 Good evening everyone. My name is Lou Hess. I have the pleasure of facilitating this evening's conversation. And it's my pleasure in that context to welcome or to note that there have been 1,955 registrants. We expect that there might be a little less participants in terms of other competing commitments. But we're really delighted to welcome you to this webinar providing culturally responsive mental health care during COVID-19 and beyond. As well as to the viewers who will watch this recording at a later stage. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which our webinar presenters and our participants are located. I would also like to pay my respects to Elders past and present. This webinar is a partnership. The Northwest Melbourne and Eastern Melbourne PHNs have contracted the Mental Health Professionals Network to deliver 2 webinars which aim to build the cultural responsiveness of primary health and mental health care practitioners to provide mental health support to people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds during COVID-19 and beyond. I will be facilitating both webinars and this is the first of the two. The second webinar, an interdisciplinary cross-cultural conversation, exploring the meaning of healing and recovery will be broadcast live on Wednesday March 31st at 7.15. We do hope that you will be able to join us for the second webinar. We are of course interested to hear our audience's views and you are invited to use the chat box. And finally a brief comment on the ethos of our time together. As human service professionals we are practised at the art and science of imagining. And of course in this regard we also acknowledge the imaginings of the clients and the communities with whom we work. With appropriate acknowledgement and blessings to the technology gods who make tonight's connection possible, I ask you to imagine that we are sitting around a fire after dinner with either a hot chocolate or a red wine or two engaged in rich and exploratory conversation, engaged in musings and yarnings with friends and colleagues from a multiplicity of human service disciplines about our professional practice with this particular client group. And that in this conversation around the fire will demonstrate curiosity, will share practice wisdom and engage with the professional and personal enigmas of working with the client group, many of whom do not have a cultural reference point or involvement of our conversation. It's important for us to embrace the truth that conversations are seldom completed and that tonight's time constrained engagement with culturally responsive mental health during the pandemic and beyond will inevitably crystallise more questions than provide simple answers. The only caveat on tonight's rich and expansive conversation by the fireside is that it will be my job to keep time, to time keep, to balance breadth and depth and given my interest in conversations I regret that I will sometimes be required to ask panellists to briefly respond or to comment succinctly. So they're all important words of introduction. Now it's my pleasure, my very great pleasure to introduce our panellists. As per the information contained in the brief bio-data, Voux, Radica and Francis are eminently well placed to contribute to our conversations on culturally responsive mental health during COVID and beyond. To complement the credentials identified in the bio-data and as a warm-up to our conversation I now want to invite our panellists to very briefly introduce themselves to us ethnically. Acknowledging that place of birth is but one marker of identity and that ethnic and cultural identity usually embraces both objective and subjective dimensions and is a dynamic and sometimes complex and contested. My invitation to the panellists will be to introduce yourselves ethnically and that will set the scene for our engagement with culturally responsive mental health. We could of course devote the whole evening to musings on ethnic and cultural identity but in this regard dear Voux, Radica and Francis you'll be invited to reply in one or two sentences. How do you identify yourself ethnically? So Voux, to you first for a simple but important ethnic introduction. Hi everyone, my name is Voux. I came originally from Vietnam but grew up in Sunshine West of Melbourne and for GP and my faith is Catholic. Thanks Voux. Radica, an ethnic introduction please. Hello, hello everybody. Lou this is sounding like where are you really from, that kind of a question. Well I was born in Jodhpur Rajasthan so I'm originally from India and I migrated out of India about 30 years ago, thank you. Thanks Radica. Francis? Well the red hat might give it away but more the clothes keep it away. So while I'm from the countryside or from Ghana, my middle name is me, Lante, which is actually from the traditional area of Akkarat in Ghana. Thanks Francis and to complete the introductions, I'm an Anglo-Australian bloke of working class background who slowly but I guess now intentionally is becoming more sensitive to my colour, to my whiteness and to the privilege that that embodies. So thanks everyone. As I said we will, those simple introductions are really I guess foundational to the conversations that we will have tonight in regards to cultural