Paediatric intensive care nurse Grace Larson is breaking down barriers of distance and affordability for rural families seeking infant and child first aid training.
Through The Sisterhood Project she aims to provide free essential paediatric first aid training for vulnerable groups, in an aim to curb child mortality rates in rural Australia.
Her work so far has seen her named one of five Victorian finalists in the 2023 AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award.
The Mia Mia mother of three has spent 14 years as a paediatric nurse. She is also the co-founder of business PEADS first aid and education training. It is through this work she recognised an important need not being met.
“One of the things I noticed through training was that the people attending the courses were not always those from areas or backgrounds with the greatest risk of experiencing a situation where they would need to intervene,” Grace said.
“There is plenty of research that identifies rural areas are more likely to experience infant or child deaths from accidents, and the risk is even greater for those that are also from lower socio-economic or non-English speaking backgrounds.
“These children are dying at a higher rate than their metropolitan counterparts and part of that is due to limited access to knowledge or skill-building in first aid.
“It could be for any number of reasons such as not having disposable income to take a course, language barriers or not having physical access to training in their area.
“It doesn’t mean people shouldn’t live in remote, rural or regional areas, we just need to find a way to empower them with the knowledge and skills that they need.
“We wanted to remove these barriers for people with the goal of making a real differences to child mortality statistics.
“We can’t keep on teaching the same groups of people and expecting a better outcome.”
The Sisterhood Project has been crowd-funded to pilot some short courses, which solidified a need for the service.
Grace said the AgriFutures’ $15,000 bursary would fund two training programs specific to foster carers and young mothers.
A group of 30 young mothers in the Shepparton area have already been identified for the first program.
Training would include CPR, drowning prevention, choking response, managing illness and other vital skills.
“We know that this training will have a ripple effect in the community in that these mothers will pass on their knowledge to others and make this a bigger conversation in their own circles,” Grace said.
The state winner is expected to be announced in April. They will also represent Victoria at the national awards with a further $20,000 cash prize at a ceremony at Parliament House, Canberra, in September.
