STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY
COLLECTION
OH 755/3
Full transcript of an interview with
REG BRAND
on 11 May 2005
by Rob Linn
Recording available on CD
Access for research: Unrestricted
Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study
Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the
State Library
OH 755/3
REG BRAND
NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was donated to the State Library. It was not created by the J.D.
Somerville Oral History Collection and does not necessarily conform to the Somerville
Collection's policies for transcription.
Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the
spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such
historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the
interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are
for the reader to judge.
This transcript had not been proofread prior to donation to the State Library and has
not yet been proofread since. Researchers are cautioned not to accept the spelling of
proper names and unusual words and can expect to find typographical errors as well.
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OH 755/3 TAPE 1 SIDE A
This is Alison McDougall interviewing Mr Reg Brand at Inner Southern Community
Health Service on Wednesday, 11th May 2005. This interview forms part of the Inner
Southern Community Health Service Oral History Project, and Mr Brand is a former
staff member. (break in recording)
Can you tell me your name?
Reg Brand.
And your date of birth?
Thirty, seven, 1938.
And what was your work experience –
Before?
– before you came to Clovelly Park.
I had worked briefly in the PMG1 as a technical person, then I was a minister of
religion for seventeen years, then I did a social work course and worked for – let me
think – Lifeline. Oh no, before that I worked at the Tea Tree Gully – St Agnes, as it
was then – Community Health Centre, when that first started up.
That was one of the very early ones as well.
Yes. So that was a part-time thing I did there. Then I worked for Lifeline and
Youthline for about twelve months, but before I’d done that I’d already spoken to
Deane Southgate about the possibility of working here and he said as soon as there was
an opportunity he would invite me to apply. So twelve months later, about twelve
months I think it was, I was invited to apply and got the position.
What actually attracted you to work in community health, because that was a very new
field at that stage?
Well, the thing was that I was always more of a ‘people’ person than a ‘God’ person in
the church, and because of this Tim Murrell at St Agnes and David Gill had heard of
some of the work I was doing, so they invited me to do some of the counselling work
with them. And I could see that it was much more free and had many more
possibilities than in the church. And – this need not be deleted from the record, but I
wouldn’t like it widely-spread – my experience in the church was people’s main
attitude was ‘I’d love you to help me with my problem, as long as you don’t ask me to
give it up. You’re there as the minister to help me cope with my beloved problem,’ and
there was no room for challenge or confrontation, or very little; whereas, in the
community health setting, there was a whole lot of confrontation, in the gentle sense of
inviting people to have a look at things differently. So yes, that’s what interested me.
1
PMG – Postmaster General’s Department.
3
And so how did you meet Deane Southgate?
I bought a house down here, just around the corner, and decided that because there
was a community health centre here I would get in contact and see, and just got on to
Deane.
Went from there.
Yes. (laughs)
So that was 1977, I believe, you joined.
’Seventy-seven I reckon it was, yes. Yes, it would have been ’77 sometime.
And so what was your role when you first arrived?
I was a group worker counsellor.
And what did that involve you in?
That’s a good question. It was very general sort of stuff, working with Kate Brown,
Elva Abrahams, and who else was around in those days? I can’t remember. But I did a
little bit of support work with Kate on families, vulnerable families in the community,
and that led to counselling which led to setting up groups for people who had some
special need, which was maybe their inadequacy to handle life because of their
upbringing circumstances, or because of – might have been, with Kate for instance,
she did a lot of work with young mums, and quite often it was mums who had gone
into relationships, become pregnant and it wasn’t the answer to what they were really
needing. So yes, that’s how I worked in that.
And how did, in the early days, how did you go about finding your client base?
Oh, that was no problem at all because there was always Kate and Elva, who were in
contact with people in the community, and they would be referring people; and some
of the doctors would refer through – not a lot, but typically when there was something
they felt needed long-term support that wasn’t appropriate for them, they referred it
through.
And in terms of group work, what kinds of groups did you run initially?
Oh, there was the relaxation group, the assertiveness group, the communication skills,
volunteers – groups for training volunteers, basic listening skills stuff for volunteers
and others in the community, and then a number of groups in listening skills and
responding skills for groups in the community, so there were church groups who
would come here and we’d conduct sessions for them – – –.
