| Cultural Diversity |
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Bilingual Case Managers and clinicians
The role of the Bilingual Case Managers (BCM) and bilingual clinicians is to:
- Reduce barriers to access for ethnic communities through the presence of bilingual/bicultural staff in mental health services;
- Provide equitable clinical services to CALD clients in their own language, with an understanding of their cultural background;
- Enhance the cross-cultural clinical skills of other case managers through joint case management and secondary consultation;
- Conduct professional development activities on mental health issues in their community, and collaborate in related training.
Half of a BCMs case-load consists of clients of their own culture, and half are clients of other cultures, to avoid marginalisation of the role. Approximately 25% of BCMs time is devoted to community development work to decrease stigma and increase knowledge of mental illness and mental health services in ethnic communities.
Community development work includes:
- conduct of community mental health forums for CALD consumers, carers, and general community;
- carer support groups;
- collaborative work with ethno-specific agencies;
- ethnic radio programs;
- newspaper articles;
- talks to various community groups on mental health;
- consultation to ethnospecific workers and to mental health staff from other services;
- and a range of other activities.
Current bilingual staff are:
- Tracey Tang: Cantonese and Mandarin (Inner West Area Mental Health Service)
- Trieu Nguyen: Vietnamese (Northern Area Mental Health Service).
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