What we found at the Forum: Embedding culturally responsive care

Overwhelmingly, 98% of attendees reported the Forum provided a greater understanding of culturally responsive care. Attendees reiterated that learning from other LHDs was beneficial enabling the sharing of common challenges experienced and discussed there could be a statewide collaboration to find solutions.

“Passion of workforce, data views, amazing work being undertaken, need to have a statewide, collaborative approach.”

LHD Multicultural Health Staff

 

Attendees appreciated learning about practical and applied solutions of what culturally responsive care looks like in practice.

“Importance of understanding cultural norms to enable effective communication. Need for work to start developing effective data collection that will allow development if CALD data indicators.”

Cancer Institute NSW

 

A common view from Forum attendees was there is much to be considered when delivering culturally responsive care, such as social complexity and understanding cultural norms; and interventions should be multifaceted and done in consultation with patients and families.

“Cultural Response Care in cancer services is very multifaceted and requires an in-depth record of patient information and lifestyle, and liaising with the patients’ family.”

Consumer Representative

 

The Forum provided a space for attendees to identify, discuss and understand gaps in service provision. Attendees identified communication across the care continuum, mandatory training and consumer voices are current gaps in cancer care. Further, a recurrent gap identified was absence of systemic collection of patient demographic data on migrant populations to support generation of information to assess, anticipate and mitigate barriers that could help improve coordinated safe care for CALD communities. 

“We need to increase data collection to include all information.”