Pam Brown wrote: The Trauma Recovery Team has been very busy in the last few months and has achieved a number of goals.
We were notified in March that our application for DGR1 status has been accepted and donations to the “Healing the Hurt” account held by the Rotary Action Group for Family Safety will be tax deductable. We have been recognised by the ATO under the new Harm Prevention Charity category. This will enable the RAG to partner with any club on projects
which reduce the harm in our communities.
In the area of public information, we have created a Facebook page that targets the East Gippsland area with information about the on-line recovery service and have created an 1800 number for the public. Bob Yeates, editor of the Bairnsdale Advertiser, is printing our brochures and running a regular ad in his newspaper.
We have begun organising an EMDR training for mental health practitioners to begin in May. Tenders for trainers have been requested and we are collecting names of eligible participants from Gippsland Lakes Bushfire Recovery and the Eastern Victoria Primary Health Network.
A small team of members (Jim Orchard, Marg Leser, and Pam Brown) travelled to the Upper Murray region and attended three Rotary meetings to discuss the Trauma Recovery Project. We met with the Rotary Club of Wodonga, Rotary Sunrise Wodonga and Rotary Belvoir Wodonga. Assistant District Governor Marg Crisp kindly spent a few days hosting us and taking us to Corryong to meet with the hospital and Men’s Shed (recipients of our containers).
She also organised a meeting with the Wodonga Bushfire Recovery Program manager, Jarryd Williams, who was very keen to have staff trained in EMDR therapy particularly for family violence and men’s behaviour therapists. We had an on-line meeting with Bek Nash Webster, manager of the Wangaratta Grit; Resilience Program who also was interested in
partnering for a training program.
Our first on the ground pilot project will the be East Gippsland mental health training and then we hope to organise trainings for the Upper Murray area.
Pam Brown
Team Leader
11 April 2021
