Uncle Colin Davis never wants to go into an aged care home.
The 76-year-old is a survivor of the Stolen Generations who grew up at Kinchela Boys Home on the NSW mid-north coast.
Now living in Batemans Bay, in the state’s south, he has recently been diagnosed with dementia.
His wife, Aunty Rita Davis, says the aged care options available to him locally wouldn’t meet Uncle Colin’s needs.
She has been caring for Uncle Colin at home and says she’s worried local services would falter in understanding his background.
“For him, it would be like the restrictions he had growing up all over again,” she says.
“Once you put restrictions on him, you never know what he’ll do.
“He does it how he does it.”
The Aboriginal boys who grew up at Kinchela were identified not by their names but by number.
The children’s heads were shaved, they were forbidden to speak their own languages and endured efforts to assimilate them under the White Australia policy.
Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation now supports the survivors of the institution, including Uncle Colin.
Its project manager, Harpreet Kalsi-Smith, says Uncle Colin is well-loved in his community and has been firm about not wanting to go into care.
“One of Uncle Colin’s joys and the way that he copes with the trauma he went through, is through painting and art,” she tells AAP.
“He goes to the local bus stop at Bateman’s Bay every day to talk to people, so he’s part of the fabric of the community.
“Everyone loves him, they wave to him and have a yarn with him but that’s what he needs, he needs to be supported.”
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are affected by dementia at a rate three to five times higher than the general population, and are more likely to experience earlier dementia onset.
Half of Indigenous people aged 80 years and older have dementia.
Ms Kalsi-Smith says the corporation has been working with those living with the debilitating illness to create a ‘life story’, a visual representation including their background and interests, which can accompany them if they need to go into hospital or care.
She says the survivors of Kinchela Boys Home need to be understood and have access to care from those who know them and able to grasp their need to avoid re-traumatisation.
“We are talking about the last generations of Stolen Generations survivors,” she says.
“It’s not a big ask to support their wishes as they age.”
Kinchela is one of a number of institutions where Aboriginal children were placed after they were taken.
According to the landmark Bringing Them Home Report in 1997, most Indigenous families have been affected, in one or more generations, by the forcible removal of one or more children.
There are still 17,000 Stolen Generations survivors across Australia, all of them aged over 50.
Healing Foundation chief executive Shannan Dodson says aged care services need to be able to provide a trauma-informed environment for survivors.
But there also needs to be support for survivors to stay at home as they age.
“How can we support survivors and rather than entering into institutions what does wraparound support look like for home care?” she asks.
“Further support is needed to ensure that survivors can age in a dignified way at home or with family.
“It requires a lot of resourcing and money but it’s definitely something that has to be taken into consideration, particularly not to re-traumatise survivors.”
At a recent gathering in Darwin, survivors and the organisations which support them called for compensation for all survivors, for truth-telling about the Stolen Generations and access to records, which have been historically kept from them.
They also called for sustainable funding for Stolen Generations organisations.
Healing Foundation chair Professor Steve Larkin says there needs to be a national approach to supporting survivors, calling for a national policy framework.
“We want to ensure Stolen Generations survivors and their descendants … have access to a quality of life that has been largely denied until now,” he says.
“I think it’s the least we can do in this country to work together to provide them with the quality of life they deserve.”