and ethnic identity. Some further comments in terms of introduction. Orientation to our webinar room. Most of the navigation buttons for functions are located in icons at the top right hand corner of your screen. There is a help button if you need assistance or you can message red back directly or ring on the number 1800 733 1416. In terms of the format for tonight, each of the panellists will give a brief three to four minute discipline specific overview of what culturally responsive practice means to them. This will be followed by a panel discussion of three vignettes. The discussion will address the aims of the webinar in regards to culturally responsive mental health. The registration process has also invited participants posing of questions of interest and some of these will be included in the question and answer section to the webinar. Please also note the ground rules document that will inform our co-creation of this space. The learning outcomes are listed on this slide but in summary tonight's webinar aims to capture and explore the opportunities, the imperatives and the complexities of professional practice with clients of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds during the pandemic and beyond. So without further adieu, I'm now going to ask each of our panellists to very briefly in about three minutes or thereabouts speak to what informs their culturally responsive practice identifying four key ingredients and one myth or challenge. Further discussion of this content will take place in the context of our reflection on the vignettes and we will be able to bring greater depth to these insights during that part of our webinar. So Fu, if I could hand over to you please, if you could talk about what informs your practice, etc. You're on mute Fu. Sorry, I've got to unmute myself. Go ahead. What informs my cultural practice is that I've got experience growing up as a young boy in sunshine in the mixed cow background where my father was a refugee from Vietnam. My 10 years or more of experience working as a GP doing this, the new refugees in New England and some cultural awareness course or program that was taught during my GP training. I would say that it's still quite limited compared to the amount of practice or knowledge compared to yours, Lou or Radica or Francis. I'm quite humbled to be on the panel. But at the same time, I would have to admit that my knowledge or experience is still quite limited compared to yours. Lou and ingredients, myth and challenge please. Well, the most important thing, the key ingredient would be to make sure that you allow the time. You need to frame the concept to be able to have the time to listen to your patients first. And then the ability to show that mutual respect about their cultural beliefs. And that has to do a lot with them before you actually say anything. And then the third is to be able to use the appropriate interpreters that is suitable for the client, whether it's the right dialect or the right text to make sure that whatever they're saying is clearly concise. And a lot of the time that it might take a lot longer than the usual concept, but it's worth the while. And the fourth thing is to employ a cow health worker that is appropriate to the community that you're looking after, whether it's the receptionist or whether it's the manager or whether it's a doctor or a nurse or a health that works with the community. And I think that patient can often associate with that or having that sort of connection to turn up more. Thanks, Lou. A myth and a challenge please. So one of the myths I find is that often patients are complaining that they have mental health concerns and worries that it would actually bring shame to themselves and the family. And also it has a lot of discrimination in the community and workforce. So often they seldom want to admit that they've got a mental health problem. And one challenge would be I do find that a lot of the patients would need a lot more support than what Medicare would subsidise. And how do we actually promote awareness or create more funding for these communities of all? Thanks, Lou. Radhika, if we could invite you to comment as Lou has. Sure. But firstly, Lou, I just wanted to say, listening to your practice principles, I am, there's no way one can say you're not a peer power excellence without such a, thank you, such, such beautiful principles and practice for a GP. Thank you. You're learning, Radhika. You're learning. Yes, and the lived experience too. Thanks, mate. So basically what informed my cultural practices? I grew up in a colonial context and a post-colonial education and so the entire kind of career and life has been how do I decolonise knowledge and values and beliefs and so it's a work in progress. What has helped me in that journey is my first degree was in philosophy. So being an ethicist has helped me ground perspectives, I guess, and of course being a brown migrant female woman gives a lot of lived experience of how othering happens. So that's, yeah, that's that. Radhika, your ingredients. Yeah, this was the hardest one, Lou, when you asked me to do because, you know, one always thinks it's like choosing what's the best music you like or something. Because there are so many principles that one would like to