CALD Community Connections
|
CALD youth making connections and supporting each other
|
|
CALD Community Connections is a community suicide prevention project that works to increase wellbeing, reduce suicide risk and enhance capacity for individuals to respond to suicidal crises within CALD communities in Tasmania. The project primarily achieves this through the delivery of information packages, workshops, training programs and support groups. CALD Community Connections is managed by The Phoenix Centre.
Aims
CALD Community Connections aims to develop and increase community capacity to work with CALD individuals, to recognise risk within individuals and to provide support for CALD individuals who live in Tasmania.
The project’s services are open to all CALD clients in Tasmania, with a particular focus on specific groups identified as being at need. They include the Chinese, Burmese, Sierra Leone, Sudanese and Farsi speaking communities.
Background
In 2007 and 2008 the Phoenix Centre received funding from the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing for a suicide prevention project named Building a Trauma, Culture and Rural Mental Health Consortium (BTCRMHC). CALD Community Connections was formed from key recommendations that came out of BTCRMHC’s evaluation, which identified a need for suicide prevention and mental health education in CALD communities. CALD Community Connections received funding from the Commonwealth’s National Suicide Prevention Strategy (NSPS) in 2009.
Location
CALD Community Connections is a state-wide Tasmanian project. The Phoenix Centre is situated in Hobart and Launceston.
Activities
Activities conducted by CALD Community Connections include developing support groups, delivering mental health and suicide prevention workshops and providing support and training to service providers who are working with CALD clients.
CALD Community Connections expanded Multicultural Mental Health Australia’s Mental Health Stigma Reduction package to include information specifically related to suicide prevention. The project has trained bicultural community trainers in the package, which they then deliver to CALD communities.
The project develops support groups for men, women and youth. The youth groups initiative includes school holiday camps which aim to build social connectedness by encouraging participants to talk about issues in their lives, increase their self esteem and so forth. CALD Community Connections also provides individual support for people at risk, including assessment of suicide risk and, where appropriate, counselling and referral to other services.
The project also provides training and support to service providers who work with CALD clients who are at risk of suicide or who need mental health support.
Challenges
The major ongoing challenges encountered by CALD Community Connections include:
- the effectiveness of written communication, as many people within the project’s target demographic cannot read or have low level comprehension;
- gaining access to interpreters who have specific training in mental health; and
- accessing appropriate data, given there is limited mental health and suicide related data about CALD communities and there are many issues regarding methods of data collection.
Project partners
CALD Community Connections has formal partnerships with:
The project also has informal partnerships with:
More information
To learn more about the CALD Community Connections project, email Phoenix Centre Manager Dr Gillian Long or telephone (03) 6234 9138.