region in Western Australia. The NHS conducted a needs assessment and consultation in the mid-2000s and found that young Aboriginal people, predominately aged 15-25 years, had limited access to education and culturally appropriate information about sexual health.

In 2009, funding was gained for a comprehensive community based sexual health education and access project for young people. This two-and-a-half year initiative was called the Kungkaku Yangupalaku Healthy Relationships Project (KYHRP).  Its aim was to improve the sexual health of young people aged 10–24 years on the Ngaanyatjarra lands.

To achieve this aim KYHRP adopted the following objectives:
?    increase the knowledge of young people on how to access services;
?    increase the confidence of young people in health seeking;
?    facilitate the development of healthy relationships among the young people;
?    reduce risk taking behaviour, and;
?    improve access to sexual health care and related services.

The approach taken by the KYHRP involved ongoing consultation with Elders, peer workers and young people, community profiling and mapping.  Important strategies were:

?    focus groups with Elders and other community members to select and design the education and community development initiatives;
?    training and working with a group of young people from several communities to create short films in their language which depicted the situations where they would need to access the clinics;
?    holding film nights in a number of communities to showcase the work;
?    separate workshops about relationships and sexual health for young men and young women, and;
?    Supporting a camp for grandmothers (Elders) and young women girls at a significant cultural site, to pass on knowledge about growing up in both the traditional way and the western way.

Public evaluation

Kungkaku Yangupalaku Healthy Relationships Project

The Ngaanyatjarra Health Service (NHS) is a community controlled health organisation that provides primary health services to 12 remote communities located over 250,000 sq kms of the Central  Desert region in Western Australia. The NHS conducted a needs assessment and consultation in the mid-2000s and found that young Aboriginal people, predominately aged 15-25 years, had limited access to education and culturally appropriate information about sexual health.

In 2009, funding was gained for a comprehensive community based sexual health education and access project for young people. This two-and-a-half year initiative was called the Kungkaku Yangupalaku Healthy Relationships Project (KYHRP).  Its aim was to improve the sexual health of young people aged 10–24 years on the Ngaanyatjarra lands.

To achieve this aim KYHRP adopted the following objectives:
?    increase the knowledge of young people on how to access services;
?    increase the confidence of young people in health seeking;
?    facilitate the development of healthy relationships among the young people;
?    reduce risk taking behaviour, and;
?    improve access to sexual health care and related services.

The approach taken by the KYHRP involved ongoing consultation with Elders, peer workers and young people, community profiling and mapping.  Important strategies were:

?    focus groups with Elders and other community members to select and design the education and community development initiatives;
?    training and working with a group of young people from several communities to create short films in their language which depicted the situations where they would need to access the clinics;
?    holding film nights in a number of communities to showcase the work;
?    separate workshops about relationships and sexual health for young men and young women, and;
?    Supporting a camp for grandmothers (Elders) and young women girls at a significant cultural site, to pass on knowledge about growing up in both the traditional way and the western way.