Meet Yolande Grenfell, who is joining Tracey Stephens as part of the Aboriginal Midwifery Program at Monash Health.
“I am a proud Palawa woman and I’ve been a midwife for 16 years with Monash Health” says Yolande.
Together with Tracey, Yolande provides culturally safe maternity care to Aboriginal women, babies and families during pregnancy as well as after birth.
“I love growing a relationship with the women who come through the Bubup Clinic,” says Yolande. “Our Bubup Clinic is with Dandenong and Casey and we see women in clinic and postnatally, and with a second midwife joining the team, this will allow us to work within the First 1000 days framework. It’s great to follow them into the community and get them involved in community events, and we see them when they come back to us in subsequent pregnancies.”
Yolande decided on midwifery as a career when she was pregnant with her second son.
“I decided to go back and study a Bachelor of Midwifery at Monash. Then I went straight to Dandenong Hospital after the three years of study, and I’ve pretty much been there ever since.”
Over the last few years, Yolande worked with the Aboriginal Health team as an Aboriginal Health Liaison Officer. Like the Aboriginal Midwifery team, the Aboriginal Health Service plays a vital role for First Nations patients and their families.
“Patients feel culturally safe with us,” Yolande explains. “Sometimes there’s a lot of trauma behind the scenes that you don’t know about, therefore having Aboriginal staff in mainstream services really helps towards self-determination for Aboriginal people. We have liaisons at Casey, Dandenong, the Children’s, and Clayton, and we cover Moorabbin and Kingston, and Cranbourne as well. So offering the Aboriginal Health Service is a way of making a safe space for people to talk.”
These opportunities are part of the reason it’s so important to ask every patient if they identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.
“It’s about asking the question and making it a safe space for them to answer,” explains Yolande. “If a patient identifies, put them through to the Bubup Clinic so that we can have a chat with and offer cultural safe birthing experience.”
Yolande is excited as she returns to a midwifery role.
“Since I’ve been working alongside Tracey, we’ve developed an Antenatal Yarning Pregnancy and Birth Education. We cover all the mainstream education like birthing and breastfeeding, but our yarning group incorporates cultural activities. So we do weaving, and belly casting, and we have Elders in to speak, and we have possum skins that we make little headbands with, with the mums and the babies. This encourages families to incorporate cultural needs into their care, so birthing on country can help families feel connected.”
Approved by Andrea Rindt