Aboriginal-owned · Narrative therapy · Mentoring · Movement · Community
Healing throughstory.Strength throughconnection.
Every family needs an extra Aunty for a yarn.
Aboriginal-owned narrative therapy, mentoring, movement and community support walking alongside children, young people, families and carers when life and systems become overwhelming.
"Someone who can yarn.
Someone who can listen."
The Ngawilyi model
One relationship.
Multiple ways of responding.
Too often, a child experiencing overlapping challenges ends up with an education worker, a mentor, a placement worker, a contact worker, a substance-use service, a behaviour program — another appointment, another assessment, another person asking them to tell their story again.
Ngawilyi asks: what if we didn't need ten workers? What if one trusted Aunty could walk beside the child and family, drawing from a range of program models depending on what was happening in their life?
One relationship. Multiple life domains. Less system overwhelm.
How Support Begins & Grows
Many starting points. No one-size-fits-all.
People connect with Ngawilyi through different starting points — and you don't need to join a structured program to access individual support. Initial yarns identify what matters to you: your preferred goals, strengths, existing supports and the type of engagement you're seeking.
Connect
However you arrive — referral, request or yarn.
Yarn & Explore
What matters to you, your hopes, strengths and existing supports.
Agree on a Starting Point
A collaboratively developed support outline — never one-size-fits-all.
Begin Support
Engagement shaped around your goals, interests and ways of working.
Reflect & Review
Regular, strengths-based progress conversations — together.
Adapt or Transition
Review goals, adapt supports, or plan transitions, endings or ongoing engagement.
Your support outline may include
- Initial engagement and relationship building
- Identifying hopes, strengths and concerns
- Agreeing on goals and areas of focus
- Identifying preferred activities and ways of working
- Regular reflection and progress conversations
- Reviewing goals and adapting supports
- Planning transitions, endings or ongoing engagement
Progress is more than attendance.
It can include changes in confidence, relationships, identity, belonging, education engagement, emotional wellbeing and connection to community. Progress reviews are collaborative, strengths-based and appropriate to your circumstances.
Flexible across supports
Entering through one service or program never restricts you to it. A young person referred for education engagement may also benefit from narrative conversations, family connection, mentoring, cultural identity work or movement — explored collaboratively. Any change to agreed services, information sharing, referrals or other professionals is always discussed first and supported by appropriate agreements, permissions and informed consent. Joining one program never automatically authorises others.
Where Support Happens
Support doesn't always happen in a therapy room.
Ngawilyi uses a flexible, mobile delivery model. Location and delivery methods are agreed based on your needs, safety, accessibility, privacy, consent and service capacity.
Face-to-face sessions
Individual sessions in a space that works for you.
Community-based & outreach
Support where community and life already happen.
Mobile support
At suitable agreed locations — subject to availability, travel and safety.
School-based engagement
Working alongside education settings where agreed.
Online sessions
Telehealth yarns when distance or timing calls for it.
Hybrid delivery
Combining online and face-to-face engagement.
Group yarning & community
Circles, cook-ups and community activities.
Outdoor & fitness
Walking, movement and physical activity where appropriate.
Mobile and outreach services are subject to availability, location, travel arrangements and relevant safety requirements — always agreed with you first.
Find your starting pointWhen behaviour starts affecting everything
One difficulty can cascade across a child's whole life.
Ngawilyi works within these intersections — before one difficulty is allowed to dominate every other area of a child's life.
Instead of asking "What is wrong with this child?" we ask —
- 01What is happening around this child?
- 02What knowledge does this child already hold?
- 03What has the problem convinced other people to believe about them?
- 04What relationships and community can we strengthen around them?
- 05How can we stop this problem from taking over other parts of their life?
Difficulty at school
Suspension
Kinship carer repeatedly leaves employment
Employment and financial pressure
Stress within the home
Placement pressure
Child experiences further rejection & disconnection
Behaviour escalates
More services and workers become involved
Children as knowledge holders
"You are not just someone receiving help. You have knowledge that could help someone else."
Young people experiencing difficult circumstances develop significant knowledge about survival, relationships, systems, identity and what actually helps. A young person's experience should never only become another case note — their knowledge may become something capable of helping another young person.
Finding the ThreadsPractical Aunty support
When school falls apart, support happens where life happens.
A young person has been suspended. Their kinship carer receives another call asking them to leave work and collect the child. Repeated suspensions begin threatening the carer's employment — and the resulting stress can affect the entire household and placement.
Where appropriate, safe, authorised and within the service model, a Ngawilyi Aunty — a narrative therapist — may step in to support the young person following suspension. But this is not simply transport or babysitting.
That afternoon can become
The immediate pressure on the carer is reduced while the young person remains meaningfully supported. That is the Ngawilyi difference.
Programs
Proposed programs, shaped with community.
Ngawilyi isn't another worker in a child's life. It's an Aunty beside them when they need one.
We are seeking partners, referrers, community voices and pilot funders to help shape what comes next.