share. Anyway, the one I want to share is that we are practitioners as a practitioner. We are imperfect allies, like, but we need each other. We need the sense of solidarity. And that's how clear responsive practice can happen. It's not about clients. It's about the entire ecological system. And the second simple value that I want to bring is how do we honour spaces of not knowing, like, you know, the unknowable, truly to honour that, not to see it as a weakness or a vulnerability. And the third is my, if I'm infatuated with Winnicott, and it's a Winnicottian, as a Winnicottian holding environment, which is like, how can we hold an environment and contain it and not make the environment more aroused or more vigilant, which is what is happening in COVID. So it is, how do we create and contain a holding environment is something that I'm very interested and deeply engaged with. And the last one is about learning practices of chair and repair, which is how do we want, because we all make mistakes and we make more often than what we think we do. But how do we repair? How do we do reparative processes is a question that looms large. Thanks, Radhika. And a myth and a challenge? Yeah, the myth I find is that, you know, like how we say clients are not one size fits all. I want to say again and again, practitioners are not one size fits all. But we are seen like, like people who say, oh, you're a psychologist, or you're a psychiatrist, or you're a GP, or, you know, somehow we are one size fits all. I want to say, no, I'm not, I'm Radhika or something like that. And the challenge is for me is certainly the intersectional language or what used to be called the social and political determinants of health and well-being. How do we bring that to understand not client narratives? I'm not thinking of that. How do we bring that to understand communities narratives and systems narratives? The systems bring very complex histories with them. So that's the end of my speech. Thanks, Radhika. We'll pick up some of that in our next section. Francis, could you speak briefly to your perspective? Well, it's been a journey. So coming to Australia from England, I settled next to the University of the Old Miranda Hospital. And of course, soon we were starting to get students, but also in the early 90s, we started getting African refugees. So I went to try and explore further. How do we help people from a different cultural background? Of course, being the only African in the whole of that municipality, I became the person who people were calling for. And sooner I needed to expand my knowledge. So why do I expand my knowledge? I needed to know about the Jewish community. I needed to know about the Vietnamese community, the Italian community, the Greek community. And therefore, I decided to gain more knowledge around how and why we, the people who are not Caucasians, have given us a different perspective of mental health. And I guess even today, when the Royal Commission has hand down their reports on mental health, the majority of the people from the non-Indian speaking background will be the people who will be the most disadvantaged. Of course, we come with stigma. Stigma is a big issue in terms of the negativity. How do you explore something that you're not aware of? And sooner or later, I connected our own ancestral spirit. What do we gain? What do our ancestors, what do we learn as a culture? And how do we transfer this culture into our everyday life? And this is how my practice has continued to evolve. So Francis, some rich comments there. Could you please speak briefly to your mental health, to the four key ingredients, but briefly please? Yes. So, of course, spirituality, and of course, the issue around multiculturalism. What does that mean? How do we, as a practice, so now I have a center here in Epping, and my picture there portrays that people need to come to the center and meet people from a vast variety of backgrounds. So we have people from Vietnamese background, from Iraqi background, from African background, Caucasian working in the center, and that's how we connect to the people that come to our center. We embrace the community by education. Our mental health, they train us. So we constantly advocate for these people, but also train them to understand their mental health and how to gain support. So Francis, we'll pick up some of this rich comments in our next session. But could you just talk to your one myth and your one challenge? The myth is about the assumption, the prejudice, the lack of understanding about our coaches. And therefore, I'll give a very brief but concise example. I have trained a lot of mental health clinicians and say, if you're giving an African an appointment, please don't give them a 10 o'clock appointment. Probably easy to say, come today and we'll see you today, rather than expecting them to be there at 10 o'clock and they won't turn up. Of course, the issue around conscious and unconscious bias, you get through the door. It is my close. I wear this every day. I wear my red hat all the way back. So my community, that's my mental health community, know that Francis wears his red hat. And I wear these clothes. You know, my pajamas, they are my everyday clothes. Thanks, Francis. We will, as I said, pick up some of these