This document provides tips for engaging culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities and carers to ensure a culturally diverse client pool for disability support services. It discusses the importance of getting to know the community, building trust over time, not making assumptions, focusing on human rights, effective communication, celebrating strengths, and ongoing reflection on cultural competency. The goals are to raise awareness of disability rights and supports, develop skills to exercise greater choice and control, and promote the rights of people with disabilities from CALD backgrounds.

1. How to engage CALD
communities and carers
to ensure a culturally
diverse client pool
Ingrid Boland and Stephanie De Lorenzo
Ethnic Community Services Co-operative

2. Ethnic Community Services Co-operative
Our vision is that every
Australian from a culturally
and linguistically diverse
background has the
opportunity to participate
fully in Australian society and
receive services that are
relevant and appropriate to
their needs.

3. Ethnic Community Services Co-operative

4. Cultural Diversity and Disability
ECSC’s experience
•“Double Disadvantage” pioneered in the 1980s; concept
of multiple disadvantage is still relevant today
Ongoing focus
•Information and advocacy for CALD people with disabilities
and their families
•Community outreach and NDIS capacity building
•Multicultural respite services and carer support groups
•Specialist advice, training and
resources to services

5. CALD Capacity Building Project
Project goals
•Raise awareness about disability rights and supports
•Develop skills and confidence required to exercise
greater choice and control
Core activities
•Community outreach and consultation
•Information sessions on disability in a cultural context, disability rights and the
disability system in Australia
•NDIS workshops and pre-planning mentoring
•Resource development
•Stakeholder engagement

6. Ethnic People with Disabilities Program
Promoting the rights of people
with a disability from CALD
backgrounds through:
•Individual advocacy, information and referral
•Community development
•Systemic advocacy
•Training and support for service providers

7. Engaging CALD
communities:
what matters most?

8. Tip 1: Get to know your community
• Why outreach
• Research community profiles
• Find out a little about the culture(s)
your clients may identify with
• Don’t make assumptions
• It’s not what you know…
• Power of partnerships

9. Tip 2: Take time to build trust
• Listen and respond to immediate
concerns
• Be careful and patient with the
information you provide
• Be an ally
• Do what you say you will do
• Be upfront and realistic about the
limitations of your service – but
acknowledge the impact this may
have

10. Tip 3: Assume nothing! Be curious.
• Don’t make assumptions about an
individual’s level of awareness of
disability rights, the disability support
system, the NDIS..
• Realise there may be a reason you
haven’t thought of…
• Things may not always be what they
seem…

11. Tip 4: Bring it back to human rights
• A shared foundation
• A link to person centred
approaches
• Empowering carers to advocate
for themselves and their family

12. Tip 5: Communication matters
• If you are struggling to understand,
straining to follow or feeling a bit
lost: offer an interpreter
• Ask clients for their feedback on
working with an interpreter
• Help with forms and letters
• Level of language (formality)
• Interpreters or bilingual workers?
• Repeat messaging

13. Tip 6: Celebrate strengths and
achievements
• Easy to forget…
• Look for strengths in the family in
terms of what is meaningful to
them
• Celebrate increasing confidence
and empowerment

14. Tip 7: Reflect on your practice
• Cultural competency is an ongoing
process
• Be aware of your own cultural position:
you are not neutral!
• Make use of existing resources

15. What next?
• The world of disability services is
changing
• Remember the reasons for the change:
“The current disability support
arrangements are inequitable,
underfunded, fragmented and
inefficient and give people with
disability little choice”
(Productivity Commission, 2011)
• How will you engage CALD
communities to use your service?

16. Thank you!
ingrid.b@ecsc.org.au
stephanie.d@ecsc.org.au