WHEN Eastern Health’s Bram Morton called for ideas on how the organisation could better engage the Aboriginal community in their region, sport was top of the list.
“We thought of a footy match, and when we all came together the community told us you can’t have football without netball,” he said, looking back last week on a hugely successful sports day at Healesville’s Don Road Sporting Complex on Sunday, 3 March.
Eastern Health put three netball teams on the court against Worawa College and two local ‘Aboriginal All Stars’ teams for a tournament which saw two Eastern Health playing off for ‘grand final’ honours.
Footy was also EH vs the AFT – Aboriginal Football Team.
“We had over 50 Aboriginal players participating and a lot of family and friends making up around 500 people on the day,” said Mr Morton who is an Aboriginal Community Adviser in Preventative Mental Health with Eastern Health.
Working on estimates, Mr Morton said with an Aboriginal population in the eastern region of about 3000 people, they had about 10 per cent of the population on board.
“We were really excited about that,” he said.
His role is to assist with families and children and part of that is making links and relationships in the community to deliver the preventative mental health messages and programs.
“To start, you need relationships to be able to work on creating a healthy lifestyle,” he says.
“To be able to educate people you have to get alongside them and having days like Sunday really creates links for the community so they can feel comfortable accessing the services that they might need in the future, or that they already use.”
He said the day was a great success for all the Eastern Health members involved who were particularly pleased with the spirit in which the games were played.
“We were all there, joined by sport – football and netball, so it really gave everyone the opportunity to leave all pre-conceived ideas, any negative experiences that people may have had with our service behind, and celebrate sport and coming together in a spirit of reconciliation,” he said.
Mr Morton said there was overwhelming enthusiasm for making it an annual event.
