Lessons from the Alaskan Family Wellness Warriors Initiative - Conference Report

Executive summary

This report summarises the outcomes of a two day conference to consider how we might 'learn lessons from the Alaskan Family Wellness Warriors Initiative' on informing views on the future development of services for survivors of childhood abuse in Scotland.

The issues for adult survivors of childhood abuse are often seen as mental health and trauma but also include addictions and other physical health issues. Better outcomes are being achieved for survivors through services funded by SurvivorScotland but there is much more that can be done.

The first day focused on setting the scene around the ongoing challenge of improving health in Scotland. This included recognising the longstanding poor health issues and persistent health inequalities of Scotland, and the desire to address those inequalities, particularly for adult survivors of childhood abuse. We also heard about two models of addressing the effects of abuse: CEDAR (Children Experiencing Domestic Abuse Recovery) - an approach adopted from Canada which addresses the effects of domestic abuse for children and mothers and the FWWI, a Native Alaskan model which deals with domestic abuse, child sexual abuse and child neglect. The objective of this was to consider the background to how the models were introduced, what engagement and support were required, what the barriers were and what worked well.

The second day provided an opportunity to take on board some of the lessons from the previous day and to consider how we might address these in taking forward proposals for future improvements in the delivery of services in Scotland. Some of the main points to emerge are highlighted below.

• The importance of political influence and leadership.
• A cultural change on ownership. Individuals and wider communities need to take on, and benefit from, more responsibility for their own wellbeing.
• The importance of engaging with the community in its entirety, using feedback from such engagement to inform service delivery and to contribute towards the development of an evidence base.
• A mapping of existing services is required, particularly identifying areas where there was already a good model of partnership working.

Following the discussions and feedback of the two days we propose not to attempt to adopt the FWWI as it is delivered in Alaska but instead to look to adapt its innovative features for use in Scotland, utilising existing expertise and services.