Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander counsellors

If you identify as being Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander or South Sea Islander, we actually have an identified team. Say you're a Torres Strait Islander person. We have Torres Strait Islander staff that you can speak to both a male and a female person, and you can speak directly to them rather than an Aboriginal person.

Or if you're an Aboriginal person who is from, say, the Logan area or Beaudesert area, we have people from that area as well. So we're all from Queensland and from different areas in Queensland. So we'll ask you these questions. We'll ask your date of birth because everything that we talk about is all private and confidential. Nothing goes out on the Murray grapevine.

You can identify if you would prefer to speak to a male counsellor, you can identify if you'd prefer to speak to a women's counsellor because there's men's business and women's business that must be taken into consideration. We'll ask if you have any health conditions, then we can tailor our support to include those conditions to support you through this.

We may refer someone to ATODS for drug and alcohol. We may give information to someone who may be homeless or someone who may need food support. So we'll tend to do that for people that need that support for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team, because how can someone simply focus on smoking if they've got all of these other factors going on, which a lot of the time are.

And people wanna know that you connect with them, that you get what their life is like and who they're like as a person. And if you don't have those connections, then they're not gonna speak with you. Those connections are everything.