The Victorian Government has invested $8.8 million in Australia's first-ever Aboriginal Healing Unit for First Nations women in custody at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre.
The new unit will feature specially designed accommodations, alongside culturally appropriate spaces and community-led and trauma-informed programs for Aboriginal women.
The facilities will house sensory and activities rooms, art programs, an outdoor cultural area with art-inspired screening and native plantings, and a yarning circle featuring symbolic mosaics and a fire pit area.
The outdoor space has been planted with traditional grasses for weaving and a gum tree to provide leaves for cultural ceremonies, as well as Aboriginal totems for various clan groups.
First Nations women at Dame Phyllis Frost Centre (DPFC) and community members were consulted on the design of the Aboriginal Healing Unit, to ensure the centre supported the spiritual and cultural needs of Aboriginal women.
This new unit will support reforms to improve Aboriginal cultural safety for people in custody, after the recent coronial investigations and the Cultural Review of the Adult Custodial Corrections System.
The Aboriginal community-controlled organisation Elizabeth Morgan House will run the unit and programs which focus on the social and emotional well-being of Aboriginal women within DPFC.
Under Burra Lotjpa Dunguludja, (Senior Leaders Talking Strong in Yorta Yorta language) the Victoria Government is working with First Nations communities to look at culturally appropriate, holistic health care models in prisons.
Minister for Corrections Enver Erdogan said the facility was one small step towards making our justice system safer and more culturally appropriate.
"Reducing the over-representation of Aboriginal people in custody is critical and the new Aboriginal Healing Unit will help to address the causes of offending and keep people from coming back into custody," he said.
The Dame Phyllis Frost Centre has been the centre of controversy and tragedy in the past. In 2018, a 12-day-old baby girl died in the mothers and children unit at the Centre and an inquest later heard that guards and a nurse did not try to resuscitate the child. In 2020, Yorta Yorta woman Veronica Nelson died at the Centre, ultimately leading the state government to resume management of health services at the facility - which had previously been run by private contractors - and to the Victorian coroner referring prison contractor Correct Care to prosecutors.
