Home care relies heavily on relationships of trust, and for care recipients from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds or from the LGBTQI+ community, welcoming strangers into the home can be intimidating.
As the sector inches closer to the new Support at Home model, providers need to ensure they are providing the necessary support and safeguards for equitable care for both employees and care participants, Marie Alford –HammondCare general manager of growth and innovation national programs – told day two delegates of the Ageing Australia National Conference 2025 while facilitating a panel discussion.
Speaking on the panel, Multicultural Communities Council of the Gold Coast chief executive officer Shane Klintworth noted that part of improving safety in home care requires the sector to move away from the idea that multicultural care is a niche service.
Australian society is changing rapidly, and diversity can sometimes bring challenges, meaning providers must be mindful about the way they deal with conflicts or tension and ensure that both workers and participants are protected from unnecessary trauma or service delivery inconsistent with their wishes, he said.
“From my point of view, I think that we collectively have responsibilities as leaders to be really, really intentional about the way that we are going about preparing for our diverse workforce, whether that’s through cultural or ethnic belongings or religious views,” Mr Klintworth explained.
“And we need to be able to do that in a way that sets us up for the way that we want to finish, so I guess it’s about beginning with the end in mind – to pause and reflect and think about the type of service that we want to be, the type of client experience that we want to provide and the culture of the workplace that we want our staff to experience. And that just doesn’t happen by accident, it requires intentionality and consistency.”
South West Kinship executive cultural navigator and educator Sharon Wood-Kenney added that cultural safety goes beyond “words we write on a piece of paper,” and requires everyone to unpack their own biases and assumptions about others.
“We should all be learning about what our biases are. We’ll go back to being good humans. It’s as simple as that,” she said.
“Treat everyone like you want to be treated – and that’s what our nans have said since we were little kids, I think we’ve lost our way a little bit – it’s nothing else.”
“So cultural safety comes with being the best human you can be with what you know today and if we make it our business, we do not need a policy or a process to tell us to be good humans or to ask us to be the best we can be,” she continued.
But some aged care workers and home care clients are just simply not a good fit and that needs to be accepted, said Ms Wood-Kenney, who encouraged providers to allow people to include on their paperwork anything that they would deem a conflicting or uncomfortable situation so it can simply be avoided.
“It needs to be okay, because at the end of the day, you don’t want to put the two wrong people together, because one thing can change someone’s life for a long, long time,” she said.
Mindful recruitment key
Providers need to also make sure they are hiring for emotional intelligence, said dementia advocate Gwenda Darling.
“I think that’s something we often overlook when we’re hiring people and in this industry, because it’s a caring, kind industry, we’ve got to match people and… if we want to avoid issues, if we want to avoid workers’ compensation claims, we’ve got to really match participants with their carers,” she said.
Mr Klintworth agreed, saying it is the leadership team who needs to understand the environment and circumstances which they are sending people into on a daily basis and ensure they have the tools and resources to thrive.
“This will sound harsh, but I also think that from a human resources perspective you need to be 110 per cent on top of the people that you are bringing on board and the old adage slow to hire, quick to fire is something that we live by,” he said.
“You can’t afford to have someone with poor values or beliefs that are not consistent with your organisation in your organisation because those beliefs will spread like cancer, so you have to act swiftly and I think that’s something that we can all do and be on top of as hard as that is.”
Ms Wood-Kenney, Ms Darling and Mr Klintworth were joined on the panel by Elder Abuse Action Australia executive officer Bev Lange and Christine Sellman from Silver Pride Advocacy Network and LGBTIQ+ Health Australia.
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