Organisation: Agency for Clinical Innovation
The project has produced an interactive website (with written and digital content) that provides information and guidance to assist regional LHDs seeking to establish refugee-focussed health services by documenting the way established organisational models/services are being used to deliver care to people of refugee background. General elements have been documented, as well as four vignettes that illustrate the four regional models, the impact their care has on people from refugee background, and lessons learned about successful implementation approaches and navigation of system challenges. The website hosts a resource library of consolidated resources that will support new staff orientating into refugee health system models.
Dominique Holt
Organisation: Cancer Institute NSW
This project is a multi-agency partnership that aims to create awareness and improve participation of refugee communities from the Middle East and Sub-Saharan African region in population-based cancer screening. The project will focus on target communities residing in regional areas.
Organisation: Centre for Oral Health Strategy
This project will ensure refugees and asylum seekers have timely access to oral health care and treatment as necessary, by providing a targeted assessment day as needed and improved access to interpreter supported treatment clinics in selected locations in regional NSW and metropolitan Sydney.
Angela Masoe
Organisation: Hunter New England LHD
Armidale is Australia’s first new regional refugee settlement site in over a decade. This innovative project has enhanced refugee nursing provision, providing social work, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech pathology. The creation of a refugee health multidisciplinary team has been successful in coordinating and supporting clients in accessing broader specialist needs, as well as providing dedicated health education programs, mental health support and school-based interventions.
Ashley Young
Organisation: Illawarra Shoalhaven LHD
This project aims to improve mainstream services' capability in working with refugee women and children. It is a collaborative project to implement an organisational change process across the continuum of care as well as enhancing cultural responsiveness amongst mainstream staff working in maternal care and children’s health and education services.
Leissa Pitts
Organisation: Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network
This project will develop a care pathway for people with lived experience of torture and trauma who are treated within secure settings including people from refugee or refugee like backgrounds. The project officer will review how the adult screening process identifies this cohort and how JHFMHN can improve the provision of culturally sensitive and trauma-informed care.
Jennifer Culph
Organisation: Mental Health Branch
Mindgardens Neuroscience Network (Mindgardens) has co-designed an adaptation of an evidence-based lifestyle intervention for people living with poor mental health (Keeping the Body in Mind). This program will evaluate this adapted intervention on participant outcomes along with a focus on building capacity of service providers to engage with and facilitate lifestyle change.
Organisation: Mid North Coast LHD
The project will contribute to more holistic culturally-sensitive care provision through additional clinical workforce, including physiotherapy and social work support to coordinate and support patients when accessing specialists outside of the Coffs Harbour area. Increased capacity will be used to coordinate patient care, offer school-based clinics and tailored health education programs.
Michele Greenwood
Organisation: Northern NSW LHD
The project will co-design a local Multicultural and Refugee Health Strategy. Outputs will also include governance to oversee implementation of new initiatives, increase in engagement with local CALD communities, as well as increased use of health care interpreters.
Organisation: Northern Sydney LHD
The Northern Beaches peninsular has the largest Tibetan refugee community in Australia. Concern has been expressed by clinicians regarding the late presentation of Tibetan children with developmental delays to early intervention services and the low uptake of the Blue Book child development checks. This project will work in partnership with Tibetan refugee families to co-design a model of care to improve access to culturally responsive child health nursing services and resources.
Organisation: South Eastern Sydney LHD
The NSW Multicultural Health Communication Service (MHCS) project will increase targeted communication of health information to people from refugee backgrounds. It will take a systematic approach to audit and translate health resources, including audio and video. It will also develop best practice guidelines around the development of health resources for refugee communities.
Sylvia Giannone
Organisation: South Western Sydney LHD
This project will scale-up a successful consumer partnership model of service delivery that engages vulnerable CALD community members to navigate mainstream hospital services and manage their chronic conditions. The project will recruit volunteer ‘natural helpers’ to partner with mainstream healthcare teams and target communities. They will deliver peer-led health coaching that complements clinical care, while supporting patients with service navigation.
This project aims to build digital health literacy and social media skills in refugee communities in South West Sydney through partnerships with health and community organisations and the University of Technology Sydney. It will utilise participatory action research, online workshops, as well as develop a train the trainer programs for digital health literacy online workshops in languages other than English.
Michael Camit
Organisation: Sydney Children's Hospitals Network
The project will improve timely access for refugee patients to tertiary mental health services through improvement of clinical pathways, including referral pathways and care navigation/coordination for refugees and asylum seekers. It will feed into a broader body of PEAcH projects, which are a network-wide Quality Improvement aimed at building and supporting sustainable screening and referral systems to enhance access to priority patients.
Organisation: Western Sydney LHD
This Transcultural Mental Health Centre (TMHC) project will work with NGOs and related services and provide emotional wellbeing services for people from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka (Tamil-speaking) who reside in Western Sydney. The project seeks to identify and ameliorate signs and symptoms of psychological distress before mental status deteriorates to the need for the public mental health service. The TMHC will also work with, support and supervise clinicians from target communities to use their cultural and language concordance and professional skills to meet the project goals.