2.5.3Report Weight: 40% Type of Collaboration: Individual Due: Friday 10th June by midnight Submission: online Format: This assignment includes the analysis of community work in action. You may...

Community Project: Closing the Gap: Indigenous Health Campaign
Executive Summary
‘Closing the Gap’ is a community project developed by the coalition of Australian governments for addressing health inequalities disproportionately affecting Indigenous people. There exists considerable gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians as indicated by the key indicators of development, named as education, children’s literacy, child mortality, school attendance, employment and life expectancy. Closing the Gap as a community project signalled as putting an end to decade’s old indigenous policy measures prevailing in the country. However, several new measures and reforms have adopted in respect of improving indigenous peoples health status. Despite some progress, there is need of some more effective initiatives and approaches backed by community knowledge and awareness for driving health equalities among indigenous communities.
What is the project, who is the community and its strengths and limitations?
The community project selected is ‘Closing the Gap: Indigenous Health Campaign’ that aims to address Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Indigenous people risks and disadvantages in health, education and employment field. Indigenous people are considered as the traditional owners of land in the country practising oldest civilisations, incredibly intricate and diverse with using different stories, language, arts and knowledge. The Close the Gap community project or campaign is launched for gaining Australian’s public overwhelming support to improve overall health outcomes and results for Indigenous people. The Close the Gap for Indigenous health equality is implemented as a program facilitated government policy and continues working towards working improving health prospect of Indigenous people (Who are Indigenous Australians?, 2020).
The main strength of the project is understood in terms of an opportunity sending Australian governments and Indigenous people a clear message that Australians value and give high preference to health equality as a basic fundamental right. The project involves in designing and delivery of health care services that Indigenous people need and enable them to achieve success. In this community development project, a grouping of indigenous and non-indigenous people with around 200,000 Australians invite or encourage governments to take real and measurable action for achieving equality in health status by the end of 2030 (Australian Indigenous: Closing the Gap, 2020).
Another main strength of ‘Closing the Gap’ is to establish a tripartite relationship and partnership between Indigenous people, State and Territory governments for designing health policies and frameworks. For this, the underlying project worked upon on the principle of investing funds and efforts in indigenous people health care needs. In that pace, first preference is given to older people as they are facing higher incidence of illness and in greater need of health care services. The major limitations in the project are based on developing awareness among Indigenous people for adopting and implementing improved course of actions regarding health care, and critical social issues in terms of poor housing, nutrition, employment and education preventing indigenous people from opting towards improved level health care services (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Development Project, 2020).
Theories of Community Work
Community development theory is used as a guiding framework to social workers seeking changes and reforms in individuals and Indigenous people communities. The main focus is on assisting people in the process of dealing and overcoming imposed social problems. Indigenous people are a community with unique set of features in terms of education, housing, literacy and other living characteristics. While working with this community, social workers can work on three approaches-reformists, planning and process.
These three aspects decide the pace and manner of working with communities and seeking their involvement and coordination in the social development projects. The community work theories asserts that society needs resource-redistribution from powerful section of the society to the weak in line of the belief that it brings enormous benefits to people living in outer or backward city and areas, or, else belong to groups which are highly discriminated on grounds of women, poor, and other grounds. Community work theories assert that community work should strive to establish ‘neutral tradition’ where interests of all social groups are ensured and addressed (Australian Indigenous: Closing the Gap, 2020).
Empowerment is another community based theory aimed at stimulating personal growth and improvement in capabilities and proficiencies of Indigenous people. It is worth mentioning empowerment is a combination of personal strengths and initiative leading Indigenous people to bring about major changes and reforms in health statistics. For this, health care professionals are asked to consistently check out and evaluate the environment and its surroundings in order to build a fostering climate creating positive impact on overall health and well-being of deprived sections of Indigenous people. Empowerment theory prepares indigenous people for dealing with the problems and situations on their own; this is through developing new ideas and thoughts about the issue and deciding how to...