comments in our next session. Again, mindful of my role in managing the time. I'm sorry if we've had to rush, but let's move now on to the section where we discuss the vignettes. And the vignettes are not case studies in the traditional sense, but rather have been designed to provide the opportunity for the identification of a range of poignant practice issues relevant to mental health for cold communities in a pandemic and beyond. And our discussion will invite a multidisciplinary approach, even though the vignettes speak to particular disciplines. So let me start by referring to Abdul's story. Abdul's story is replete with many invitations for professional engagement. To commence our conversations, I make explicit reference to Abdul's God-centeredness. God-centeredness is a primary value of many who arrive in Australia as part of our refugee and special humanitarian programs, or and or who are of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. This is sometimes expressed in the Islamic sentiment, Allah al Akbar, God is greater. And the Christian sentiments regarding the presence of God, Emmanuel, God is with us. The value, this value way of being and doing in the world has the potential to be a significant protective factor in both enabling clients and communities to cope during the with the challenges of COVID-19, but also to buttressing their mental health and daily functioning per se. In Abdul's words, my God will prevail. For some, COVID-19 does have the potential, however, to threaten and indeed dismantle such perfect protective factors. Where is God? I have been abandoned. Informed by Abdul's story, but also thinking more broadly, I now want to invite each of our panellists to comment on your observations, your experiences in regards to clients' utilization of God-centeredness or faith as a protective factor. So, Thuc, if we could start with you. In terms of your rich practice in the wonderfully diverse sunshine in the west of Melbourne, how often do you in your consults with patients have to engage with faith or spirituality or God-centeredness or what Abdul would say my God will prevail? I think, Lou, around 40% of my patients would highlight their God, whether it's the Buddha or the Jehovah or whatever God that they name. And I have no issue with involving the God to understand their belief. And also, I utilize that as a positive way to engage with them to say that, you know, I'm here not to distract you from any path. I'm here to be guiding you along, to be assisting you, going through the hard time with you, you know, and you can continue to pray to your God so that you'll get better. But I'm here to facilitate and guide you along. That's all. I would not disregard any of the beliefs. I would say that it's actually an important thing to maintain the belief because, like you mentioned, Lou, it's a protective factor and I use it to a positive extent to treat. Thanks, Lou. Radhika, your reflections on my God will prevail. Yes, my God will prevail, which is what a lot of people in the United States are saying. So one of the things I want to say is that not just clients, a lot of practitioners are profoundly dissatisfied. It's just that they don't reveal it. So there is this kind of system that happens that somehow there's some practitioners are all from secular background because the training is secular. But that doesn't mean everyday living reality for practitioners is secular. A lot of them are devoutly, are very devout practitioners, whatever faith they come from. So I want to emphasize that. And I'm very drawn to what has come into the literature as what's called religious competence as cultural competence. So we want practitioners to become competent in taking a spiritual history. We want to know, even if the person is not going to say, a lot of my clients do talk about God, but even if they don't, I do ask that, do you have any strong faith practices? How do they help or hinder your journey in this life or in this struggle? And what do you very similar to Voo, what do you want me to do in order to support you in this? How would you like for me and our team to help you with your practices? Like are there any letters we should give to your office so you can pray or what kind of things? And there is one interesting, I think it's in a video too in the Victorian Transcultural Mental Health, we included it a while ago. There was an interesting video of a psychiatrist in Vancouver saying he did a faith related practice in the world so that the family will keep the client in the world rather than discharge him and take him home. So these are profound practices of co-designing recovery. So it is not so much about whose faith prevails, whether you believe in DSM and you believe in God and DSM prevails or ICD prevails. It's better saying can we have a middle ground of being able to see multiple perspectives, plurality of ideas in order for you and I to recover and to heal you. Because if we have less number of clients in the world, isn't that good for practitioners too if the struggles are less? Thanks Radhika. Francis, can you complement our conversation thus far with your engagement with spirituality? Yes, well the engagement with spirituality, I mean one of the books that I have is called the spirit of increment. How