Support Options: Survey of Women’s Health in the ACT
Below is a list of support options available to you, should you need them.
Lifeline – for crisis support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – ph: 13 11 14 . For more information or online chat visit their website.
Beyond Blue – for help with anxiety and depression 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – ph: 1300 22 4636. For more information or online chat visit their website.
Red Nose Grief and Loss – miscarriage, stillbirth and newborn death support – ph: 1300 308 307 for 24/7 support. For more information or online chat visit their website.
QLife – LGBTI peer support and referral for LGBTI people and issues relating to sexuality and gender – ph: 1800 184 527. For more information or online chat visit their website.
Domestic Violence Crisis Service – local service for people impacted by domestic and family violence: 24/7 Crisis Line: ph 02 6280 0900. For more information or online chat visit their website.
Canberra Rape Crisis Centre – assistance, counselling and advocacy for issues relating to sexual violence: CRCC Crisis Line 7am-11pm 7 days per week – ph: 02 6247 2525. For more information visit their website.
1800RESPECT – national service for issues relating to domestic and family violence, sexual assault and other forms of gender-based violence – ph: 1800 737 732 . For more information or online chat visit their website.
ACT Women’s Health Service – ph: 02 5124 1787. For more information visit their website.
Sexual Health and Family Planning ACT – All Options Pregnancy Counselling – if you are pregnant now and trying to make a decision about whether to continue a pregnancy, you can call SHFPACT for free all options counselling on 02 6247 3077. For more information visit their website.
Perinatal Wellbeing Centre – for mental health issues related to becoming a parent – Non-crisis phone support, support groups and support for partners as well as information and referral – ph 02 6288 1936. For more information visit their website.
Care Financial Counselling – Canberra-based service helping with financial distress and debt – Phone support (Mon to Fri 9am to 5pm) – ph: 1800 007 007. For more information visit their website.
National Debt Hotline – financial counselling by phone: 1800 007 007 (Mon-Fri 9:30am to 4:30pm) or Live Chat (Mon-Fri 9am to 8pm) via website.
My Pregnancy Options ACT – find out about your pregnancy, abortion and contraception options in the ACT: website
13YARN – confidential, culturally safe space for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people to yarn about needs, worries or concerns with an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Crisis Supporter. Ph: 13 92 76 (24 hours/7 days). More information at their website.
Q&A with Fleur and Maddy from Positive Motion – Women’s Health Week 2022
Fleur Balmain
Madeleine Walker
We caught up with Fleur and Maddy from the Positive Motion Rehabilitation Kingston Physio for the final day of Women’s Health Week 2022 – Move and Improve.
Fleur is the director and a physiotherapist at the clinic and Maddy is a physiotherapist. Together they put on their move and improve hats and shared with us some key reasons on why you should exercise, not just for your body but also for your brain! Check out their answers below.
Q. Why is it important to exercise?
A. Exercise is important to not only help maintain or reduce weight but it also helps to improve brain function through the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to all your tissues. This influences your sense of wellbeing and improves your mood through the release of serotonin.
Exercise also helps to reduce the risk of osteoporosis by improving bone health and can help reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes. Exercise can help to improve your cardiovascular system thereby improving circulation to increase your energy levels and give you the willpower to make healthier choices.
This in turn can improve sleep quality and sex drive enhancing arousal for women and reducing the symptoms of erectile dysfunction in men.
Q. How does exercising benefit not only your body but also your brain?
A. Exercise can be a form of letting go and allows the person escape the day-to-day hassles that can clog up the brain. It releases endorphins which help relieve stress in the brain and can help you de-fog when you’ve had a stressful day.
Practising things like mindfulness can help to connect the body and the brain better, things like yoga and tai-chi can create a sense of calm, as often we can switch things on easily but can struggle to switch off.
Breathing exercises can also help to improve mood, and promote relaxation.
Q. How can exercising help during other times?
A. There are lots of different examples of how exercising can help women at all stages of their life. For women going through the changes which menopause bring, hormone levels will change. This puts the women at a higher risk of various diseases and tendon stresses.
There is also a linear relationship between weight gain and incontinence in women. Weight loss alone for those considered overweight can have a terrific impact on improving pelvic floor control and continence.
Some of these hormones help protect the body from things like osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease so it is important to exercise to help reduce the risk, especially muscle strength and resistance work for bone health and cardiovascular health are important.
Women if they choose to, go through pregnancy and childbirth, this obviously impacts the body and can sometimes create issues immediately post, e.g pelvic floor weakness and leakage, however, a woman may be fine until they hit menopause and the associated hormonal changes which kept them at bay then may affect them and they can start to experience issues.
If a woman has had a baby and wants to return to higher impact activities or exercise having a review by a women’s health physio is very important. It can direct the women if she needs to strengthen some muscles to safely return to the activity and can also give confidence to the women that she can get back to some of her activities that she may have had to stop during pregnancy.
For a lot of women knowing that there is help at hand is really important. Sometimes simple changes can greatly affect quality of life, so seeing a health professional with an understanding in this area can be life changing.
Q. Tell us a bit about your clinic?
At positive motion we assess everyone as an individual and take the time to listen to the client about what their goals are and how we can help them. This may include more clinic work and hands on work by the therapist or exercising in our gym downstairs. We offer different types of classes in our gym which include circuit style, pilates based, program based and also classes specially designed for people post cancer.
Time is spent to understand the clients needs and make sure the appropriate class is picked and caters to their needs. Although we treat a range of conditions we see a lot of people especially women post cancer treatment.
The bar has been set — It is time for employers to support reproductive health
2022 has been a big year for reproductive health and rights.
