Community of Practice in Cultural Diversity and Mental Health

We support a community of professionals to have conversations about cultural diversity and mental health and share the successes and challenges they face when putting their learning and knowledge into practice.

Please read the Terms of Reference to find out more. If you are interested in becoming a member, please sign up below.

Cultural Diversity and Mental Health Community of Practice

Terms of Reference (TOR)

Purpose

The purpose of the Cultural Diversity and Mental Health Community of Practice (CoP) is to promote better practice in the delivery of mental health care that is culturally safe and responsive to needs of communities across the state of Victoria. The Cultural Diversity and Mental Health CoP is a group learning space that aims to:

• Encourage members to mutually share their understandings and knowledge of issues in the area of cultural diversity and mental health, and learn from each other
• Help members to consider ways to provide culturally responsive mental health care in their role within their workplace
• Support the sharing of information and practice wisdom between members
• Provide opportunities for learning and reflecting on contemporary policy and practice changes or reforms 
• Support networking with like-minded peers
• Engage members in learning opportunities, discussions and reflection.

Membership

The CoP is open to people working in publicly funded mental health services, including the lived experience workforce, and other community sectors, including educational and social services, across the state of Victoria. Please note this space is currently not offered to practitioners solely working in private practice.

Expectations of Membership

• This is a face-to-face CoP and as such all members are expected to attend and participate in scheduled quarterly meetings either in person or via video conferencing (via Zoom).
• All members are expected to share their experiences, and any documents or other resources they have which they think will be useful to all members.
• All members are expected to utilise the online platform (Loomio) in line with the CoP Guidelines as set out below.

Structure

• The CoP will be convened by Victorian Transcultural Mental Health.
• The CoP will meet quarterly in the calendar year.
• The meeting will last for 2 hours.
• There is a general agenda format that is used for each session.
• There is flexibility if desired for the Chairing of sessions to rotate between members. The chair is responsible for facilitating group discussions to ensure that communication is appropriate and respectful. The agenda and/or objectives will be developed in collaboration with the CoP facilitators. 
• The CoP is responsive to the learning needs of members. Activities may also occur outside of the quarterly meetings where identified by the group members.
• Members will be kept informed of CoP agendas, venues, and activities via email and/or the online platform (Loomio).
• If feedback indicates a need, the TOR will be amended, varied or modified by the CoP Conveners and CoP members will be advised. This document is reviewed yearly.

CoP Guidelines

• The Loomio platform is used to post information such as upcoming meetings, discussing any special events or for attaching and sharing documents related to discussions we have around particular topics.
• Members are to use a profile image of themselves, or their initials when creating their Loomio profile.
• To ensure a safe and inclusive discussion space, the facilitators will have the discretion to remove any content that is deemed inappropriate
• In keeping with the membership criteria, the facilitators will have the discretion to not approve some requests.
• Those members who continually do not attend scheduled quarterly meetings will be contacted by facilitators to discuss their ongoing membership.

We use Loomio, an online collaboration tool, to manage registrations. The registration process takes no more than 5 minutes. Please ensure you have reviewed our Terms of Reference, which cover how the CoP functions, and what is expected of members prior to joining.

How to register

Please note: We recommend using Google Chrome or Safari as some versions of Internet Explorer may not support Loomio.