Cormac

‘Now my kids are going through all this stuff and there’s not much support for them … Next generation is going to end up the same as this one if [governments] don’t start learning.’

Cormac, early 30s, has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder and an acquired brain injury.

From a young age, Cormac was a ward of the state and lived in managed accommodation.

In primary school Cormac struggled to focus. He was ‘an outdoor kid’ and needed to be active all the time. He remembers repeatedly banging his head on the table because he liked the sound.

‘I used to do that every day in class … and then they would send me home for a few days … But then I would go back to class and just annoy everyone.’

In high school he was always in trouble for non-attendance and dropped out in year 9. He went back in year 11 but had similar problems.

‘Because of my ADHD I started off in the English … but then I would just wander out of class and go to, like, the art class, the cooking class, the landscaping and then I joined up for building construction certificate 2 but because I kept jumping around and doing all that other stuff I just missed out on the attendance.’

Around this time he started taking medication for ADHD, but had difficulty accessing it because he was often homeless.

Cormac discovered ‘smoking weed’ calmed him and it was easier to get than his medication.

Still a teenager, Cormac became a father. Child protection didn’t offer him any parenting support and ‘forced’ him away from his son, making his partner ‘take out an intervention order’ against him.

He spent the few years mostly on the streets.

‘I kept going to [child protection] going, look, I’m under your care. You need to help me.’

Eventually they put him in a boarding house but he was stabbed and ended up back on the streets.

Services often turned Cormac away because he couldn’t prove his Aboriginality.

‘When I lived on the street and I could not [get anything] saying I am Aboriginal, or if I did get it, it only stayed with me for so long before I end up losing it.’

Cormac finds it ‘annoying’, because state and federal governments have so much information about him.

‘Proof of Aboriginality should be passed down through the government. We are an Aboriginal country so why don’t organisations know before you get there that you’re Aboriginal.’

In his early 20s Cormac had a serious accident and acquired a brain injury.

He said there wasn’t any support or rehabilitation.

‘On the third day, they wheeled me in, stitched my head up and kicked me out of the hospital … I was having problems. I was messed up for weeks.’

He struggled with his memory.

‘I completely forgot how much time and stuff like that. I wasn’t thinking. I was messed up locking myself away for eight years. Didn’t really talk to anyone.’

In the last few years he has ‘started to get out and do stuff’. He found a First Nations mental health worker who has identified some services that may be able to help him.

But it’s taking time because the services need proof of his Aboriginality.

‘On the [Services Australia] system I’m Aboriginal, but yet everywhere else they don’t know. It’s really, really annoying. Why do I need to keep proving and proving and proving? Once should be enough.’