Kanwal Saleem (pictured), of CEH’s Multicultural Health & Support Service, recently spoke about ‘Cultural Competence in Sexual Health Care’ and its importance for people from migrant and refugee backgrounds as part of the Learn over Lunch (LoL) series. LoL is hosted by True Relationships & Reproductive Health.
The increasing diversity of Australia brings opportunities and challenges for health care providers to create and deliver services that meet the social, cultural, and linguistic needs of people from migrant and refugee backgrounds.
Some common strategies for being a more culturally competent service include:
– Use plain language and avoid medical jargon while communicating with the communities.
– Provide resources in the language that community members are most comfortable with.
– Use interpreters whenever there is a language barrier.
– Train people from the communities to be peer educators.
– Recruit team members who come from the communities you serve.
– Provide cultural competence training to all staff.
CEH provides practical & specialist training to make organisations, staff, and systems more responsive to clients from migrant & refugee backgrounds. For more information head to our training page.