Deficit Discourse and Strengths-based Approaches: Changing the Narrative of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and Wellbeing

Abstract

This report explores strengths-based approaches to shifting the deficit narrative in the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health sector. Studies, including a companion report to this one entitled Deficit Discourse and Indigenous Health: How Narrative Framings of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People are Reproduced in Policy, have identified a prevalent ‘deficit discourse’ across Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health policy and practice. ‘Discourse’, in this sense, encompasses thought represented in written and spoken communication and/or expressed through policy and practices. The term draws attention to the circulation of ideas, the processes by which these ideas shape conceptual and material realities, and the power inequalities that contribute to and result from these processes. Show more