So they could then go away and help other people?
They could go back to their churches and be more responsive.
So your background in the church would have been quite helpful.
4
That was very handy! (laughs) Because I knew where they were coming from and, yes,
I felt very comfortable with them, that was the other side of it, it was very easy for me.
Yes, any group that needed – oh, a diabetes group was sort of started with Pat Phillips,
though I’m not sure where that sort of went to I was involved in getting that going, and
– yes, so a number of ad hoc groups that would perhaps go for two or three times. Oh,
and we had clients who would come, we’d see individually, and occasionally you’d get
one of those saying, ‘Look, this has been really helpful, and I’ve got a friend: could
they come along?’ And we’d arrange to do the group in the community with four, five,
six couples, for their specific need, whatever their need was.
Okay, so you could respond to client requests.
Yes.
Or did you also then perceive there was a need and set up a group –
Yes.
– and then try and find the people?
Yes, and then advertise it and – – –. It always succeeded, because you knew the
demand was there and you didn’t offer anything unless there was a demand. But we
did groups in people’s homes, relationship – a lot of relationship stuff, I specialised in
relationship counselling and relationship groups. But the relaxation groups were the
groups that were the sort of ‘funnel’: you’d advertise the relaxation group and you’d
get all sorts of people, people that – like one woman I remember who’d had late teen,
early twenties kids, three of as I remember, and she was here because of stress – sent
by the doctor, actually – and she was a very tense woman, and get talking to her and
find out that her husband’s out here – they’re a German couple – the husband was out
here with his firm and gone back, with his beautiful, blonde secretary, to Germany; her
son, who was eighteen or nineteen, was in Argentina and they hadn’t heard from him
for we don’t know how long, you know, about about five years or something – four
years, I think it was, since he was thirteen or something when he went to Argentina
and she hadn’t heard from him; and her daughter, who had gone to Queensland or
something. So it was – yes, layer upon layer. And each person had their individual
thing. That woman would never have come for help, but she would come for
relaxation training, and when you’d built the relationship she – yes, one-to-one stuff.
So we could funnel it in through other people in the Centre, other workers.
Yes, so it’s making those connections and building up the trust, isn’t it?
Yes. And it was very much a family-oriented thing, as far as the Community Health
Centre itself was. Like we were more like a family than anything, because there was
this understanding that, if something was needed, well, we’d all work together to do it,
and if that meant getting in at half past seven, eight o’clock in the morning and not
getting home till seven o’clock at night, well, you’d do that because ‘Hey, we’re on a
great mission here,’ and it was really exciting stuff and everyone was enthusiastic and
it was – – –. Yes.
So did you feel like pioneers, really, in this field, or would it have worked elsewhere
like that?
5
I’m not sure that we felt like pioneers so much, but there was just this enthus[iasm] –
yes, this sense of achievement and enthusiasm, all these opportunities, and ‘We can do
some good, we can make a difference in the world and here it is!’ And we all worked
together with one another and got on well with one another.
So I guess that’s the beauty of having so many disciplines under the one roof.
Yes. And there were no boundaries between disciplines. So community health nurse,
occupational health nurse, counsellor, social worker, group worker, all – there was no
professional jealousy; it was like, ‘Do you reckon you could handle this better than me,’
or, ‘I reckon this is the sort of person who you’d respond to, or would respond to you
better,’ so there was that ‘family’ atmosphere.
It wasn’t structured and
institutionalised in the sense that – – –. Well, in fact, when I came to do my thesis for
my social work degree, I had no concept of the fact that I was being in – I was meeting
brick walls every time I tried to do my thesis, that it wasn’t quite the subject they
thought I should do and ‘This would be better, and that,’ and yes, then finally I found
out that what they wanted me to do was to do a thesis on the specific role of the social
worker in the community health setting, that set the thing apart from – community
health nurses were nurses and they were doing counselling stuff, and that’s really
encroaching on social work stuff. So yes, so there was all that going on in the
background, which was – – –. (laughs)
So you had to sort of run with that but do your own thing?
Yes.
