Residential rehabilitation facility, Normanton Recovery and Community Well-being Service, is helping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people throughout the entire Lower Gulf region recover from substance misuse.
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Opening in 2014, the service is a partnership between Gidgee Healing and The Salvation Army, boasting a 20 bed residential facility.
Community well-being manager, Shannon Gallagher, said the service is aimed at Lower Gulf communities including Mornington Island, Doomadgee, Normanton and Burketown.
“That is where we are targeting, but we are certainly accepting clients from much further afield, as the capacity allows us,” Ms Gallagher said.
We have people that come in and stay for three days and then leave again.
- Community Well-being Manager, Normanton Recovery Service, Shannon Gallagher
Ms Gallagher leads a small team of well-being officers, and part of their brief is to increase the service’s visibility in the community.
“There is always work to be done in that area, to make sure other agencies and people actually know that we are there,” Ms Gallagher said.
There is arguably enough need for the service in Normanton alone, but Ms Gallagher said there needs to be a willingness for people to engage in the service.
In order to make any kind of substantive change, she said clients should look at staying for at least six months. The average stay is far shorter.
“We have people that come in and stay for three days and then leave again, like they’re just not quite ready to do that. And they might come back four or five or six times, and have another go, have another go,” Ms Gallagher said.
“Three months would be the bare minimum for people to look at making a real lifestyle change which is what we’re talking about, getting those things under control.”
Unlike on Mornington Island where prohibition has led to a problem with home brew, Normanton residents are allowed to drink.
“We get a lot of clients from Mornington Island and Doomadgee so we certainly see the effects of it (homebrew),” Ms Gallagher said.
“In Normanton the effect for us from those Alcohol Management Plans was the transient people coming to the community because of those restrictions, coming to Normanton because there is no prohibition here.
"That then places pressure on families, it places pressure on housing, on services, all the rest of it,” she said.
While both The Salvation Army and Gidgee Healing work with residential clients, the latter also provides a ‘wraparound community well-being program’ to clients, families, and the wider community.
