Fostering Cultural Sensitivity in Psychiatric Practice
We are excited to announce the ongoing success of the VTMH Monthly Registrar Group, an initiative dedicated to enhancing cultural responsiveness among psychiatry registrars across Victoria.
This group meets for 1 hour, running from 2:30-3:30pm on the last Wednesday of each month. Each session invites psychiatry registrars to bring forth clinical cases that present cultural components or nuances. These cases form the basis of rich, in-depth discussions aimed at exploring the cultural dynamics that influence mental health care. By examining these real-world scenarios, participants gain valuable insights into the complexities of providing culturally sensitive psychiatric services.
Upcoming Sessions
Our next meeting is scheduled for the end of this month. We invite all psychiatry registrars in Victoria to join us and contribute to this enriching dialogue. Whether you have a case to present or wish to learn from others, your participation is invaluable.
For more information about the group or to express your interest in joining, please contact Dr. Justin Kuay (VTMH Consultant Psychiatrist) justin.kuay@svha.org.au or Dr. Sangita Raj (VTMH Psychiatry Registrar) sangita.raj@svha.org.au.
We look forward to seeing you at our next session!
On Tuesday, 3 July 2024, VTMH hosted a ‘Meet & Greet’ event with Kenya Community Victoria (KCV). This was a wonderful opportunity for VTMH staff and KCV organisational leaders, mental health sub-committee members/volunteers and community members to meet and to formalise our relationship through an official signing of the KCV & VTMH Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
The event was an inspiring and highly memorable experience for everyone involved. We thank KCV members for their generosity in sharing their stories, experiences and wisdom with us.
We are very much looking forward to working together over the next 2 years to support KCV to centre and embed mental health and well-being literacy in their organisational structure, leadership, programs and activities. Our work together will focus on 2 main areas:
Capacity building of KCV mental health sub-committee members in their volunteer role;
Supporting the engagement of the community.
We look ahead with anticipation to building a strong, successful, and mutually beneficial relationship.
In December 2021, VTMH held its first Lived Experience Community of Practice. This community of practice supports a diverse cohort of practitioners from a variety of workplace settings to come together and exchange ideas and experiences on a broad range of issues relating to lived experience, cultural diversity, and mental health.
The group is run bi-monthly on Microsoft Teams and aims to:
Discuss, develop and promote strategies to amplify the voices of diverse lived and living experience within mental health care workplaces and community-based settings.
Discuss and identify enablers and systemic barriers that diverse LLE practitioners face when trying to contribute, generate and sustain change (e.g. enablers such as supportive management and whole-of-organisation approaches to embedding lived and living experience; and barriers such as tokenistic consultation).
Learn from diverse LLE practitioners’ stories of challenge and triumph when navigating workplaces and the mental health sector as part of the Royal Commission’s reform.
Share knowledge relating to fundamental aspects underpinning LLE work (e.g., self-care, values, co-reflection, using an intersectional lens, practicing cultural responsiveness).
The group is led by VTMH’s Consumer Consultant, Naomi Chapman, and is supported by staff in the unit, including VTMH’s Carer Consultant Olivia Fletcher, and consultants with their own lived experience as consumers, supporters or carers.
Having facilitated the Lived Experience Community of Practice for almost two years, Naomi had the opportunity to share her learnings at The Mental Health Services Conference (TheMHS) in Adelaide last year.
During her presentation, “Dare to Care: Human Rights and Compassion in the Workplace,” Naomi mentioned the development of the community of practice program as an example of a platform where LLE workers reflect on their practice and learn from the intersection between diversity and lived experience. LLE workers are invited to bring their various lenses of their experience to conversations about how mental health, cultural diversity, and lived experience are intertwined in wellbeing challenges, recovery, and ways care services are structured to meet the needs of diverse communities.
The overall goal of this CoP is to support the lived and living experience workforce to influence practice within the sector in ways that diverse lived and living experiences are centred, exploring ways to create a more culturally responsive and inclusive system.
Membership to the CoP is open to individuals working as lived and living experience workers in public mental health and wellbeing services across Victoria. We invite you to read the Terms of Reference before joining the CoP so you can make an informed decision. We are looking forward to hearing from those who would like to join us. Link to Terms of Reference.
VTMH has been delighted to return to face-to-face workshops this year as part of our state-wide calendar, in addition to continuing to deliver workshops online.
We have enjoyed sharing our face-to-face workshops from a variety of training venues from across Victoria, including Shepparton, Bendigo, Ballarat, Dandenong and Melbourne Inner North and CBD.
The state-wide training program has offered a range of workshops including our Foundations of Culturally Responsive Practice for Mental Health Settings, Approaching Work with Interpreters in Mental Health Settings, Recovery and Diversity – Approaches to Cultural Assessment and Supporting Personal Recovery and our new workshop, Community Engagement with Purpose – Approaches to Consider in Mental Health Settings. We have been thrilled to connect with practitioners from a broad variety of mental health services and roles through these workshops.
VTMH workshops are open to and provided free to staff working in Victoria’s state-funded mental health workforce. This includes public clinical and community mental health services, as well as state-funded mental health programs within community health and social services.
Staff working in a range of roles within this workforce, including but not limited to community rehabilitation and recovery workers, lived experience workers, mental health nursing, social work, occupational therapy, psychiatry, community engagement roles, program leaders/project workers and administration roles, are invited to register.
To stay connected with upcoming dates, please join our mailing list here
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.
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.
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.
This year VTMH has worked alongside Headspace Dandenong/Hastings sites to pilot a brief and contained service development engagement to support their developing workforce in relation to culturally responsive practice.
The complexities of current funding arrangements and capacity consideration from both organisations rendered a whole of organisational partnership (VTMH’s Partners in Diversity Program) not possible this year. However, collaboration in a short-term local level project specifically focused on localised needs at the Dandenong/Hastings sites was possible with reference to:
Establishing foundational knowledge and practice in cultural responsiveness
Establishing policies and procedures at a local level to ensure policies support practice
Support to establish a reflective practice culture
Implement activities /actions to sustain this culturally responsive lens into the culture of these identified sites. ie. staff orientation models
In close collaboration with the Dandenong/Hastings leadership team, VTMH provided a series of face to face and online workshops, provided guidance to a newly established Policy and Procedure taskforce and co-facilitated a number of reflective practice sessions with Headspace staff.
The project concludes with a brief evaluation to be completed by the end of 2022.
Star Health have been engaged with VTMH as part of our Partners in Diversity Program since 2020.
Recently Star Health, Central Bayside Community Health Services and Connect Health & Community amalgamated under the banner of Better Health Network (BHN).
The BHN network have enthusiastically extended support to continue the VTMH – Star Health partnership to progress the strategies Star Health have employed to embed cultural responsiveness practices in their organisation and work.
For this final year of the partnership, VTMH is supporting BHN by delivering a ‘Train the Trainer’ (TtT) program as one mechanism to extend and embed cultural responsiveness practice within the broader BHN network.
The TtT program was launched in September 2022 with an orientation session. This has been followed by the first two workshops. Further workshops and reflective sessions, to support the trainers as they begin to facilitate the training, will take place in 2023.
It is anticipated that the future BHN trainers in Cultural Responsiveness will be ready to begin supporting the broader BHN staff base to develop knowledge and skills in cultural responsiveness in the second half of 2023.
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.