Yes. So I mean I guess that’s what you kind of call ‘teamwork’, isn’t it? You were
calling it a ‘family’, but you might – would you have had formal structures like – – –?
No.
No.
What’s a ‘formal structure’? (laughs) Didn’t even have a time book! You know, there
was nothing. It was just ‘Come along and do your job.’
So how did you get to talk with your fellow workers? Was it just because you happened
to be at the next desk, or were there structured meeting times, or – – –?
There was a weekly staff meeting, but most of the real discussion went on over your
desk or as you’d come out from an interview or come out from a group or come back
from the community, and there’d be a debriefing with people. There was a great deal
of trust in that sort of thing, so – – –.
So it sounds like, at the initial stages, you worked very much in a kind of generalist
model.
Very much, very much generalist. And learnt from one another, picked up skills from
one another, and – yes, very supportive.
Was there any, I guess again, formal professional development on offer through the
Centre?
6
No, not that I really recall. I don’t think we sensed a particular need for it, because of
the informal stuff that went on. And it would be nothing for one of the workers to, for
instance, go out to Ingle Farm or St Agnes and talk to one of the other workers out
there and see what they were doing, come back, and in no sense a formal way but come
back in the next day, perhaps, in the tea room say, ‘Oh, I went out to Ingle Farm and I
was talking to So-and-so and they were telling me that what they’re doing out there is
such-and-such.’ And yes, there was this great sharing of information and so forth.
And it was a small group, which made it very easy.
Indeed.
A bit harder when you’ve got something bigger.
Sounds like the tea room was a fairly crucial room.
Yes, and they are open office areas.
Yes. Explain that?
Well, I think we all had a desk in the one room, so when you went to write up your case
notes, you didn’t do it in the interview room because interview rooms were at a
premium anyway; you’d go back to your desk, and everyone would be talking or
writing up. ‘Oh! I’m writing this and yes, that’s a point. Elva, what do you reckon?’
‘Okay, what do you reckon?’’
So people were there.
Yes.
It wasn’t difficult.
Yes, very spontaneous.
What was Deane Southgate’s role at that time?
He kept very much out of it, and I can remember him saying, time and time again, ‘You
are the people who know your job. I don’t know your job: you know it, you tell me
what we should doing here.’ And so there was that exchange all the time and once
again that trust, of valuing people and their expertise. And if the expertise wasn’t quite
as good as perhaps someone thought it should be, in those very early days there was
this ability to sit down and say, ‘I noticed you were saying such-and-such. Now, did
you know that there was such-and-such a course on, or information on that,’ or
whatever, and I don’t think anyone took umbrage at it.
So Deane kind of managed in the background – – –?
Very much from a distance, yes. And he took information from the workers and sort of
blended that together and then came back with what he thought should be. Plus his
experience in the community plus his work at the uni and all that came in, and he
would say, ‘Well, look, that’s fine doing that, but have you thought of the bigger picture
of such-and-such?’
7
And he was really only half-time, I think, as director.
Yes, I think it was half-time, or probably more like one day a week or (laughs) half a
day a week or something. But yes, he had very little input as far as time was
concerned. But his influence, as far as valuing people, keeping the team rolling, was
incredible.
Was that always the case, all the time that you were here, into the ’80s?
No. No. Once we got a little bit bigger and there were people who were needing
structure – some of us didn’t need structure, because we’d grown up in it as it was, and
some of us I think didn’t need structure because of our personality; but other people
liked to have certainty and so forth – and once they came in they were looking for
more structure, so they would look to Deane to make decisions. And I think it was a
stage of development in the organisation, like organisational growth – although I don’t
like calling it ‘growth’, because I’m not sure organisations actually grow, I think they
proceed along a line and sometimes –
Positively and some are–
– yes, and sometimes they’re dying! (laughter)
– difficult, yes.
That’s right, yes. So there was no way that – it couldn’t go on like it was. So it’s not
saying like that’s how it was and it was great and it should have kept going that way.
Can’t do that.
Different circumstances need different responses.
Yes. Like kids are lovely to cuddle when they’re small; when they’re teenagers,
different set of skills (laughs) completely!
Yes. It’s a constant learning curve – – –.
Yes.
So then you were also involved, I think, in the board of management, or as a staff rep?
