Health Promotion
Gippsland Women’s Health recognises that all aspects of a woman’s can influence how she feels and how healthy she is. We work together with other organisations and the community to develop health related programs that address a range of issues.
The following provide an example of the issues which face women in the Gippsland community.
A snapshot of recent and ongoing programs follows.
Prevention of violence against women
Respectful Relationships Education in Schools
Five secondary schools from Latrobe participated in in the first phase of this project in 2006. We worked individually with each school to identify their level of understanding around family violence and to identify the needs of each school in regard to professional development and policy and procedure development.
As a result each school took an individual approach to their involvement in the project and this had lead to the development of a flexible professional development package that can be delivered to targeted staff or whole of staff information sessions in schools across Gippsland.
This project has now been expanded to include schools in East Gippsland and Wellington. We anticipate expanding further into areas of South Gippsland in the near future.
Information underpinning the GWHS Respectful Relationships in Schools programs can be found in the attached documents,
A Right to Respect - Victoria's Plan to Prevent Violence Against Women 2010-2020 (A Victorian Government Initiative) PDF 1.04MB and Respectful Relationships Education - Violence prevention and respectful relationships education in Victorian Secondary Schools (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. ) Part 1
(PDF 3MB)
"Say No to Violence" Campaign
A partnership was formed with the Sale City Football Network Club to implement a family violence community awareness program. As a result all Senior, Reserve, Thirds Football and Senior Netball players display family violence prevention messages on their team sporting uniform.
Information sessions have been held for Thirds Football and Senior Netball players, and a duty of care session for the Junior and Senior Committee members and Board members. A sign has been provided for the football ground boundary fence and information is displayed in the Club male and female toilets.
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Promoting mental health and wellbeing
Lifeskills for Women
Central Gippsland Alcohol and Drug Services in 1995. Since that time the project has been delivered to a significant number of women throughout Gippsland, in response to requests from established groups and workplaces, either as a full time program or through the delivery of specific modules.
The program is designed as a capacity building program to aid social connectedness and support mental health and wellbeing.
There are six complementary and inter-related topic areas:
- Self-esteem
- Effective communication
- Negotiation
- Appropriate assertiveness
- Anger management
- Stress management.
The program has also been successfully adapted and delivered to women living with intellectual and/or psychiatric disabilities. In addition to the direct program delivery, health professionals in Gippsland have been trained to deliver the program through a Train the Trainer approach.
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Sexual and reproductive health
We have worked with schools and other organisations to deliver information on sexual and reproductive health. These sessions have mainly been in response to project requests and a number have led to ongoing contact with the participants through follow up activities, in both a formal program sense and also individual utilisation of our resources. Planning and delivery of sessions takes place in consultation with the requesting agency and content is generally tailored to meet the needs of the participants.
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Alcohol and other drugs
Girls on the Edge Postcard Project
In response to anecdotal data that indicated that young women are engaging in unsafe sex and alcohol practices at parties and school events such as debutante balls, we developed an art project that involved working with young people and a graphic artist to design postcards depicting safe sex / safe partying messages to display in places that are predominantly used by young women.
Phase Two of the project included interactive information sessions with parents to assist them in better understanding of the effects of alcohol and tips on how to communicate effectively with their children about alcohol use.
Phase Three will see a wider distribution of the postcards and posters to schools across the region.
These postcards have now been reproduced as posters. Click on the thumbnail to look at a larger view.
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Information on our Health Information Service is available here.