Overseas, the overturning of the Roe v Wade decision has seen the US slide back decades on access to abortion. In Australia, it has triggered collective action at the same time as a series of reforms have been implemented across the country, from decriminalisation in South Australia, the announcement of new services in Queensland and Victoria, and free access to abortion in Canberra.
At the same time, the ground has also been shifting on periods and period poverty. There’s more national funding for addressing endometriosis than ever before, while States and Territories have been making pads and tampons available in schools since 2021, and a Bill to make period products freely available to the whole community has recently been introduced in the ACT.
These initiatives will go a long way to addressing the disproportionate cost of reproductive health for women and people with uteruses. But there’s still more to be done, and one piece of the puzzle falls squarely in the lap of employers, not policymakers.
Reproductive health policies provide leave and flexibility for employees for reproductive health-related needs, sexual health and wellbeing. Reproductive health needs can be complex, change over time and vary significantly across individuals. Reproductive health policies can allow employees leave to attend IVF or abortion appointments, flexibility to work from home when an employee has painful periods, or time off after a miscarriage.
We know that reproductive health needs do not, in most circumstances, reflect ill health, they are part of day to day life for a significant proportion of the population in the workforce. Reproductive health polices help to recognise the time and burden involved in reproduction, and its important role in our community.
Reproductive health policies also help to alleviate the indirect costs which can restrict reproductive choice. For example, the price of procedures like freezing eggs or abortion care are so significant that they stop women and people with uteruses from accessing them. The loss of paid work involved in attending appointments make these costs even greater.
It’s also been shown that the benefits don’t just flow to employee wellbeing and health outcomes, but also to overall workplace productivity and work satisfaction.
We talk about Australia being one of the most progressive countries in relation to reproductive health policy. But if this were true, wouldn’t this be reflected in our workplaces? In 2021, University of Sydney researchers Sydney Colussi, Elizabeth Hill and Marian Baird wrote that normalising and supporting reproductive health is a key lever for gender equality in the workplace.
This Women’s Health Week, Women’s Health Matters, the ACT Peak Body for Women’s Health, is implementing a reproductive health policy to support staff and are calling for other employers to do the same. The policy includes leave (24 days per year) and flexible work arrangements to support staff around:
- Menstruation
- Menopause
- Miscarriage
- Abortion
- Fertility and other pre-natal needs
Reproductive health policies are not entirely new, and businesses such as ModiBodi and FutureSuper have previously announced leave for menstruation and menopause. Victorian Women’s Trust has also undertaken groundbreaking work in the period leave space.
Women’s Health Matters is building on these policies to set a baseline for minimum expectations around supporting reproductive health in the workplace. The intent of the policy is to provide staff with support and flexibility and to also set the bar externally for other employers to consider similar policies and supports and is publicly available from Women’s Health Matters website.
This reproductive health policy is a call to action for Australian employers to consider how they support their staff and their reproductive health needs. It also provides an opportunity to improve research and evaluation in this space, which will illustrate the direct and indirect benefits of these sorts of policies.
By normalising reproductive health in the workplace and enabling access to critical reproductive health services we will drive long term change that will contribute to gender equality, improved health outcomes, increased job satisfaction and workplace productivity.
Supporting reproductive health in the workplace should be a bare minimum expectation, not a competitive benefit.
Q&A with Maeve O’Brien – Women’s Health Week 2022
Happy Women’s Health Week! We met up with Maeve O’Brien who is a Continence and Women’s Health Physiotherapist working at the Community Pelvic Health clinic in Canberra to talk all things pelvic health!
1. Why is good pelvic health important?
1 in 4 Australians, men, women, and children, can have problems with their pelvic health and this can have a significant impact on their quality of life. There is much that can be done to help people with pelvic health conditions, but many people do not seek help. Good pelvic health is essential for not only continence but also sexual function. Sometimes people are embarrassed to raise their concerns with their doctor or physiotherapist, but it is important to remember that we specialise in these issues and can offer simple strategies that can make a big difference.
2. Tell us a bit about pelvic pain and the pelvic floor?
Pelvic pain affects 1 in 5 women but often cannot be diagnosed with a test or scans which means that people often continue to suffer for years before getting help. Sometimes the pelvic floor muscles themselves can become tight and painful and this can make passing urine, opening bowels and intercourse painful. Women with pelvic pain may also experience abdominal pain, bloating and pain with their periods.
Pelvic health physiotherapists assess all these things and provide a plan to help manage and improve these symptoms. Unfortunately, there is often not one thing that will fix everything but by having a detailed assessment and setting goals together we can develop a plan to reduce pain.
3. If someone is experiencing pelvic pain, what can they do to help improve this?
First of all, it is important to seek help and talk to their doctor or pelvic health physiotherapist if they have not done so already. Simple lifestyle choices can have a big impact on pain. These may include ensuring they are drinking enough fluid every day 1.5-2l of mostly water is sufficient, they are managing their bowel health and avoiding constipation, getting regular exercise which may just be walking every day for short periods, sleeping well and trying to do something they enjoy every day. This may be something as simple as listening to music or reading a good book. Depending on the nature of the pain, we will often provide more specific treatments and strategies following the initial assessment.
4. How do your workshops help women to take control of their pelvic health?
We offer two face to face workshops. One is a pelvic floor workshop for women with continence or prolapse symptoms that provides education on healthy bladder and bowel habits and provides simple strategies to help manage these conditions. The other is a more targeted workshop for women experiencing persistent pelvic pain. This provides detail on why pelvic pain occurs, education on pain management strategies including pelvic floor relaxation and stretches and aims to empower women to manage this complex condition.