Good practice principles
The department is:
- partnering with multicultural communities to co-design and co-deliver health promotion and education activities that empower people to manage their own health and wellbeing and build trust in the health system
- engaging multicultural communities in consultation and evaluation activities to elevate the voice of people who are excluded and build on their unique strengths and connections
- ensuring governance structures reflect the diversity of the community by supporting multicultural communities to actively take part in committees, boards and advisory groups
- ensuring multicultural community representation reflects priority cohorts and the diversity within communities, including across culture, ethnicity, language, religion and other aspects of identity and experience such as age, ability, sexuality, sex/gender, rurality and experience of homelessness and family violence
- providing financial recognition for community contributions and engaging formal and informal community leaders, recognising that multicultural communities are not homogenous
- doing what we say we will do, understanding that trusting relationships between government and multicultural communities requires time, resources and consistency
- developing engagement frameworks and plans that identify priority multicultural communities and effective ways of engaging and empowering them.
Practical resources and supports
- Victorian Government: Diversity on Victorian Government boards and Victorian appointment and remuneration guidelines
- Safer Care Victoria:Partnering in healthcare: a framework for better care and and co-design and partnering workshops
- Department of Health: Mental health lived experience engagement framework
- Engagement with the Victorian Multicultural Commission and multicultural community organisations such as Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria and Victorian Refugee Health Network.
Actions we will take
| Flagship initiatives | Timeframe | Lead division |
|---|---|---|
4.1 Facilitate the CALD Health Advisory Group, chaired by the Parliamentary Secretary for Women’s Health, to provide advice and support on:
| 2023–24 | Community and Public Health |
| 4.2 Develop and implement a new Diverse communities mental health and wellbeing framework and a two-year blueprint for action in 2024 to improve and promote the mental health and wellbeing of diverse communities, including in collaboration with multicultural and multifaith communities. | 2024–34 | Mental Health and Wellbeing |
| 4.3 Deliver targeted efforts to ensure the Smile Squad free school dental program reaches students from disadvantaged refugee backgrounds including establishing a new time-limited refugee advisory group and working with the Centre for Culture, Ethnicity and Health to engage mothers from a target refugee community to co-design simplified consent processes. | 2023–24 | Community and Public Health |
| Other new and continuing actions | Timeframe | Lead division |
|---|---|---|
| 4.4 Implement a prevention and early intervention strategy for priority populations focused on health risk and pandemic engagement, primarily through the 2023–24 Community Grants Program, which includes a suite of supporting mechanisms focused on increasing the health and wellbeing of priority populations, including multicultural communities, and providing community insights back to the department. | 2023–24 | Community and Public Health |
| 4.5 Co-design an approach to perinatal mental health screening that will better meet the needs of people from refugee and asylum-seeking communities, to be incorporated into statewide practice advice. | 2023–24 | Community and Public Health |
| 4.6 Co-produce a new Victorian suicide prevention and response strategy with people with lived experience of suicide. The strategy will apply an intersectional lens to understanding and responding to contributing and protective factors to suicide, including for multicultural communities. The strategy will be supported by rolling implementation plans and a whole-of-government accountability framework. | 2024–34 | Mental Health and Wellbeing |
| 4.7 Implement the Diversity on Victorian government boards via the annual ministerial diversity plan to strengthen inclusive recruitment and appointment processes for public entity boards and committees. | Ongoing | Whole-of-department responsibility, with coordination led by Hospitals and Health Services |
4.8 Improve community, sector and lived experience representation of multicultural communities on departmental and ministerial advisory structures. Examples include:
| 2023–27 | Whole-of-department responsibility, with examples led by:
|
| 4.9 Provide targeted support for priority populations such as multicultural communities, patients living with disability and Aboriginal people who are preparing for planned surgery, through dedicated patient support units. Patient support units have been funded until June 2024 to support patients on the preparation list (also known as waitlist), providing regular tailored communication and supporting patients into the most appropriate care pathways. | Funded from June 2022 to June 2024 | Hospitals and Health Services |
4.10 Continue:
| 2023–27 | Community and Public Health |
| 4.11 Provide free training to multicultural community members through the 2023–24 More Support for Mums, Dads and Babies State Budget initiative to strengthen lactation support for women from multicultural backgrounds. | 2023–24 to 2026–27 | Community and Public Health |
| 4.12 Conduct an inquiry into women’s pain management that will include hearing the voice of multicultural, refugee and asylum-seeking girls and women. | 2023–24 | Safer Care Victoria |
Good practice example: Multicultural community engagement in the COVID-19 pandemic health response
The COVID-19 pandemic shone a spotlight on health inequities experienced by multicultural communities in Victoria. In response, the department set up a range of innovative targeted programs to engage and support multicultural communities that continue to inform the department’s work.