does our spirit contribute to our mental health? In fact, I use what I call the will of life as part of our conversation around the need of the individual. And our spirituality forms a greater part of it, whether you believe in anything. As Radhika said, we are now using evidence-based. Of course, mindfulness in itself has come through the Buddhism type of teaching. And now we are setting it up. So spirituality is a very key part of our contribution to our well-being. And in practice, as a mental health man, we want to look at somebody in their quality, in their comprehensive and integrated service. Being able to capture every part of their living being into improving their well-being. And for me, it's about using the hours of the aspect of knowledge. If you have in the Konsha kitchen a Vietnamese going through Buddhism, Christian, I've just come back from Africa. And there are more churches than you can think about. That's where the people derive their spirituality, their wealth of health. And so, yes, we need to also be able to distinguish whether that part of religion is also affecting them. But a lot of the time, as a mental health man, we are connecting the people to areas that will help them to actually get the better treatment. I.e., helping somebody to connect to the local mosque whereby they could go and pray on a Friday, connecting with religious people so that they could go and get some religious food on the weekend. Alright, thanks Francis and everyone. So acknowledging, I guess, that spirituality for this client group, but more broadly, is becoming more acknowledged as being a part of progressive and respectful human service practice. I now want to invite, again, a brief comment on, given that it's not necessarily a traditional orthodoxy for human service professionals, although there's obviously some commonality amongst the panellists, what are some useful questions for eliciting an assessment of the relevance of God's centeredness? All disciplines assume a secular stance. So how do we as practitioners discuss issues of God's centeredness or spirituality? How do we engage with Abdul in the notion of my God will prevail? Voo, would you like to make a brief comment on how you have those conversations? Are you very open and direct or what happens in your practice? Lou, for me I'm quite open about talking about God but often. I would actually, part of my job is to assess for the risk in terms of suicidal risk as well as assessing for elicitation as much as a believer. But the client is saying that, well, my God stopped talking to me or my God is telling me to do certain things. Then certainly that's where I draw the line and say, well, we need help. It's more than just talking about the strong belief or not. So I use the faith as a way to assess whether they act and their mental health well-being. Often, if they are well enough, then they would often tell us that my God is still guiding me and they still have hope and faith, which is really good. But when they have given up or said my God has forgiven or abandoned me, then that's where they were allowed to start to ring. Or if they're saying that I've been praying to my God, I've been talking to him 24 hours and I'm not able to do anything else, that's also a concern for me as well. Okay, thanks, Radeka. That is so good, because I always want God to be part of my care team. It's the worst thing when they say God has abandoned me because God is one of the most strongest players in the care team. So it's like their grandmother or their hands. Sadly you seem to have frozen. Go ahead, Radeka. The outcome usually is similar to Vue, where I absolutely want a long-drawn exploratory conversation. But I use particular, there are assessment tools and I use the cultural formulation which gives an entire sheet on how to ask faith-based questions. So some of the questions will be something like, do you have any spiritual beliefs that help you cope with your current situation? And then other question will be, do you have a spiritual community that you're part of? Are they helpful or are they hindering your progress? And some question would be, how would you like me as your therapist to address some of these spiritual issues? What would you like me to do? So there is a series of questions that cultural formulation gives on faith-based care that I use often and regularly. Thanks, Radeka. Francis, could you add briefly to your response to that curious question around how you actually engage with patients, with clients? Yes, this is, as I said, part of my daily practice. So that comes into conversation on the regular basis. My practice is actually full of multicultural people. And over the years, people come from so many different places. And the important thing is connecting them with religious places. I have a client who lives all the way in Brunswick. And we connected her with a Thai religious group all the way in Boxfield. And she felt extremely connected. So it depends upon what the client wants and how we can facilitate those services. Thanks, Francis, and everyone. Clearly, there's lots of more richness that we could examine in regards to Abdul's story. But let's move now on to Leanne. Leanne's story highlights many factors. Relationship, the importance of significant others