Waijungbah Jarjums was awarded the Health and Wellbeing Award and Premier’s Reconciliation Award at the 2023 Queensland Reconciliation Awards.
Waijungbah Jarjums means ‘place of mother and children’ in traditional Yugambeh language. It’s the name of our co-designed maternity service at Gold Coast Health.
The maternity service combines the Birthing on Country project and the First 1000 Days Australia principles. It’s founded on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being and doing. The service is the first of its kind in Australia.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community leads engagement and consultation across all stages of the innovation process. This includes:
- conception
- design
- conduct and implementation
- reporting and dissemination of findings to make sure there’s self-determination and community governance over service delivery.
The service has expanded since it opened in 2019 with 10 Identified staff members. It now has 26 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander midwives, student midwives, nurses, health workers, social workers and administrative staff. In 2022 to 2023, over 170 families used the service and we delivered more than 8,600 individual services.
Waijungbah Jarjums has been very successful in improving health outcomes to close the gap for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Positive outcomes for the people using our services include:
- higher attendance at antenatal visits
- fewer babies born with a low birth weight
- fewer babies needing to go into our Special Care Nursery or Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
- higher breastfeeding rates.
The service was awarded the Health and Wellbeing Award and Premier’s Reconciliation Award at the 2023 Queensland Reconciliation Awards. The award recognises the important impact this innovative and life changing service has made in the community.