That’s right, yes, I was a staff rep at one stage, yes.
How did that – what were your impressions of that management?
I think my main impression of that was that it was an attempt to involve the
community more, and once again respect was one of the things that happened there:
that people who had very little idea were valued as much as people who were so-called
‘experts’, those of us who knew something about the subject, and that was part of the
value of it. Biggest value, I think, was involving those people. If there was any
criticism of that I think it would be that I don’t think some of the community reps had
enough information given to them to make decisions, so they were making decisions –
or they were making comments, or seeing situations from a particular perspective
8
without a wider knowledge, so they’d seem sometimes as if it was a bit narrow and – –
–.
I guess sometimes people come with a particular issue, or – you know, you look at
some politicians that they’re a single-issue politician, or – – –.
Yes. Yes. Well – yeah, there wasn’t a lot of that from community people that I can
recall. It was more they were wanting to do the best for the community, and they were
struggling to find out – and we were wanting to do the best, and we were struggling to
find out, and we were hoping they’d be able to help. And we had some little things that
we were doing that we knew were working, and we were hoping they’d be able to bring
us the magic answer: ‘Oh, yes, here’s someone right in the community.’
What were some of the issues that the community members were concerned about?
The ones that come to mind are mainly those of the underprivileged, it was about
poverty. Yes, I think that, and the disadvantaged, as far as economics were concerned.
That’s really ‘big picture’ stuff, isn’t it, in a way, in terms of – – –.
Yes. They come with a – – –. An instance: I had this woman come to my door on
Thursday morning and she said – – –. And that was a good instance, but the bigger
picture of where you tackle that from was much more difficult to deal with.
Because there’s a social view of health.
That’s right, yes. And that’s the thing that these people didn’t have at that stage, and I
think what they did was to bring that information to us, we’d have the social view and
think, ‘That’s a long way from where you’re at,’ and then it was trying to meet – like
they’re saying, ‘Doing that’s not going to help, or doing that’s not going to help,’ – you
had to come up and match back closer to the problem: ‘What we really need to do is
give her a food parcel,’ or – – –.
That’s always been a bit of a tension, I think, within community health –
Yes.
– the balancing the individual’s needs with the kind of bigger social health policy –
Yes.
– and how you match, or keep a balance of those.
Yes.
And I was just wondering about, you know, promotional work, preventative work, and
running relaxation groups is kind of somewhere in between.
Yes. There was a struggle to try and do the preventive stuff, but it never came clear, I
don’t think, while I was here, how we would go about that, or what resources we could
get, what resources we needed, like where do we even start? That sort of stuff.
9
And needing the hard data as well, and looking at evaluation as well?
That’s not one thing that stands out to me. It was more not having the policy visionary
people who could talk to coalface workers. Fran Baum was probably one of the
persons who, as I recall, was able to make some of that connection more, and she was
able to get to coalface workers like myself and lead us a step more towards policy stuff
and get thinking about that. And see possibilities, rather than: ‘Yeah, we know it
needs doing but it’s so hard and it’s out of our skills range.’
So it was a real evolutionary thing that needed to happen –
Yes.
– but didn’t necessarily happen here during your time here?
No. I didn’t think there was really anything that was strongly community prevention,
as distinct from individual prevention. Yes.
END OF TAPE 1 SIDE A: TAPE 1 SIDE B
Over time your role changed and you had the opportunity to work in the area of
domestic violence.
Yes.
Can you explain how that came about?
Yes. David Wehner was a Psychology student from Flinders who had a background in
the Los Angeles police force and then in the armed forces, in the military police in the
armed forces in Germany, and he came across a lot of domestic violence so he wanted
to do his thesis on domestic violence. And he came and saw Deane, I’m not sure why
or how this happened, but he came and spoke to Deane and he said he wanted to set
up I think it was four groups, and one was to be a control group, where there was no
intervention except getting the blokes together. So he set up his four groups and
different people ran the other three groups and I was running the control group, and
what I did – I can remember the words of Deane – ‘You go there and you open the
door and you supply the cup of coffee and you keep them talking but you give them no
direction, because this is what the control group’s about.’ So – – –.
That must have been very difficult for someone in your role.
