In October, the VTMH team came together with Education Changemakers for a team culture retreat day.
The team, with no knowledge of what the day would hold in store, met at Free to Feed in North Fitzroy. What transpired was a day of story-sharing, cooking, and connection to each other and the values and pillars which guide our work.
The VTMH team were honoured to connect with the values, mission, chefs and stories within the Free to Feed team and enjoyed preparing and sharing lunch together.
We thank Free to Feed for hosting us and the team at Education Changemakers for facilitating a wonderful retreat day.
Dialogue between National and state-wide entities enables relevant alliances and ensures alignment between frameworks. In the context of cultural responsiveness, this dialogue allows possibilities for messages to be amplified, as an example, Embrace Australia and Victorian Transcultural Mental Health (VTMH) inform each other and consult with each other about cultural responsiveness strategies in the national and state-wide context.
Support in the Victorian context
VTMH supports public mental health service providers to go through a reform of their own organisation. In the context of the ‘VTMH Partners in Diversity Program’, the Partnership Framework was designed to facilitate discussions between VTMH and services, to document the services perception of their strength and gaps, to develop organisational goals and to identify how VTMH can assist the organisation to meet their goals.
The VTMH partnership planning framework is relational and aims at enabling educating processes, thinking spaces, broad perspectives, negotiations and co-construction of goals through guided conversations. It is a fluid, dynamic and changing relationship that evolves between VTMH and the partner service supported by the ongoing use of the partnership planning framework.
The VTMH Cultural Responsiveness Partnership Planning Framework was originally adapted from and informed by the domains, standards and measures outlined in the Victorian Government DoH (2009) Cultural Responsiveness Framework: Guidelines for Victorian Health Services.
The VTMH Cultural Responsiveness Partnership Planning Framework is in alignment with the Victorian Mental Health and Wellbeing Workforce Capability Framework (2021) and Victoria’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Workforce Strategy 2021- 2024.
VTMH is here to support public mental health organisations to identify strengths and gaps in cultural responsiveness and put together a plan to sustain positive change.
Support in the National context
The Embrace Multicultural Mental Health Project offers a nationally available online resource which allows mental health organisations and individual practitioners to evaluate and enhance their cultural responsiveness. It is mapped against national standards to help organisations meet their existing requirements, and provides free access to a wide range of support and resources. Public mental health services and practitioners in Victoria can undertake this online assessment (evaluation), and develop an action plan to support organisational improvement in cultural capacity.
If after going through the Embrace Framework, public mental health services in Victoria would like to continue expanding their knowledge, practice, and reflections on cultural responsiveness, they are welcome to contact VTMH which is the Victorian State-wide Transcultural Mental Health Service who supports the Victorian mental health sector to build their capacity on cultural responsiveness.
To date, the Mental Health and Cultural Diversity Community of Practice (MHCD CoP), convened by VTMH, has supported a diverse cohort of practitioners across a range of settings, including those beyond the mental health sector, to come together to exchange ideas, thoughts and experiences regarding a broad range of issues relating to cultural diversity and mental health.
VTMH chose this model to offer the workforce a space to have conversations about cultural diversity and mental health, to share the successes and challenges they face when putting their learning and knowledge into practice, and to support clinicians to navigate complexities in their work. We believe this model is helping to build bridges and connections amongst members, find common ground, and encourage robust conversations about cultural diversity and mental health that may not usually be explored.
After having facilitated the MHCD CoP for almost three years, conveners Shehani De Silva and Kimberley Wriedt had the opportunity to share their learnings at the Mental Health Services Conference (TheMHS) in Sydney in October this year.
Their presentation, entitled “Learning together: How has a transcultural mental health service approached a community of practice model”, explored the evolution of the CoP program at VTMH, and how we believe the CoP model is a supportive approach for building a critically reflective workforce, which is vital for a culturally safe and responsive mental health system.
Early in 2022, the VTMH team welcomed three new team members.
Nivanka De Silva is our new Psychiatry Registrar for 2022 to 2023. Nivanka has a Doctor of Medicine from the University of New South Wales and is in the process of completing a Master of Psychiatry through the University of Melbourne.
Nivanka is excited to be working with VTMH and looks forward to supporting VTMH to increase its contribution to the sector on institutional racism and structural barriers in mental health.
In her own time, she enjoys indulging her love for poetry and visual arts.
Stephanie Shavin (who goes by Steph), joined us as an Education & Service Development Consultant at the beginning of this year. Before joining VTMH, Steph worked as a Counsellor Advocate and Senior Practitioner with Foundation House alongside adults, children and families of refugee background and those seeking asylum who have survived experiences of torture and trauma.
At home Steph is kept busy with her 2 young children; Esther and Hugo.
Abie Jazi also joined us as an Education & Service Development Consultant at the beginning of this year. Abie is a psychiatric nurse, social worker and midwife with qualifications across mental health nursing, social work, and education. One of his primary interests is building clinician skills to address cultural and complex needs at the point of admission or during initial assessment in mental health settings.
Radhika and Nivanka from VTMH recorded a session for the MHPN Book Club podcast in September, 2022.
In this episode of Book Club, they explored Judith Herman’s ‘Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror’ (1992). Radhika and Nivanka reflected on the book’s powerful themes of witnessing and remembering trauma; how it has inspired a ‘new way of seeing and knowing’ in their practice; and why the ideas presented are more relevant than ever for Australian society and mental health practice.
This is a new section to our twice yearly e-newsletter. We realise that while many of you reading this do work with some members of our team, many of you don’t know who we are!
We would like to be a little more personal and share some information about each of our team members in our e-newsletters.
First up is our beloved Shehani De Silva.
