Methadone, Counselling and Literacy: A health literacy partnership for Aboriginal clients
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper describes a literacy program delivered at the Kirketon Road Centre (KRC), a primary health centre located in Kings Cross, Sydney. KRC was established to meet the health needs of ‘at risk’ young people, sex workers, and people who inject drugs. The literacy program was initiated from within an Aboriginal health group at KRC, following a request from clients in the group. A teacher from Tranby Aboriginal College delivered the literacy program one afternoon every fortnight over a period of approximately one year. This paper is based on recorded and transcribed ‘reflection’ discussions undertaken over several months between the literacy teacher, a KRC counsellor and the researcher immediately following the literacy sessions. Of particular interest is the nature of the literacy program and its pedagogical approach which is based largely on the delivery of popularly themed worksheet exercises. These activities represent in some ways an approach to adult literacy education that we term ‘autonomous’, that is, as a single set of skills generalisable to other life contexts. This pedagogical approach, however, needs to be understood in relation to the social capital outcomes of the course which take into account the complex and varying relationships and networks of the client group. The real value of the course can be seen largely in terms of the social capital outcomes for individual participants.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
a) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
c) Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Open Access Citation Advantage Service). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (ie. a copy of a work which has been published in a UTS ePRESS journal, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the UTS ePRESS publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.
d) Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.