No, no, it wasn’t. No. Yes, and that’s a whole ’nother story. Yeah, that was okay, but I
could see these guys digging themselves into a hole deeper and deeper, and it was a
twelve-week course, the others were doing twelve weeks, so I had to go on for the
twelve weeks. And we actually didn’t finish the twelve weeks. I said to Deane, ‘I think
we’ve got to stop this, it’s making it worse for the guys because they’re reinforcing one
another,’ so I think in about nine weeks or something we stopped it. And the other
groups went on and then David did his evaluation. And I felt a really strong moral
obligation I had to do something for these guys. What they’d done was reinforced their
ideas and got more frustrated. So we started up a group for them and I scrounged any
material I could find, anything to do with domestic violence, and I think we had about
four weeks or five weeks of material, and then, as we’re going along, I developed others
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or other stuff came in, and it was develop the thing on the run. It was a structured
course, because what we wanted to do was having something structured so we could
try it a second time, see how it worked, and then once we’d done that I think I was
probably pretty strong in believing that what we needed to do was to pass that on to
other people. If you’ve got a structured course you can give to someone, then they can
use it and do what they like with it; just to run on an unstructured basis was not going
to be helpful for other people. So we got this structured course up and running and it
was quite successful, and we – I don’t know how many years we did that for, but some
years – one year I know we did five groups of twelve weeks, overlapping, but we had to
cut that out because I was getting too confused with having two or three groups in one
week who was where and all the rest of it, and we dropped back to four and I think
occasionally we only had three groups per year. During that period, I’m not sure
where along the line, I thought it would be really good to have a female in the group, as
a leader, and so I asked Dallas Colley if she would. And she was reluctant, as I recall,
but decided she would do it, and yes, she came along and sort of – very low
participation at first, as you would imagine, but got into it, then we did it together.
How did the men react to having a woman coming as a leader?
They like it, I think, because most of the guys had in the back of their head the
question, ‘What do women think about this?’ And here was a woman who could speak
on behalf of all women (laughs) – and that was one of the battles I remember that
Dallas had to fight: ‘Hey, I’m not your wife, I’m not all women, I’m just one woman.’
Because the guys were very stereotyped in their reasoning.
How did you actually get the men to come along to a group in the first place, and
where did they come from?
I’ve got to think about that, because – – –.
That’s quite a groundbreaking thing, to get men to come along and talk about their
anger and their violence.
Yes. I’m not sure where our first referrals came from, but we didn’t have any – – –.
Oh, the very first ones came through David Wehner, because, because he was running
that project, people knew that he was doing something about domestic violence, so
people all over Adelaide knew about that so they’d refer. We had guys that came from
Elizabeth and came from Gawler, yes, because it was the only – no, it wasn’t true to say
that it was the only group available, because I think Rob Hall and Alan Jenkins were
doing a group occasionally, but not a – – –.
Where?
Eastern Community Health Centre at that stage, I think it was.
So once you had run that pilot group and that control group, did you then advertise or
people referred on?
I think, yes, they came through David mainly, then we advertised somewhere along the
line there and I can’t remember when that started, and it just always had enough guys
to run a group – in fact, too many sometimes. Like we had to close it off at twelve,
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although I think there were times when we had sixteen guys in a group, which was not
ideal.
So were you fairly directive, or how did you actually run it? Tell me a sort of typical
night or session.
Oh, goodness! Now you’re asking me something. Oh! I guess the main thing would be
that we, whatever we did in the session, we approached the guys with respect, helped
them to see that they had a problem – as distinct from telling them they had a problem
– encouraging them to look at it and ask if they wanted to go on doing, were they
happy with the relationship. And of course they were never happy with their partner.
And then we would ask them the sort of question like: ‘Are you happy the way you
respond to how she is so bad?’ So you’d accept his definition of the problem early, and
then move to him being able to say yeah, he would like to do things differently. So
sometimes it was very confrontational, in a gentle sort of way. He’d say how she’d nag,
nag, nag, nag and all the rest of it, and you never queried that, that was his perception.
You’d ask how he handled that, what did he do, he’d tell you, and very quickly just say,
‘And is that what you want to do? Do you like doing that, do you enjoy that?’ And of
course, you know, ‘No, what sort of mongrel do you think I am,’ or words to that effect.
