The Carnarvon Community Healing Project is a long‑term, community‑led effort to heal intergenerational and transgenerational trauma and address systemic racism in our town. It aims to design a 10‑year healing model for Carnarvon that combines culturally strong healing practices, trauma‑informed care and community‑led action, so that more of our people can live with safety, pride and hope. A core part of this work is building a local healing workforce, so knowledge and practice sit in the community and can be sustained over time.
Why this project is needed
Local Elders, community members and service providers have been clear: if we want real change in Carnarvon, we have to deal with the deeper wounds, not just the symptoms. Intergenerational trauma, transgenerational trauma and systemic racism continue to shape everyday life – from how people feel about themselves, to how families function, to who ends up in hospital or the justice system.
Community voices describe trauma as emotional pain that gets passed down when it is not healed. When people live in a constant heightened state, it affects decision‑making, relationships and the ability to cope. Children growing up in these environments often don’t get the chance to build strong coping skills and emotional regulation, so the cycle keeps going.
Aboriginal leaders in Carnarvon have said that any serious attempt to tackle social disadvantage must have healing at its heart, and that this work takes time – more than a one‑off program or short‑term funding cycle. The Community Healing Project is a way to honour that wisdom and commit to a long‑term, community‑driven healing journey.
What this project is about
The Carnarvon Community Healing Project is about designing and then delivering a 10‑year, self‑sustaining healing model that is led by community, grounded in culture and supported by evidence‑based practice.
Key aims include:
- Healing trauma by building trauma‑informed practice into local services and creating healing pathways for individuals, families and groups.
- Naming and challenging systemic racism, and its impacts on confidence, opportunity and everyday life, so people are no longer “holding themselves back”.
- Strengthening culture, language and identity as powerful sources of healing, belonging and pride.
- Growing skills and opportunities, so people have better chances around education, training and employment.
- Supporting young people, with programs that build cultural pride, leadership and strong futures.
- Backing community‑led initiatives, so solutions come from the community and are owned by the community.
- Building a local healing workforce, training community champions and practitioners so that healing methods are held locally and can spread through families, services and community over time.
What has been done so far
Since late 2022, the Carnarvon Aboriginal community, the Gascoyne Development Commission and local services have been working together to build a justice reinvestment approach tailored to Carnarvon. Through that process, community members consistently named healing from trauma – and dealing with the impacts of racism – as a top priority.
A draft Carnarvon Community Healing Project brief has been developed, drawing on:
- local consultations and quotes from Elders and community members about how trauma shows up in families and young people’s lives
- evidence from practitioners and healing programs, including long‑term, culturally grounded healing work in other regions
- early conversations with healing specialists such as We Al‑li, Better Hearts, Mara Lamar and others about how their approaches could support Carnarvon.
Funding has now been secured for the design phase, with a view to starting this work in earnest around June. As part of this, the intention is to re‑ignite and broaden a local healing working group – bringing together community members, Aboriginal organisations and services who want to help shape and carry the work.
Where the project is up to now
We are moving into Phase One – Decide, Design and Deliver (Year 1), focused on:
- Bringing local mental health and wellbeing services together in the same room – alongside healing specialists and community members – to map what’s happening now and what needs to change.
- Re‑forming and strengthening a Carnarvon Community Healing working group, made up of community champions, Aboriginal organisations and key services, to lead the design and early delivery.
- Creating a culturally safe space for hard conversations about trauma, racism and healing, facilitated by experienced external practitioners so everyone feels safe to contribute.
- Designing a Carnarvon‑specific healing model that is realistic, culturally strong and can be owned by the community over the long term.
The plan for Year 1 is structured around three stages: Decide, Design and early Deliver.
What this project is hoping to deliver (Phase One)
During this initial funded stage, the project is aiming to deliver:
- Decide – Community priorities for healing
- Deep, grassroots conversations with community about what healing needs to focus on first (for example: grief and loss, family violence, parenting, youth anger and shame, racism, substance use).
- A shared picture of the main goals for the 10‑year Carnarvon Community Healing Project, agreed by the re‑ignited working group and community.
- Design – A 10‑year Carnarvon Community Healing Model
- A clear design for how healing work will run over a decade: who it reaches, what kinds of healing programs are used, how cultural practices and Western therapeutic approaches sit together, and how we grow local healing leaders.
- Input from specialist healing organisations working alongside local people, so the model is both evidence‑based and culturally right for Carnarvon.
- Deliver (early steps) – Build local capacity and start the work
- Training for community champions and service providers in trauma‑informed practice and healing processes.
- Training a first group of local facilitators to run adult healing groups and circles.
- A first cohort of community members completing healing programs over 6–12 months, so we start seeing real change while the longer‑term model is locked in.
Across this phase, the project will also:
- strengthen partnerships between Aboriginal organisations, services and schools
- build an evaluation framework to track changes in wellbeing, connection, participation and opportunity
- plan for long‑term sustainability, including how a growing local healing workforce and community champions can carry the work forward well beyond the initial funding.
The longer‑term vision
Looking beyond the design phase, the Community Healing Project imagines a future where:
- more people in Carnarvon have had the chance to heal their own trauma and build strong coping skills
- a local network of trained healing practitioners and community champions is active across services, schools and community spaces
- services work in a genuinely trauma‑informed, culturally respectful way
- the impacts of racism are named, challenged and reduced
- strong local healing leaders and facilitators are leading ongoing work in community
- children and young people grow up in families and systems that are safer, more regulated and more hopeful.
Ultimately, the goal is a self‑sustaining healing movement in Carnarvon – where knowledge, skills and practices live in the community, are passed between generations, and quietly change how we support each other every day, not just when there is a crisis.