From 2020 to 2022, the CALD Communities Taskforce enabled a Victorian Government forum to ensure multicultural communities were informed and resourced to manage outbreaks, increase uptake of testing and vaccination, and facilitate socioeconomic recovery. Through the taskforce, the government invested $68.6 million in localised COVID-19 supports for multicultural communities such as food relief, translations, PPE distribution, testing support, COVIDSafe messaging, mental health support, digital engagement and outreach. The funding enabled more than 380 partnerships with community organisations and helped more than 70,000 people stay healthy and safe.
The CALD Health Advisory Group was also established in December 2020 to broker relationships that enhance community confidence and build capacity and behaviour change.
The department also commissioned tailored COVID-19 supports including through the Centre for Culture, Ethnicity and . The centre translated COVID-19 factsheets and messaging, set up an online long COVID resource centre and awareness campaigns and delivered more than 50 workshops for more than 500 bicultural workers about COVID-19 safety, restrictions and vaccinations.
The Victorian Refugee Health also hosted weekly service forums, delivered COVID-19 information to more than 1,000 refugee health and settlement service providers, and advised government to help respond to rapidly emerging issues.
New services models were rapidly implemented with a culturally competent approach. For example, 30 Mental Health and Wellbeing Hubs were rolled out in 2021 to provide free access to mental health support close to home. In the first year, the hubs supported 2,985 people, including 1,365 people from multicultural communities who faced social isolation, anxiety, financial difficulties and housing stress. The hubs undertook targeted community engagement, translation of resources into 25 languages and arranged training by Victorian Transcultural Mental Health.
COVID-19 vaccination and prevention activities with multicultural communities are detailed next.
Good practice example: Engaging multicultural communities in COVID-19 vaccination and prevention activities
The department implemented community engagement strategies from April to November 2022 to support protective behaviours in multicultural communities. Multicultural communities were at higher risk of exposure to COVID-19, as defined by COVID-19 policy and data teams at the time. Outcomes included:
- 850,360 people reached across collective priority population groups
- 31 priority language groups reached through 88 funded community organisations
- 31 out of 33 priority language groups increased third dose vaccination rates over the funding period
- 81% of grantees reported behavioural change regarding COVID vaccination, testing and COVIDSafe management
- 80% of community leaders who took part in program activities were very confident in their knowledge and ability to promote COVID-19 vaccination and protective behaviours.
- The program made progress towards the overall objectives of supporting high-risk multicultural communities to:
- isolate at home when unwell, undertake a rapid antigen test when symptomatic or a close contact
- wear a face covering indoors and in sensitive settings to stop or slow the virus from spreading
- access COVID-19 medicines
- keep rooms well ventilated
- get a third dose vaccination (and a fourth, if eligible) to keep up immunity against COVID-19.
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Diversity on Victorian Government boards
Department of Health: Mental health lived experience engagement framework
Safer Care Victoria: Partnering in healthcare framework Partnering in healthcare: a framework for better care and
Safer Care Victoria: Supporting tools and co-design and partnering
Victorian appointment and remuneration
Engagement with multicultural community peaks listed in Appendix 4.
Reviewed 27 March 2024