Recovery-oriented mental health practice and service delivery is respectful of and responsive to diversity in the community.
Core principles
- Effective mental health services are responsive and suited to a person’s age, developmental phase and gender-related needs.
- Responsive and inclusive services respect and accommodate diversity among people who use services, including people from diverse cultural backgrounds, language groups and communities.
- Gender, sex identity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs and spiritual practices are acknowledged and responses to diversity become core components of service delivery.
- Diverse views on mental health issues/illness, wellbeing, treatments, services and recovery are understood and accommodated.
- Recovery-oriented services seek to overcome the adverse impacts of location or setting.
Characteristics
Values and attitudes
Mental health practitioners and providers...- embrace, value and celebrate diversity
- understand their own values, assumptions and world views
- recognise peoples’ expression of their personal identity and beliefs
- acknowledge the relevance of personal belief systems to mental health including cultural, religious and spiritual perspectives
Knowledge
Mental health practitioners and providers...- understand stages of human development and how approaches to recovery might differ across the life span
- understand cultural diversity and its applicability to mental health practice and service delivery
- understand the range of factors influencing people’s expectations of safe practice Top of page
Skills and behaviours
Mental health practitioners and providers...- demonstrate sensitivity when working with people and families from a diverse range of backgrounds irrespective of age, developmental phase, gender, culture, religious beliefs or language group
- use the information provided by diverse groups of people about their preferences and needs to develop appropriate responses
- provide safe care that reflects and actively includes people’s values, aspirations, goals, circumstances and previous life choices
- deliver developmentally appropriate responses
- support people in the practice of spiritual activities they find helpful
- understand the importance of seeking out assistance when in doubt about aspects of diversity
Recovery-oriented practice
Mental health practitioners and providers...- provide opportunities for people to share information about their needs and expectations related to age, development, gender, sex identity, sexual orientation and spirituality
- include family recovery approaches, especially for infants, children and where relevant for adolescents
- ensure access to diversity and cultural support services when required
- access knowledge about diversity from people with lived experience of mental health issues
- establish understanding of shared and different perspectives of mental health Top of page
Recovery-oriented leadership
Mental health practitioners and providers...- ensure participation opportunities for all, including children and young people
- proactively incorporate input from people with a lived experience to ensure responsiveness to age, gender and diversity in organisational policy, practice and service improvements
- set in place processes for systematically identifying training needs and regularly reviewing practices to ensure that staff and volunteers embrace cultural, gender and age sensitive and safe practice
- routinely offer appropriate age, gender and diversity competence development and training
- have systems in place to identify and monitor the changing needs of local population groups.
Opportunities
Use e-mental health service developments to increase responsiveness to rural and remote communities and to fly in/fly out employees, their families and their adopting communities.Resource materials
- Women’s Centre for Health Matters 2009, WCHM position paper on Gender sensitive health service delivery, Women’s Centre for Health Matters, Canberra,
www.wchm.org.au/GenderSensitiveHealthServiceProvision.htm - Victorian Department of Health 2011, Cultural responsiveness framework: guidelines for Victorian health services, docs.health.vic.gov.au/docs/doc/Cultural-responsiveness-framework---Guidelines-for-Victorian-health-services
- AICAFMHA 2008, National youth participation strategy (NYPS) in mental health, www.aicafmha.net.au/youth_participation/files/AIC35_report.pdf