Community care for all cultures
A Sydney based provider has released a public resource to help community care practitioners provide culturally appropriate care.
A new set of guidelines and recommendations has been launched this week to assist community care practitioners who work with clients from culturally diverse backgrounds.
The briefing document from the Benevolent Society contains a list of common issues faced by older people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, along with principles and practice of culturally appropriate care and a set of discussion questions.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), by 2026 a quarter of Australians aged 80 and over will come from a culturally or linguistically diverse background.
Launching the new research to practice paper, the chair of the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia, Pino Migliorino talked about the broad range of cultural issues faced by older people from CALD backgrounds.
“In non-English speaking communities, there are different cultural sensitivities around health and wellbeing,” he said.
“For example mental health issues such as dementia, depression and schizophrenia create a sense of shame and fear of community rejection, and often result in clients retreating into the home, where the burden of care then falls on their spouse and family.”
The Benevolent Society’s general manager of ageing, Barbara Squires, said culturally sensitive care was an increasingly important issue for all care providers.
The Sydney based organisation provides mainstream community care services in culturally diverse areas, as well as ethnic specific packages.
“The numbers are quite extraordinary,” she said. “We really have to think of this now, not just as a specilaised area that ethnic specific services can take care of.
“The larger communities such as the Italians, the Greeks and the Chinese do quite well in terms of being able to provides services but they can’t provide them everywhere.
“And the smaller communities are not able to provide specific services so it’s important that workers in mainstream services are aware of these issues.”
The paper on culturally appropriate care is the fourth in a series of briefings produced by The Benevolent Society, in partnership with the Social Policy and Research Centre.
It presents the latest research and ideas on culturally appropriate community care in an easy-to-read manner.
Ms Squires said the resource will help to redress the shortage of resources designed for people working in the community.
“What we are hoping that it will give them in one place, all the numbers, facts, evidence and principles that they will need,” she said.
“For their team leaders, the briefings provide some guidelines for discussion questions to help people think through these issues for themselves.
“It’s a really useful resource and it’s also something that can be used in training and ongoing work.”