So it was all, never telling him he had a problem, it was inviting him to define the
problem and gently always moving away from the woman, because – who knows? –
she may have been attacking him with a baseball bat without provocation. Unlikely;
but – – –. (laughs) So we didn’t buy into that, we just bought into – – –. That’s a long
time
ago
now,
you’re
asking
me – – –. (laughs)
But they did continue for a number of years, those groups.
Yes. And then I went to the Domestic Violence Service and continued to run them
there, and in fact when I retired in ’98 was when I was working with Sue Foster and I
ran those groups for offenders, referred by the police, unwilling guys. We thought,
‘This’ll be a joke,’ but it wasn’t hard. That was out at Elizabeth. The police would refer
them through and the same sort of thing: just invite them to have a look at what they
were doing. And many of them were just so grateful, so proud to be able to stop, have
alternative ways, you know, and not be jumped on. So yes, I suppose that’s a bit of a
picture of how we would – – –.
How did you judge – did you do follow-up after the groups?
Yes, there was – I’m not sure how often that was done. It was done on a number of
occasions, and it seemed to be going – I think, as I recall, about forty to fifty per cent of
the guys a couple of years down the track were going well. But then we had one who
was – oh, I don’t know how many years – he came to one of our first groups and he
relapsed, I think it was about seven years afterwards, and he was back here like a shot.
He self-referred?
Yes. (laughs) Yes, he was an interesting sort of guy. But that’s the sort of thing – on a
whole range. And once again, if you look at it on the social construction of the whole
thing, it’s very difficult for a bloke: he can change his own attitudes and his own
behaviour, but the whole social stuff is reinforcing his old behaviour. ‘Well, you don’t
hit a woman unless you absolutely have to.’ (laughs)
12
So you’re not necessarily changing the culture that he socialises in or lives in.
No, that was the thing: we’d encourage them to look at where they were getting
support for their bad behaviour, and to encourage them to look where they could get
different sort of support. That was really hard for guys who’d been brought up to say –
like through the footy club, for instance, and he’s still got his footy club mates there,
that’s his social circle. It’s very difficult to encourage him to drop them and find
someone new.
It was quite groundbreaking work, I believe, what you were doing to actually be
working with men in those groups.
Yes. We always felt it was, because we were changing things as we went, flying by the
seat of our pants. Yes, there weren’t other models that we felt comfortable using. As I
recall, there was something in the States2 but it was a very confronting, ‘outpowering’
the guys, which is like (laughs) –
Sounds exhausting.
– well, it was just repeating: ‘Instead of what they do to their wives we do the same to
them,’ and yes, there was a lot of that stuff around. And that was one of the hardest
things in training other workers, was to help them to get over their fury at the man’s
behaviour and look at how he could be helped. And there was a lot of opposition from
the Women’s Movement, because the Women’s Movement was still struggling to be
recognised and so forth, and here’s us only doing a fraction of what they’d done but
still taking the focus away, and I could understand that. Women’s shelters hated us
because of what – we were doing something for the men, and some of the workers in
shelters believed that the men weren’t going to change unless they were punished, and
I understand that. I mean, I’ve got no judgment at all on those women who took that
attitude, because when you see a woman beaten up walking in the door, like how do
you say, ‘We’ve got to help the guy’, you know? (laughs) Everything wells up in you.
It’s a matter of having the resources to assist everybody in those relationships, isn’t it.
Yes. And that was one of the things: because of my training as a marriage counsellor I
think that helped me greatly, because in the relationship counselling you had to be
right with each partner. And so, if you’re seeing them individually, she’s in the room
and you’re right with her and you understand how it is for her; she walks out and he
walks in and you’ve got to switch off from one to the other. And I think that helped me
to do it, but it was a personal challenge.
Did your fellow workers – you know, would you help each other debrief, or kind of
manage? Because you must have felt like there were so many people out there to be
assisted, and only a few of you.
Debriefing after a session – yes, took a long time because you’d just be spilling
everything, you know. ‘How about that?’ ‘Oh, that was good that he did that.’ ‘Yeah,
but that got me, when he says – – –.’ And on and on. So there was never anything
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United States of America.
