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12. Home visits

Home visits can offer invaluable insights and provide new understanding about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Home Visits also reveal the emotional and social needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

• If possible ask an Aboriginal Worker in the community to accompany you on the first visit.
• Make appointments in advance and follow up with a reminder
• Be flexible
• Be prepared for unexpected occurrences. eg. Cancellation, new situations.
• Be prepared when visitors call in. Remember Confidentiality. Rearrange appointment if necessary.
• Make the first visit brief.
• Personal sharing can put the client at ease.
• Observing and listening can lead to insights.
• If offered a cuppa always accept. (If you don’t drink tea or coffee ask for water).

Confidentiality

An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person needs to be reassured that the intonation they give you will be confidential.

Kinship and expended families may result in a person not wishing to work with another Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Worker.

An Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person can experience shame, discrimination as well as the added burden of alienation and rejection from family and community if confidentiality is broken.

Traditionally

Aboriginal lore/law required a person who did not ‘belong’ to a particular area, to be invited or granted permission, to enter into the territory of a tribe. In other words, he or she could not simply wander into the land of another tribe. To do so invited hostility that could result in the death of the individual (trespassing).

When someone wanted to visit another tribe, they carried a message stick – a piece of bark or timber that was decorated with symbols. These symbols were a form of passport that identified the intent or authority of the bearer and ‘communication’ took place verbally (or by sign language), between the ‘stranger’ and those whom s/he wanted to visit. “The passing of a boundary line by the blacks of another territory was considered as an act of hostility against the denizens of the invaded grounds, and wars were frequently the sequence of such transgressions. “(The Aborigines of Australia, Roderick J Flanagan, 1888, pp 46)