2007 No 1 - Cultural Competency II - Being and Showing

In this edition, we complete our two-part series on Cultural Competency in mental health. In the last edition, we explored organisational and strategic overviews of cultural competency, primarily focusing on the definition of cultural competency and how it’s applied to mental health services.

 

In this edition we take the concept further by illustrating examples of how mental health services are meeting cultural competency standards – the checks and balances that are in place.

We also focus on a variety on Australian and international models that are making a huge difference in the way mental health services are better reaching consumers from CALD backgrounds.

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Online Articles

Consumer Perspective
Evan Bichara, Consumer Advocate at the Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit

 

A Culturally Sensitive Consultation Model
Dr Jill Benson

A full copy of this article (including references and footnotes) was published in the Australian e-Journal for the Advancement of Mental Health (AeJAMH) Vol 5, Issue 2, 2006 and also in Medicine Today.

Cultural and Linguistic Competence: An International Perspective
Tawara D Goode - Director of the National Center for Cultural Competence at the Georgetown University Centre for Child and Human Development in the United States

Tawara D. Goode was one of the special international guests at last year’s “From Tolerance to Respect: Cultural Competence in Practice” conference hosted by the Multicultural Disability Advocacy Association of NSW (MDAA) and the National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA) in Sydney. Tawara was invited to give a speech that has since been transcribed and uploaded on the MDAA website. This is an edited version of that speech.

Assessing cultural competency of mental health services
Elizabeth Cheong - Research Officer for Audit Tool Development, Bernadette Wright - WA Transcultural Mental Health Centre

This article provides all the background to developing the Cultural Competency Standards and Audit Tool (the Tool) and how it helps enhance service delivery to CALD mental health consumers.

The Carer perspective

We’ve respected the wishes of the family and changed the names in the following article.

Better detection of perinatal mental illness for CALD women
Jann Marshall, Kate Bethell, Statewide Policy and Planning Directorate, Child and Adolescent Community Health Division at the Department of Health Western Australia

This article is about a new resource that has been developed to detect post natal depression in women from CALD backgrounds.

IN MY OPINION

Inmyopinion is a regular feature where we ask individuals from a range of backgrounds and disciplines to address a particular issue. In this article, Kim Bui, a Social Worker from the Canterbury Community Mental Health Centre in Sydney, shares her thoughts on cultural competency.

Service provider perspective
Khin Myo Myint, Accredited interpreter for the Burmese community living in Perth