CALD & Indigenous
Indigenous Issues Paper
The capacity to provide both culturally specific and mainstream services and the ability to appropriately meet the needs of indigenous people, is an increasingly important issue for the aged and community care industry. In order to identify the key issues for ACSA to pursue, a small working group of nominated people with experience in indigenous aged care was convened. They developed a strategy paper for the ACSA Board that identified key issues for ACSA to address. The working group also identified the need for their, and ACSA's, work to be seen and where possible owned by indigenous communities and providers. As a result a National Indigenous Aged Care Planning Day was held in February 2006 which brought together a range of people involved in indigenous aged care from across Australia.
A Cultural Pool for Aged Care
In September 2006 ACSA released a national policy position “Strength through Diversity – Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Aged and Community Care.” The policy suggested that a cultural pool should be established to enhance and promote good quality care for older people from CALD backgrounds. This paper explores further the rationale for a pool and how it could operate. In preparing this paper it became clear that there is little data on how much is required to provide adequate support or culturally appropriate care, and the nature of the areas that require additional funding. Therefore a research and evaluation project must be an integral part of the design of the pool.
