Our Way Home – Ngalla Bidee Mia
In Noongar language, Ngalla Bidee Mia translates to Our Way Home.
Ngalla Bidee Mia is our new Aboriginal led program providing out of home care services to children in care.
As part of this work, Wungening will lead Community Foster Care and Group Foster Care services across the Perth metropolitan area.
While each child has a unique set of needs and
experiences, almost all come from complex family and social situations.
While those situations at home are resolved, or until plans for longer-term care are made, children need a safe, stable, caring environment where they can strengthen their family relationships, so they can return home safely.
Wungening Aboriginal Corporation provides:
- Temporary Care Homes
- Group Foster Care Homes
- Community Foster Care Placements
Community Foster Care
Our Community Foster Carers understand each child in care has a unique set of needs and experiences. They open up their hearts and homes to these vulnerable children, providing a safe, stable and caring environment to live – so they can strengthen their family relationships.
When a Community Foster Carer opens their heart and homes to a child in care from our community, they become part of the child’s family.
How to become a Community Foster Carer
Our job is to walk alongside you in partnership, building bridges that keep you and the child in your care connected to family, community and culture.
Group Foster
Care Home
This service offers an alternative support model to community foster caring.
Through the program, up to four children are supported in one of six houses managed by Wungening across the Perth metropolitan Region.
Each house, is staffed by a team of our people who manage the day to day running of the house, and provide around the clock support to the children living there.
The service model we apply to running these houses, uses Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing.
We apply a culturally informed, and therapeutic approach, to help young people in their healing journey from trauma.
Support is provided across a range of areas – from getting to school, to medical needs, and everything else you would expect in any other home. We also place a strong emphasis on healing, recovery, and connection to community, culture and family.
Children are referred to us by the Department of Communities, and are supported in these facilities on either a temporary or a long-term basis.
To keep our kids in care safe, and connected to family, community, culture, we follow these service models.
Ngalla Bidee Mia - Service Model
Danjoo Wungening - Healing Together
Danjoo Wungening -
Healing Together
Moorditj Djerripin Koorlunga Strong Happy Child
Our approach to healing addresses trauma at an individual level for every child, as well as addressing the broader historic trauma caused by Western systems.
Yorga and Marmum Women and Men
We support women and men to reclaim their role as parents. Family and kinship is the cultural framework to build on strengths, share knowledge, and heal relationships.
Moort Family
For cultural immersion, we involve family and kinship wherever possible, facilitating deep relationships, storytelling and the passing on of cultural knowledge. Our children belong to the collective and heal within the collective.
Boodja Country
Our children are born to the land and belong to the land. We use Country as a method to ground our people, using the power of story to pass on cultural knowledge, values and principles.
Western Systems
Addressing the power imbalances that cause harm, we promote healing by elevating the voice of the Aboriginal community in decision making.