Family Wellbeing programme

Domain V · Systemic, relational, group & community · Les Nayda · 1993 · Adelaide, Australia

What it is

FWB is not a psychotherapy. It is an Aboriginal-developed group empowerment and personal-development programme, delivered as a structured adult-learning course, often accredited. It was developed in 1993 in Adelaide by the Aboriginal Employment Development Branch of the South Australian Department…

Format

• Underlying programme logic. These levels describe a layered sequence rather than separate sessions.
• Dose and format.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Stage 2: facilitator training plus participatory community research. Participants name priority community issues (in Yarrabah: housing shortage, school attendance, boredom), act on them, and monitor what works.
• The Certificate II usually runs over about six months.
• Completing a stage, or the accredited unit, opens the next one.

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Does it involve fasting, a special diet or 'detox'? Have you discussed this with your doctor?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• few male facilitators (the roundtable calls for more); burnout.
• data collection that feels extractive; give results back to the community.
• the client dismissing their own qualities. Working: they claim qualities with concrete examples.
• helper burnout; the client acting as an untrained crisis counsellor for high-risk family members.
• the clinician becoming the "real" treatment and the group an add-on; the reverse is the programme's intent.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.