Northcott

Cultural Competency Framework

Issue:
Ageing, Disability and Home Care (ADHC), part of NSW Government’s Family and Community Services commissioned the Diversity in Disability project, with project lead Northcott, which sought to develop a sector based cultural competency framework to help support sustainable diversity capabilities and build the capacity of non-government service providers to work with a diverse workforce and population. The draft framework had initially been pilot tested to a small number of organisations to explore different levels of intervention, as well as identifying levels of cultural competence and gaps, and provided recommendations for potential tools.

Solution:
DiverseWerks was commissioned to work with Northcott to conduct a series of workshops and consultations to understand the needs within the disability, ethno-specific and mainstream sectors to ensure the Diversity in Disablity framework was adopted within the sector.

We conducted two types of consultations – sector forums and key informant interviews. A final consultation report was developed succinctly summarising the findings from the consultations, with particular regard to engagement and capacity working with CALD populations (particularly in a post NDIS world), and cultural competency generally.

Results:
The framework is adaptable and sustainable, to fit the needs of the range of staff, clients and families/carers in terms of experiences and preferences, particularly in relation to culturally competent person centred planning, support and service provision. The report also provided recommendations on the information, tools, strategies and resources required to help encourage the sector to take up the framework. Northcott is currently exploring options for a permanent home for the website and toolkit.