Community Health

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GDCHS Springvale

Community Midwives Program & The Young Women’s Program Dandenong

Community Midwives Program

A community pregnancy care service is provided for women living within the City of Greater Dandenong. All pregnancy care is provided by community midwives and bilingual community development workers. Women give birth @ Dandenong Hospital and the midwives and CDW provide support with postnatal care (EPC). The GDCHS books sessional interpreters for women speaking other languages. Due to the increased demand on our service, we now only accept women into the program who fit a certain criteria and we are specifically focusing on families that have newly arrived in Australia and require interpreter services.  The Childbirth Education Classes run over a 6 week period and are provided by the bilingual Community Development Workers speaking Vietnamese and Cambodian languages.  Our most recent addition to our service is the inclusion of an African women’s clinic, we are now providing Childbirth Education sessions for African women having their first baby in Australia, along with some capacity for social support.

Criteria:

• Newly arrived in Australia, or have been living here 5 years or less.
• Primigravidas and women having their first baby in Australia, and coming from a Culturally linguistic diverse background. ie (South East Asia, middle East and the Horn of Africa)
• Women who are not eligible for Medicare or are temporary Protection Visa holders.
• Women requiring interpreter services.
• Cultural and linguistically diverse women experiencing settling issues, ie trauma, financial and material aid requirements.

The Community Midwives also provide 2 sexual and reproductive clinics per week. Services available for clients, are pap smears, postnatal follow-up, contraceptive advice, testing for STIs, pregnancy testing, referral for pregnancy terminations and various other referrals. A Cambodian interpreter is available at both the clinics and when required other interpreting services are booked.  There are 3 postnatal groups run at the Springvale site run by Bilingual Community Development Workers in conjunction with local council and the Maternal and Child Health Service. The groups are for Vietnamese, Cambodian and African women and women join around 2 months after birth for a 6-8 week program.     

The Young Women’s Program
 
The Young Women’s Program (YWP) is based from Dandenong Hospital and is a service for women who are pregnant and under 20 years of age and wish to have their pregnancy care with midwives. The YWP also encourages women to attend Childbirth Education Classes provided by the midwives and works closely with the support of Allied Health, specifically Social support services. Midwives book 10 women each month for pregnancy antenatal care and run a series of CBE classes for young women. Following the birth and discharge from hospital, YWP midwives provide 3 postnatal home visits before to discharge to MCHN service.  Pregnancy antenatal care is provided from the midwives @ 131Cleeland Street, Dandenong.  Childbirth Education Classes are conducted within the hospital.

The management of GDCHS is under Primary Health, midwives  and CDW’s  are  managed by a Unit Manager and are under the direction  of Women’s and Children’s Program @ Southern Health. All staff work in collaboration and practice the social model of health philosophy.

Medical Therapy Unit:  Monash Medical Centre, Clayton

The Medical Therapy Unit is the State Thalassaemia Service of Victoria which offers a whole of life service.  Medical Therapy provides a resource centre for clinical management of Thalassaemia for interstate and overseas.

The Day Transfusion Service Hours of operation are Tuesday to Saturday from 7am to 4.30pm.  Outpatient Rooms operate from Tuesday to Thursday from 1pm to 5pm except Tuesday when the rooms close at 3.30pm.  Activities include the review of transfusion dependent patients and regular reviews of non‑transfusion dependent people with haemoglobinopathies.  Counselling and testing of "at risk couples" referred from PCC at all sites, local doctors (both pre‑pregnancy and those detected at risk when pregnant) also occurs.