Katherine West Health Board (KWHB)

Katherine West communities have faced extra challenges in the past few years with flooding impacting several communities. As Sinon Cooney their CEO says “we have become experts in disaster management”. This flooding has also impacted the communities themselves with some having faced evacuation to Darwin for months at a time. In other cases, they have had disruption to normal services such as health, education and housing and even food and supplies to the local stores. The flooding has damaged the community infrastructure including houses.

Given there were already many challenges in relation to crowding and homelessness, the flooding has been an extra burden. MB has been working with KWHB to support a Healthy Homes Officer since 2023. Similar to the CAAC HHO, the plan was for the new position at KWHB to support community members with reporting maintenance issues to their local Housing provider. The first Healthy Homes Officer Maxine Gallagher- Johns worked in the role and Lesley and Michelle and Emma were pleased to partner up with Maxine on several occasions. These included at some Conferences and workshops.

In 2023 there was a Healthy Homes Workshop held with Katherine West in November 2023. Maxine Gallagher-Johns the then Healthy Homes Officer welcomed everyone to the two-day workshop.

Recently KWHB has added to the Healthy Homes team. They have some other sources of funding for homelessness and tenancy support and have made a team of three Healthy Homes/ Tenancy support officers to work across the KW communities. With referrals from their Rheumatic Heart Disease nurse and the extra positions we look forward to seeing all they can achieve across the communities.