Wanting to find out more? Check out these links:
If you would like further information about the Multicultural Advisory Service, please visit:
This season of SNACK has been produced by the Ethnic Communities’ Council of Queensland as part of the COTA Queensland Home Care Workforce Support Program which received grant funding from the Australian Government.
Produced by Martin Franklin at East Coast Studio
We acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which this podcast has been produced, and we pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to elders past and present. Welcome to SNAC, the Aged Care podcast where we break down some of the big questions around what it really means to be person centered. This podcast is brought to you by the Ethnic Communities Council of Queensland, also known as ECCQ, the peak body for multicultural communities in Queensland. In this episode, we will hear from Anjuan Lai from ECCQ’s multicultural advisory service and Adele Dang. Adele is a South Sudanese community member who is caring for her mom in a regional town in Queensland. Explains her experiences and challenges in accessing culturally appropriate care. Hello? Hello there. There. Okay. Yeah. For some times, people have been talking about aged care issues, particularly, accessing those aged care services by the people from cultural and linguistically diverse background, generally, in Australia, but particularly in the rural and remote areas. There have been persisting, issues that need to be captured and highlighted. Some of these issues, are to do with the engagement between service providers, aged care service providers, and consumers, clients, or their families, or their carers from culturally and linguistically diverse. I understand that you are your your mother is on level 4, CHSP, which is Commonwealth Home Support Program, and, you have been supervising that as the services are being delivered to her. Yes. My mom, she’s in a high level of supposed to be taken care of, but there’s not much support for her, and not any sort of, like, the government sent to assist to come and ask the information what need to be done to assist the level she’s in, those sort of support.
Has the service provider been engaging with you as as the primary care person, the family member? Is has there been ongoing contact? No. No. Is the support worker worker of your cultural background? No. I think that’s one of the main issues in the rural and remote areas when it comes to accessing culturally appropriate care from service providers. There has aged care service providers been engaging with the community members? Did you see that? Do they inform you of, what services yourself and your and and your mother could be eligible to access? No. They don’t inform us, not only my mother, and also I’m a a community leader. I see that in my community. A lot of elder people, older people, they struggle. No much information to deliver to community for us to know that we can assist the all the people to support them. Because of the background of that those older people that download the system. Adele now provides some suggestions as to how service providers could help community members in understanding what services are available to them. It’s like, the community leaders should be given a training, like a network. They can know what is available for all the people that what is the services around, where to go. We should be trained, and then we can look after our older people in the community. And also, the older person needs someone from the language because of the language barrier to work with her because to him or her from their language, from their community. There has there been respired services accessible to your mother? Not at all. Not only my mother. Not happened to my mother, but for others of elder people in my community. Nothing is like that. No. Nothing. So you don’t actually get respite.
Is that because, there are no culturally appropriate respite centers that offer programs that could be more culturally responsive? No. No. It’d be really good if they can offer something like that for our community in general. Sometime I have a problem, but I need something like that for my mother. And and I don’t I don’t find I don’t find that. So language and lack of knowledge are Yes. Some of the major barriers Yeah. Accessing the services. Yeah. The further away you go from the center, the more, these issues are quite affecting, the population. We will hear from Adele how she would like care workers to support her mother and other families when providing services. We need to work together with the family like me and the disability employer. To work with the family together, that could be arranged, and knowing community who will be fit to work with her. You need also to be informed. You need the the care workers to, not to only focus on the client, but include the the the family of the clients or the family of the client can have an input into the care that is being delivered? Is is that what you you would prefer happening? Yes. Yes. Do you think there is more to be done about communication when the the care workers communicate with the the people they they they support. That communication could, also we extend it to the carers like yourself, the the the relatives, the family, as you said? Yeah. Family and her too. She have to know what to do with what support she’s getting. She have to be included as well. We know that food connects people. Offering food to guests is a cultural norm that many cultures practice. This hospitality is offered to care workers as well as they are going into people’s homes.
However, sometimes it may be an organisation’s policy for their staff not to accept food and drinks, so care workers could politely refuse the offer of food and drinks. And it is important to explain the policy to the clients, so they don’t get offended. There are also other considerations such as understanding that people from different parts of Africa may do things differently and gender is important when working with clients as some people would prefer to have care workers of the same gender. From the engagement that I have established so far with some African background communities in Toowoomba, I was able to conclude that people would prefer if there is a conversation, rather than a care worker would just come and straightaway start with what they are doing. But people would want to talk to them, things like, the small talk, sometimes offering of drinks or food. How comfortable are you when when the care workers come home and they don’t accept the offer of, drinks and food from your family? It’s not it’s not that good. Sometimes you feel bad because we have culture we share. We share food, we share communication when someone come to care for you. If it’s someone because of different culture, sometimes I feel like that’s why the rejected even cup of tea or food from one we offer. You feel like not to accept it? There is a gap there of strangers who want to remain strangers. No communication. They don’t talk. They don’t want to come in. They don’t even no language. Where you can communicate to know your support para to you. So that’s a big issue. Africa have many African countries, so every country of Africa have their own culture. So they need to get all this culture, and treat every individual their own passion, their own religion, and belief, and also the agenda they have.
So, that means stereotyping all Africans to be one group that belong to one culture is not is not right because there are so many diverse cultures in in in Africa, for example. The Muslim religion people, culture, the women have to be served by women. You can’t send the men to serve their women, so it’s a bit different from our culture. But for our culture, as I’m in South Sudan, The man could serve my mother, that’s fine. Could take her shopping, take her somewhere, but for the Muslim the Middle East people will be no owner. So they have their own religion, their own culture, their own belief, So they need to be delivered the training to know the the culture, what they believe Fine. On. So and we have a lot of Middle East in Toowoomba, a lot of older men and women, and we have a lot of African different countries in Toowoomba as well, and a lot of older people in the community of Toowoomba. So they need to be delivering the service to be available for them. I’ve seen some older people in Toowoomba communities, some of them already really old. They’re looking for respite because they’ve been but they don’t have that available. Sometimes it’s really, really hard for for the daughter. If daughter is going away or working, it’s very hard. Do you think the service provider that is looking after your mom has been adequately using interpreters to communicate with your mom? Or No. We don’t have interpreter around. That’s a big issue as well. We used to have organization called On Call many years ago, and that been because we didn’t have them around anymore, and we don’t have interpreter at home. So sometime you have to beg your daughter or someone from community to go out with you to the hospital appointment or or for food to help the elderly person access what needs to be done for them.
And sometimes it’s really hard because the privacy. So it’s hard between mom and daughter, mom and son, who to know everything. So they don’t want that. Sometimes they they even keep it to themselves. They don’t talk about it. But if they have interpreter around available for them, that would make life easier for them. They can share a lot of information. They will feel feel more confident confident to share information. Yes. We need interpreter in the community. Alright. Yeah. Thank you very much for that, and I really appreciate your time this afternoon. Okay. Thank you. In this episode, Adele shared her experience as a carer for her mother and as a South Sudanese community leader. She provided suggestions of how care workers could support her family and community in accessing culturally appropriate care. Adele also said that it would be helpful to have more knowledge of what services are available, having bicultural staff, and easy access to professional interpreters. African communities are not homogeneous, And people from different parts of Africa may do things differently. Do have a conversation with the clients and ask if you’re not sure. It is important for care workers to have knowledge about clients’ different cultures, and ECCQ’s multi out Join us for the next episode of Snack to hear more about caring for culturally and linguistically diverse people. Funding for this podcast has been provided by the Council on the Ageing Queensland Home Care Workforce Support Consortium as part of the Home Care Support Programme, which was funded through grant funding from the Australian government.
