The Loddon Mallee Health Network is working to support Cultural Safety and is working towards Anti-Racism.
System Reform for First Nations Communities within ED/UCCs
The current Department of Health-funded research project is First Nations-led and designed to position First Nations voices first and foremost.
In collaboration with La Trobe University, the LMHN is committed to listening, hearing, understanding, and responding to support health services to change and improve systems that are inherently racist.
The following ‘Statement of Commitment’ reflects the LMHN’s commitment to First Nations learning and unlearning at each of our health services in support of the joint research initiative with La Trobe University – First Nations People’s Lived Experience of Emergency Departments (ED) and Urgent Care Centres (UCC) – a best practice model to support discharge planning and reduce preventable ED/UCC presentations in the Loddon Mallee Region.
Statement of Commitment
The LMHN acknowledges its role as a healthcare group in continuing and intensifying its work towards reconciliation. To this end, The LMHN commits itself to transform itself into an actively anti-racist healthcare network, across all of its 15 services in the region. Anti-racism entails deconstructing systems which implicitly or explicitly privilege certain people groups or cultures over others.
We acknowledge this means much more than embracing cultural awareness and cultural safety for all people groups. Rather it entails taking tangible and reportable steps towards creating culturally safe environments for our First Nations community, staff, and those who seek our care. Importantly, cultural safety is met through actions from the non-First Nations majority position which recognises, respects, and nurtures the unique cultural identity and sovereign knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia. Only the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person who is a recipient of our care can determine whether our services are culturally safe.
To facilitate this transformation, the organisation commits to a process of deep listening, as part of a broader project of truth-telling within the organisation and the community. Truth Telling is crucial to the Uluru Statement From the Heart and the proposed Makarrata Commission. It means acknowledging historic and continuing violence towards First Peoples committed since settlement, as well as adopting an abundance mentality, which amplifies and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures, languages, knowledge and processes.
Truth Telling will require learning and unlearning for many of our staff, and the ability to sit in moments of discomfort. The organisation commits to finding opportunities to provide such cultural safety education.
We are committed to working collaboratively with our AHLOs, ACCHOs and First Nations Research Team to enact these changes. The Victorian Aboriginal Health, Medical and Wellbeing Research Accord will underpin our efforts to implement this transformation, meaning research creates tangible benefits for First Nations communities.
How can we know what is culturally safe?
AHPRA defines cultural safety as determined by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals, families, and communities. Culturally safe practice is the ongoing critical reflection of health practitioner knowledge, skills, attitudes, practicing behaviours, and power differentials in delivering safe, accessible and responsive healthcare free of racism.