and the importance of extended family. Many people of refugee or asylum-seeking and or culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are in Australia bereft of or with very limited relationship support. Sometimes this means that service providers are the only or the most significant other to people of refugee, asylum-seeker or cold backgrounds. In Leanne's story, she seems to be privileging relationship with the psych registrar. Understanding is all that I need is her important narrative. Your warmth makes me feel much better. What is your experience, dear panelists, of significant others for this client group? Does it sometimes require you to nuance your role differently? Who are you relationally with clients of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds? So, Vu, can you make some brief comments on your significant other role, your relationship role for so many people who are here without extended families and without significant relationships? Well, I find that with these sort of patients here, I think a lot of us would love to be able to get some magical quick fix medication that can just cure them overnight, but we know very well that it doesn't work like that. And we do have to listen to the patient's needs because you find that being patient enough to give them the time and to build rapport and you'll find that they'll be able to tell you a lot more than what's on the surface. So, a lot of these clients, they will be judging and to see whether you'll be willing to listen to them because I'll find that if you give them, whether it's a one-to-week appointment or one-to-fortnately appointment to allow them to voice their ideas and worries, they will tell you a lot more. And then that allows you to engage and help. And you're right, a lot of the time it's the talking therapy. So, even though I'm a GP where I should be thinking a lot about medication, but we know very well that a lot of these patients, they don't really like to use medication because of the stigma, I guess, associated with having the diagnosis and having to be on medication. So, we just need to be so patient and giving them the time that's needed, whether it's 20 minutes or half an hour per consult. It's nowhere near what the councillors will provide. But as a GP, if that's all we can afford, we'll have to live with that, I guess, but allowing them the time to talk, I guess. Thanks for that. Radhika, your comments on the importance of relationship with this client group? Yeah, if I can, Lou, I want to talk about, this is such a relational story, but more about the psych registrar in the character. It is also a story of the psych registrar because it starts off with the narrative of the supervision making her feeling inadequate. So, I kind of think there is relational failures everywhere and there is this need for quick fix. So, as Lou was saying, can some magic pill be given or can we just pass the buck to a perinatal unit? And there is a question from the audience, I think, that's come to the panellists on the perinatal services around during COVID time. What I want to suggest in terms of this, this happened, this is something very close to my heart. I am an attachment practitioner. I work with a lot of families with under five children. And in attachment work, we say this is such a beautiful story because it's like you have to build a circle of network for safety. So, it's not just one mother's group. It's not one GP. It's not one psychiatrist. You want to create a circle of like a care team. So, basically, you mentioned that Lou when you started that I find for me that healthcare services are extended networks of support, not just for refugees and asylum seekers and diverse communities for all vulnerable people. So, either healthcare services can restore social bonds or they can disrupt social bonds. And we don't work as a team. The healthcare service providers always do not work as a team or as a, they don't see themselves as a micro community. They split and triangulate each other sometimes. So, this is where my request would be, we need to build a circle of safety which is almost like a safety network so that Leanne will not fall through that. Thanks, Radhika. Very interesting comments that we could bring more depth to. But Francis, obviously in terms of what you said before, you are very significant to many of your clients. So, would you like to make some brief comment on the importance of relationship in your professional practice with this cohort? Well, this is the work that I really love and I really enjoy. I'm really working with clients in their own space. And I have developed almost an outreach place where I see the clients where they want to be seen. And this really, I have slides from as far as Kilmore to the base water through to Windenvale. But it's about working together. It's about that word multicultural, sorry, multicultural but multicultural group. How do you assess, how do you assess a psychiatrist? And it's absolutely difficult to find a psychiatrist. But I'm so lucky to have a group of psychiatrists who I call upon. If in a client, when the difficulty in the client actually pays the Medicare difference, I get psychiatrists to sometimes fulfill this client. And it's about taking that client in the center of the