Health Translations Directory to include information on Children, Family Services and Family Violence

We seek your support to help promote the Health Translations Directory and the benefits of translated resources amongst your colleagues, other family support services, networks and your clients and local communities.

Access to accurate information is crucial for making informed decisions about our health and wellbeing. It is also critical in helping us to understand what resources are available, how to find and use the services we need and in understanding our rights and entitlements.

For people with low English language proficiency, accessing information that they can understand and effectively utilise can be a significant challenge. This is further compounded by many migrant and refugee communities’ unfamiliarity with services and our complex health system. 

The Health Translations Directory was developed as a response to such challenges. The Directory, funded by the Victorian Government, is an online library, which has over 14, 000 reliable, up to date translated health and wellbeing resources (both print and audio-visual) in over 100 languages. It is used by health professionals, community workers and culturally and linguistically diverse communities across Australia. 

Due to the success of the Directory, which has close to 600 unique visitors daily, we are now expanding the resource to include new topics such as housing, child and family services and family violence.

Research has found that immigrant and refugee women affected by family violence face additional barriers to accessing support, which increases their vulnerability. Issues such as poor English language proficiency, unemployment and social isolation play a critical role in reinforcing strategies by perpetrators that can prevent women from seeking assistance.  Inadequate English language skills, in particular, were found to be a significant barrier to women negotiating and communicating with the broader community and in seeking help in relation to family violence.

The Health Translations Directory can be used as a tool to assist women and families to access services and increase awareness about family violence and support services. So far, we have added a number of resources to the Directory such as fact sheets on domestic violence, how to seek help and information about primary prevention. However, to continue to expand and build a comprehensive range of information resources on family violence and support services in multiple languages, we need your help.

Please contact us if your organisation has produced translated information on topics such as family violence and child and family services or if you know of any relevant translated resources that should be shared. We would also love to hear from you if you believe there is a need for translated information about your services and initiatives or a particular issue affecting CALD women and families. Similarly, we can support you in developing your own translated resources. 

You can help promote the Directory in a number of ways, including: introducing your clients to the Directory; featuring information and a link to the Directory on your website, facebook page or twitter account; including an item about the Directory in your newsletter; and displaying brochures in your organisations or service sites.  Ultimately, we want to reach as many CALD communities as possible through the family services sector and the workforce is a critical conduit.

Please join us in helping to remove barriers to information for Victoria’s culturally and linguistically diverse families. For further information, please email Mary Gavranic maryg@www.ceh.org.au or phone (03) 9418 9910 (Mondays and Tuesdays).