Rose’s story: transforming young CALD lives

Rose Deng knows how difficult it can be as a newly arrived refugee in Australia. At 6 years old, she came to Australia from Ethiopia via South Sudan, and says, “there weren’t a lot of people like me”. Growing up in Australia, Rose experienced challenges including bullying, discrimination and family violence, leading to issues with mental health and substance use.

“Through having workers, including from YSAS, they’ve been able to help me improve outcomes for my life.”

Rose now supports other migrant and refugee young people as part of the Transformer team at YSAS Dandenong, alongside Team Leader Mal Ouk and Hendric Tuifelasai. The team provide AOD outreach support for culturally and linguistically diverse people and their families in the southeast region, predominantly working with South Sudanese and Pacific Islander people. 

Mal says young people of colour are often caught between their traditional family culture and the Australian culture, which can sometimes be in conflict. “For young people it’s about developing an identity that honours both of those,” he says. Rose says that for many South Sudanese parents and grandparents, mental health and substance use issues are taboo. “Then you’ve got the children in the Western world, where you can talk about it and there are services, so they are pulled between two different strings.”

Rose says that’s why Transformer workers connect with the family as well. “I speak with families where I’ve given them an insight into mental health and AOD,” she says. “What it is, what causes it, and how they can approach their children in a more gentle and more understanding way.”

Mal says racial profiling is also something that many of the young people deal with. “It’s about how to work through that with young people, and try to keep them positive and not get sucked into the hate, because that’s the trap of racism,” he says. Rose and her colleagues are all from non-white backgrounds, which makes it easier to build trust with the young people. It also helps with language barriers.

“I can speak the same language as some of the families, so I can relay some information that they won’t be able to understand,” she says. “What it means is improving outcomes for marginalised groups.” 

Consistency is a key skill set for the Transformer team. Rose has recently been working with a neurodiverse young person with many complex issues, including an unstable home environment and mental health challenges. “Young people can see it when you show up for them and genuinely care,” she says. She also focused on giving the young person back some agency in their life. Through this approach, Rose was able to get the young person connected with housing services and on a mental health care plan. 

One of the biggest strengths of the Transformer program is its connection to the Day Program at YSAS Dandenong. It’s a space where young people can drop in at any time and access food, laundry facilities, recreational spaces and workers available to chat. Rose visited the space herself when she was a young person. “I think it goes back to Maslow’s hierarchy, where it meets the physiological needs of food, shelter, safety,” she says. “That is a good space, and that’s what I felt when I first came to the day program.”

Mal says many young people will come to the day program for months before they are ready to talk about their lives and potentially be referred to a program like Transformer. “There’s some kids that you might have to just slowly chip away at, and then six months down the line you have a conversation, and then a few months after that they are ready to book in with a program like Transformer,” he says.

“There’s no other way the universe would let that occur without a day program.”