Australian Multicultural Community Services Good Practice Projects
The Centre interviewed Olivia Oh and Katie Levine from Australian Multicultural Community Services about culturally inclusive practices across its program delivery.
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| Olivia Oh | Katie Levine |
Australian Multicultural Community Services (AMCS) was established more than 35 years ago. It started to help refugees that came from Poland to Australia. A visionary group of community leaders established Australia Polish Community Services for Polish people to have equal access to social services and opportunities for their senior care.
Today, the mission is to improve lives through care, support and empowerment.
“AMCS provide a suite of services to care for our clients, both in-home and in the community. It’s our commitment to an equitable, just and compassionate society that allows us to respond to our community’s needs effectively and appropriately,” said Katie.
Culturally inclusive feedback approaches at AMCS
AMCS work with multicultural clients to ensure people can provide feedback in their first language. Support workers are encouraged to help clients to fill out surveys.
“People can provide feedback in writing in their own language or orally,” said Olivia.
Also, older people have the opportunity to speak directly with care advisors and most care advisors speak a language other than English.
Money Talks for Better Ageing Project
This project aims to strengthen the financial wellbeing of seniors from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The project successfully completed three co-design online workshops with over 100 culturally and linguistically diverse older people from metropolitan Melbourne.
“We had multilingual staff in the project consultations and developed fact sheets and videos available in 10 languages on our website,” said Olivia.
You’re Not Alone Project
Due to language barriers and social isolation, seniors with dementia from multicultural backgrounds often have difficulty in accessing information in their own language and navigating different dementia support services. So, AMCS asked older people living with dementia what the solutions may be.
“Around 70 older people attended the co-design day. It was an opportunity for people with mild dementia and carers to create actionable solutions and share stories. On the story-telling day, people could vote on proposed solutions,” said Olivia.
Some of the solutions included: organising a short dancing class to promote the feeling of social engagement and physical activity as well as information in the older person’s preferred language to navigate dementia services.
For more information about AMCS’ current and past projects, we encourage you to visit amcservices.org.au/projects.
Thank you Olivia and Katie for sharing your good practice story.