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structured that I can recall, but it always happened after the group, while you’re
cleaning up, then sit around and talk. Yes, highly emotive stuff. And very demanding.
Looking back now, I see the demand was incredible, trying to keep yourself together
with these (laughs) tearing things.
So were there any other parts of your time here that we haven’t covered?
Probably, but I can’t remember them.
Or any other people that stand out in your mind, even community people?
Oh, community people, yes. Doug Wenham, Joy Parker, Win Gibbons.
Why do those people particularly come to mind?
That’s interesting. They come to mind because they were significant people who were
interested in what the Health Centre was trying to do, on a community level – the
micro-community, not the larger community – and they ended up on the management
committee because of that. But if you hadn’t mentioned the management committee I
wouldn’t have mentioned it, because that’s not what stands out; what stands out was
those people as people. Kate Brown as a community health nurse who could get into
anybody’s home and was so practical and so earthy. There was nothing officious or
official about her, she was like everyone’s big sister, and so that enabled her to make
contact with people and get them towards resources. Elva, of course, was occupational
health stuff that Deane supported her a lot in. And Barbara Turner, of course, was the
mother of the whole thing. (laughs)
She was officially the administrator.
Yes.
But her role perhaps extended a little more than that in some ways, because Deane was
so part-time?
Yes. Exactly. And she became the de facto manager in some ways. She probably
wouldn’t like to think of it that way, but yes.
And how do you think people from the community responded to the actual site here,
the shopfront?
I don’t think there was a great deal of reaction to it. Like it was attached to the surgery
and it was seen as an extension of the Health Service – you know, the surgery, the GP,
local sort of thing. But some people have said about how it was easy to walk into
because it’s a shopfront, but they’re the people that found it easy to walk into; the
other ninety-nine point nine per cent, (laughs) we don’t know whether they were turn
off or turned on by it!
Because there have been various moves at different times to try and get a new centre
up and running.
Yes. Yes. Yes. I think there’s great advantage in having something just part of the
community. Like around Clovelly Park is not having – we don’t have flash buildings or
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offices, sort of thing, so as a community member I think it fits in that way. But I think
it could make its services known more. That was always one of the problems.
Making people aware?
Yes. Even if it’s got nothing to do with them, just to know, ‘Oh! This group, these
people down there, that’s what they do.’
And that takes time and effort, doesn’t it, to really get – well, and a budget!
And a budget, yes. But I’m sure if you asked ninety per cent, probably ninety-five per
cent of the people in the community, ‘What happens down at that Health Centre?’ noone would know, or they might say, ‘There’s a playgroup,’ or ‘There’s immunisation,’ or
something, but yes, and since I’ve been away from it I would not have a clue because
there’s nothing in the community that tells me. I haven’t noticed them lately, but there
used to be a column in the local Messenger, but it would be about a topic of health –
which is good, I mean I’m not knocking it – but there was nothing that ever said, ‘This
place is here and this is what it does.’ Whereas down the road there was IDSC and
everyone knew, ‘Oh, that’s where intellectually disabled people can get help,’ it was
very clear. But yes, I think there’s a vagueness about it now. And I’m not saying that
people need to know for their own group – although I might say my wife has recently
found out she’s got diabetes, but we didn’t know there was a group here about it, so–
Okay. The communication thing.
– yes. But I’m thinking on the larger term, like it’s always nice, in your community, to
say, ‘What’s that big building down there?’ ‘Oh, that’s the processing office for
National Bank where they process all their things.’ You don’t need to use it, but it’s
just nice to know. And so I think there’s two levels: advertising services, but just
letting people know. But that’s an immediate reaction that comes to mind as I walked
in the door and I saw this. Yes.
So, just in summing up, it seems like you were able to really develop your skills here in
time, and it was a – – –.
Oh! Yeah, yeah. And the support was tremendous from the staff. Until we got bigger,
and then it lost that informal stuff and became more of a – like you need a training
session or something and you never got around to those because who was going to do
it, and budget.
Okay. Well, thank you very much for your time today.
Thank you.
It’s very much appreciated.
Good!
END OF INTERVIEW.
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