The forum was well-attended by a diverse range of stakeholders that included community and government service providers, Carers, Consumers and local government representatives.

The ACT Transcultural Mental Health Network recognized that the need for a meaningful dialogue addressing factors impacting access to health and mental health services for people of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds was long overdue in the ACT and local region.  The forum focused specifically on the challenges faced in delivering effective language and translator services within social, health and mental health settings to CALD communities. “We wanted to give people working in the field an opportunity to understand the issues that we as bi-lingual workers face daily in supporting people with mental health issues who have limited English language skills” said Anna Lossano, a committee of management member of the ACT Transcultural Mental Health Network.

The need for specialized mental health training for accredited interpreters is a current ‘hot’ issue in the field of Transcultural mental health in Australia today and has been the focus of recent work and research of the two keynote speakers, Greg Turner, State Liaison & Policy Coordinator at Queensland Transcultural Mental Health Centre and Malina Stankovska, Manager of the Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit.

Presentations from both Turner and Stankovska emphasized the most effective path to delivering better health and mental health outcomes for the diverse communities, as being the importance of investing resources into research, including localized epidemiology to inform development of CALD policy and services. 

ACT speakers, Kathy Ragless of Companion House, Dr Sally Somi from Calvary Hospital and Diana Rahman, of the Arabic Australian Women’s Friendship Association lent their personal and professional experience to the debate giving rise to a stimulating discussion and some tough questions from attendees.

One of the key outcomes of the forum was clarification of the areas that will become a focus of the work of the ACT Transcultural Mental Health Network in future.  These include; the need for more networking opportunities between the ACT Transcultural sector and Transcultural Centres and representatives from other states, greater investment in mental health awareness education in diverse communities where English language skills are poor, working collaboratively to identify education strategies to address racism, prejudice and community stereotypes within the mainstream community, identifying resources to assist with local research projects and specialized mental health training for accredited interpreters, the development of a CALD Consumer and Carer Participation policy for the ACT in partnership with ACT Government. 

The forum successfully provided an impetus in the local community to work collaboratively to identify strategies towards resolving local issues. 

The event was organized in partnership with the Mental Health Community Coalition ACT and Multicultural Mental Health Australia and supported by ACT Health and the ACT Department of Multicultural Affairs.