"One Circle"

Cunnara giluma healing & counselling service

Cunnara Giluma respects the uniqueness and diversity of all our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, practices and beliefs.We believe that a culturally appropriate and safe service provision is the best means of helping our people holistically. ‘The pathway to healing is through cultural activity and connectedness to country’. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people healing and culture are inextricably linked.

counselling service

Cunnara Giluma can provide a range of counselling, advocacy and support services that can help you live a healthier and happier life. Our counsellors can help with many issues and concerns that you may face – having a deep respect for your rights, culture, history and your community. Cunnara Giluma is a non-government organisation that provides crisis intervention and therapeutic counselling for families, individuals and communities within South East Queensland. Cunnara Giluma aims to provide services that are sensitive and culturally appropriate.
A crucial ingredient in Cunnara Giluma's success is that it is an Aboriginal service with strong roots in the local community. Being an Aboriginal community-controlled organisation with an Aboriginal committee of Management and staff has been instrumental to clients feeling safe and a sense of belonging there. It is a non-judgemental, supportive environment, without the racism, prejudice and disadvantage that Aboriginal people may face in the wider community, or the negative connotations many Aboriginal people associate with non-Indigenous services - something essential for clients seeking assistance and support in healing significant life trauma. It is a space where they don't have to constantly explain themselves, their families or their culture.

A life journey - indigenous understanding

An understanding from life:-As an Aboriginal service provider, Cunnara Giluma share the lived experience of the Aboriginal community they work in and with, giving them an intimate understanding of, and ability to empathise with, their clients' difficulties and experiences. Understanding the impact of European colonisation, past government policies such as forced child removal, and of the continuing socio-economic disadvantage on Aboriginal communities, especially communities in southeast Queensland, provides insight into the manifestations of often deep-seated and intergenerational trauma that clients present with. This is crucially relevant to Cunnara Giluma's work in providing Link-Up services to the Stolen Generations. It is also essential to the practitioners' understanding of the negative impact of these factors on family breakdown and parenting skills and capacity, and their repercussions in substance misuse, family violence and child abuse.
Aboriginal staff also bring with them an understanding of the strengths and resiliencies that family, community, culture and spirituality offer to members of the Aboriginal community. Knowledge of the extended families and kinship connections within Ipswich & Queensland Aboriginal communities, and where clients fit in these networks, is also essential. This knowledge stems from being part of the community, and living those experiences, rather than from a theoretical basis. "It is not what we have learnt through mainstream education - though valuable for building our skill base - it's who we are and where we've come from that is just as important and adds to our ability to engage and assist in the healing of our people".
Therapeutic approachesCunnara Giluma draw on a range of therapeutic approaches to work with various clients, including:
  • Children / Youth mentoring
  • art therapy (adults and children);
  • yarning therapy;
  • one-on-one counselling;
  • group work and education workshops; and
offering clients practical support and referral to other services in ways that empower the client to "take control and do for themselves". Yarning therapy is based on the principle that telling the story is part of the therapeutic process, where enabling the client to share their story validates their experiences. While resonating with narrative and other talking therapies, "yarning" is also strongly rooted in Aboriginal cultural practice and oral traditions.
Cunnara Giluma's therapeutic approaches are tailored to clients' individual needs, rather than a generic formula for case management. For instance, while counsellors develop a plan to work with clients over a number of sessions, this is only a guide. Flexibility here is crucial, as clients may require longer periods of counselling or may return to counselling after an extended period away - often in response to further experiences of trauma, memories and other triggers.
The service providers are also prepared to offer a little of themselves to clients to build rapport and trust by allowing clients an insight, however small, into who they are - where they are from, what their life's journey has been like, and how they may be connected to the client's family.
What is common across all of Cunnara Giluma's therapeutic practice is the holistic approach taken to a client's needs and issues, and the use of techniques grounded in Aboriginal, particularly culture and philosophies. This holistic, culturally embedded approach manifests in a number of ways, including:
A "whole person/whole-of-circumstances" approach - Stemming from the Aboriginal concept of health and wellbeing, this recognises the individual's interrelated physical, emotional, spiritual and cultural health and wellbeing, including their connection to land, family and community. While the client may demonstrate a number of negative behaviours that are identified as needing to be addressed, practitioners can explore the cause of the behaviour with them, looking at past trauma or current stresses.A "whole-of-family" approach - Cunnara Giluma's staff acknowledge that an individual client's family members may also be experiencing distress and difficulties related to the individual's situation, and that the family also needs support. For example, where a child is receiving counselling due to their experience of abuse, their carers - in most cases their mother, grandparents or other carers - may also need counselling to deal with these issues and to be supported in managing the child's needs.A "whole-of-community" approach - A holistic approach also recognises the role of the community, including how the issues and difficulties facing the Aboriginal community of metropolitan Ipswich & South East Queensland affect individual members of that community, and how the individual has an impact on the rest of their community.
NDIS - READY
Counselling / Therpay Service
Copyright © All rights reserved.