unit, I call it, and assisting them with other things. Our clients come in at their most vulnerable space. I usually say, I go with them to see a psychiatrist and I interpret English. Even if the person can speak English, sometimes they are so unsure, they're so frightened, they're not able to go in and express all their needs. And I physically go with them. I physically go with my clients to court sometimes. Okay. Thanks, Francis and everyone. Again, my job as timekeeper is an unenviable one. We want to absolutely bring depth to these important comments. But I think it's also important that we make some room for engagement with our third vignette. And we've got about 12 minutes or thereabouts for this part. But I wanted to ask, dear colleagues, invite a comment about the pandemic, per se. My sense is in terms of my client work that the lockdown and the pandemic has really exacerbated for many clients of asylum-seeking background, of refugee background, of clients with limited relational contexts. It's exacerbated their mental health challenges. But I've also been aware that for some of the clients that I work with, the pandemic hasn't been all that impactful or hasn't appeared to be all that impactful because they have a pre-pandemic experience of constraints on their life. They have a pre-pandemic experience of living with less. And so I'd be interested for each of you to make some brief comment on whether during the pandemic you have a sense that in what ways the mental health concerns of our clients have been exacerbated. But have there been some experiences that you've had, like mine, where there have been some positive coping mechanisms demonstrated? So, Vu, over to you. And again, brief comments, please. Lou, for mine, it's pretty much a mixed response. There are lots of mental patients out there who find that with COVID it was actually a lot better, given that they could actually access their GPs or psychologists through telehealth, where previously they couldn't even leave their house. The fact that we're able to call them through the phone to engage with them. I think that was great success. But then again, there'll be other groups out there who will struggle to keep up with the news, knowing what to do or when to do the checkup, or are too fearful to leave the house, fearing that they'll catch COVID, or worried about the fact that they might get a fine. So, those groups there are quite at a big disadvantage. And it is a struggle because we don't know when we'll get to engage with them, unless we made a special list and call out to those ones that need. So, I find it quite neat. Okay, thanks, Vu. Radhika, much a similar experience to Vu, or other comments that you might make? Yeah, very similar. But I also want to say you're right in that a lot of our clients know what it is to deal with uncertainty. They know how to deal with unpredictability. And some sense of, you know, relentless anxiety and fear, something might go wrong. That kind of thing, they have lived with it for such a long time. But now it has come to the middle-class practitioners. So, strangely, some of them told me, now you know what it is for me. So, it's like a strange sense of equity that's come. And so, there is a little bit more empathy sharing both ways, I find. Because a lot of us are not able to see our parents or our children graduate or our children finish school. So, there is a sense of camaraderie that's come in. So, that's the thing I find with COVID. And we are all trying to hold hands. Thanks, Radhika. Francis, your comments on the impact of COVID on our client group. Yeah, and I'm going to take it into the question. I have had a whole lot of clients who, some of them I haven't seen for four, five, six, seven, even eight years who have reconnected during the COVID time. We had the opportunity to continue to work with the faith and also the opportunity to use the telehealth. And we should be sitting here and still encouraging the government to consider how the mental health message to the Medicare rabies with telehealth. Sorry, I have to put this one in there because it's so important. Some of us have continued to provide services in that area. Our clients have come back and within a short period of time they've been satisfied. We also need to look at our core community, a cultural, linguistic background community. Unfortunately, they are still not access to services. Why? Because they come from not the individualistic societies that we know of as Australia. They come from quality societies. They want to go to church together. They want to go to the mosque together. They want to go to the temple together. And so they are also missing out during COVID. And we need to find other ways of supporting these people who are really isolated. Japan has just appointed a minister of loneliness. Have a look at it. One of my friends in Canada has provided a professor at Japan. And he's using what is called text for hope. Text for hope. Text for hope sends messages to clients on their phone and they are able to respond with their mental health. Thanks, Francis. Some very interesting observations or comments you've made that we could expand in greater depth if we had time. So clearly, in terms of Leon's story, there is lots to invite our engagement. Let's