Name: Shehani De Silva
Job title: Education & Service Development Consultant
Qualifications: Bachelors (Honours) in Psychology
Time at VTMH: completing 9 years in 2022
Tell us your work story: Prior to migration I worked in the mental health sector in Sri Lanka. Amongst others, this included working with UNICEF Colombo psychosocial program which was aimed at working with mental health issues of communities affected by the civil conflict. After migrating to New Zealand, I had the opportunity to work with a community based mental health service and also as a as a counsellor/advocate with Wellington refugees at Survivors Trust; a leading mental health and wellbeing service for people from refugee backgrounds living in Aotearoa.
What were you doing professionally prior to working at VTMH? I coordinated the transcultural mental health program at Action with Disability within ethnic communities (ADEC) an advocacy based organisation set up to support culturally diverse people with disability and their carers.
What attracted you to this role at VTMH? During my time at ADEC, I worked closely with VTMH (at the time known as VTPU) on many projects in relation to diversity. Whilst partnering with different consultants on different projects at VTMH, I also got to know each of them very well. I was always taken by the quality of work at VTMH and the nuanced and careful thought put into each project. When a position became vacant, I didn’t think twice.
Proudest achievement/s while working at VTMH: There are many, but what stands out most is working with carers from culturally diverse backgrounds to support them to share their carer stories and help bring them to life in the form of videos. What stood out most in this project was the fact that we were able to produce a resource in the carers “language.” The project was selected as a finalist for Victoria’s Public Healthcare Awards.
What do you hope for and envision for the future of VTMH? To continue to be the leading transcultural mental health service in the state.
What do you enjoy most about your role? What I enjoy most is the collaborative work undertaken with diverse groups of people, including organisations and community members. I also enjoy the ability to be creative in this role.
What do you like to do in your free time? I like to watch Netflix and chat with my mother and daughter. At present however all my time is taken up with being across the political, social and economic issues affecting Sri Lanka.
What’s the last book you read? Australia Day by Stan Grant
What’s the first concert you ever attended? Bon Jovi
What’s the next place on your travel bucket list? Travelling around Australia
Tell us something we might be surprised to hear about you? I am a fan of the TikTok app!
VTMH’s Education and Service Development Consultant Abie Jazi and Lived Experience Consultant Naomi Chapman have facilitated three further meetings of VTMH’s Lived Experience Community of Practice (VTMH’s LE CoP) since our last newsletter in July of this year.
The objectives of the group are to explore and expand understandings of:
1. How lived experience practitioners with diverse voices influence practice within their organisations and the mental health sector.
2. Systemic barriers and enablers that face lived experience practitioners from diverse backgrounds when trying to contribute or generate change. This will also become a relevant source of knowledge for the Department of Health (DoH).
The LE CoP membership benefits from a diversity of voices within the mental health system with representation from culturally and linguistically diverse and migrant communities, young people and LGBTIQA+ communities.
The group met in August, October and December online. The sessions have included a presentation by Naomi Chapman entitled “Challenging stigma of mental illness”; a presentation by Maria Dimopoulos on her recovery journey and the impact this has had on her employability; and facilitated discussion by Naomi on the topic “Persistent Negative Voices – from surviving to thriving.”
VTMH are excited to continue offering this valuable learning space in 2023 and hope to see continued growth in its membership.
VTMH was pleased to hold the Inaugural Daryl Oehm Oration, on the evening of Wednesday, 18 May 2022.
Inaugural Oration speaker, Azmeena Hussain OAM, spoke to the theme of the evening, Struggles of marginalised identities and their precarious existence, by weaving together her personal and professional experiences in the field of law, to link advocacy, cultural responsiveness, organisation reforms, mental health service provision, legal supports and lived experience in the one narrative.
We were also grateful to Mitch Tambo, Australian world music star and proud Gimilaraay man, who provided a number of musical performances, and to our MC for the night, Dr. Rasha Rahman.
Collectively they ensured the evening was one that resonated with the work of VTMH, and thoughtfully recognized the contributions to transcultural mental health in Victoria by the late Daryl Oehm (VTMH Manager, 2008-2018).
Thank you to all that joined the event on the evening. We hope this will be an event we can continue to offer to the sector in future.
We currently have two vacancies available for the following positions:
A part time (22.8 hours per week) position as a Carer Consultant. You would be responsible for providing education and service development support to mental health services in Victoria’s public mental health system in order to improve the quality of service delivery to diverse communities. This involves planning, developing and delivering a range of education and service development programs/activities on issues in transcultural mental health. The Consumer Consultant will work across the four pillars: Collaboration, Support, Equip and Advocate.
A part time (26.6 hours per week) position as an Evaluation, Monitoring and Research Consultant. You would be responsible for enhancing VTMH’s internal monitoring and evaluation processes and assisting with evaluation and research of cultural responsiveness from the publicly funded mental health sector.
Please visit the St Vincent’s Hospital careers page here to find out more about these exciting new roles.
Spiritual Health Association (SHA) in partnership with Victorian Transcultural Mental Health (VTMH) has been running The Spirituality & Diversity Discussion Project since 2019. As part of this project, reflective peer group sessions have been facilitated for mental health practitioners to integrate spiritual themes into their practices.
Over the past few months, 3 sessions were held with the specific topics:
Psychiatry and spirituality: Why are they such uncomfortable bedfellows?
Mental Health Recovery: Where is the healing, humility, and hope?
A crisis of meaning: Spiritual emergence or spiritual emergency?
These sessions were fully booked out and participants were very appreciative to have a space to discuss the important role of spirituality in mental health.
Another session is scheduled for Tuesday, 9 August 2022 with the topic: ‘Prayer, meditation, or medication: What’s your preference?’
This session is now fully booked but please do keep an eye out on our website for booking details for future sessions.