move on briefly to Fung. And we've really only got about five minutes. So we're not really demonstrating as much respect as I would like to to Fung's story. But Fung's story highlights, amongst other things, the relevance of cultural values as a protective factor. And the potential for resistance or to departure from cultural values of family origin in response to a range of Australianising influences. Cross-cultural conflict can clearly emerge. So again, briefly, what is your observation or experience of cultural values of family of origin? Losing their protective factor or status and in fact introducing further vulnerability through conflict. Particularly during a pandemic. So clearly Fung is a Vietnamese background. But can you make some brief and general comment about the protection that cultural values can offer or not in a time of pandemic? I think the cultural protective factor of Fung from Vietnamese background, often he can guarantee that he would have a lot of support from his family in terms of whether it's money or moral support and all that. But sometimes I feel like these are protective factors. In return, the parents will be having unreasonable expectations of what he should be doing. So the fact that he's working part-time or as a casual would be seen as a failure in the community. Or the fact that he's not doing well at university would be seen as a failure as well. So I think culturally speaking, there is unmatched expectations between what Fung could achieve and what the family is expecting of him. Thanks for Radhika. You know, probably Fung was the one narrative that spoke so much to me because I saw a lot of young people during COVID. And this year is not any different. Where that line, I want my freedom. They were sick of the lockdown and being locked in with parents and grandparents and siblings. And at 19, it just felt like hell for them. So Fung is one that I'm very drawn to in terms of my relational space at this moment of all the three narratives. I feel it's so unfair for the young people with the pandemic year where everything is expected of them. They have to go to school, finish exams, do everything and yet they have to be inside their room locked in. Having said that, it also had a lot of alarm bells in terms of, you know, volatile relationships and taking meth with friends for the first time. But at this moment, all I want to do is to listen deeply to Fung. Just listen. Nothing else. Because it feels like nobody is listening to them. Thanks Radhika. Profound words. Francis. It's about dialogue. I usually say, the Chinese say, the crisis is an opportunity. And it's also so much that during this, even the COVID pandemic, which most of us have never experienced, I'll call it a war, that we are going through. It's also an opportunity for the connection. So how do we, our family group connect? One of my recent discussion, both gates, we forgotten. Even when I mentioned the word ludo, a lot of people didn't know what ludo is. Scrubble. How do we sit there and engage with our family? Unfortunately, most of us in this cold community are sometimes three generations living in one home. And how do you connect with them? How do you go for a walk with your old, I had a picture, unfortunately, it disappeared. But I'll show you one of my pictures, young lady. But there we are in the village, a young person will be walking with grandma to the shop. How do we engage, re-engage with some of those activities? How does the village being allowed, like I was in Ghana recently, to go and play soccer by themselves? So we need to look at a different way of re-engaging with society. In post-COVID, let's start thinking outside the square. Let's start re-engaging with ourselves from our home to our community, after state and after nation. I think... Thanks, Francis. Time is rapidly evaporating in the twinkling of an eye, but we've had some very interesting conversations thus far. Now I want to invite, acknowledging the richness of our conversations and the time constraints, I now want to invite you to identify in a very few words a key take-home message regarding culturally responsive mental health care in a pandemic and beyond. So again, just try and capture that richness, that depth, the complexity in just a few words. So what's your take-home message, brief take-home message in regards to mental health responsiveness for culturally and linguistically diverse people and communities in a pandemic and beyond. I think the most important thing for me will be knowing our limitations and have a network of ordered supportive health workers, whether it's a mental health nurse or social worker or psychologist or psychiatrist, to be involved in the team so that there's no one side to it all. That's the essential theme. We need to work together as a team to help the clients in any way we can. And to link them in with the community, the earlier the better. I'd like what Francis said about connecting them to the church group or church leaders so that they could get food. It could be as simple as that. And I love that idea. If they're starving and they haven't got any money and food is the most important thing, go for it. I don't mind one of the religious beliefs I've got, but I'll tell them. You go down that road, there's that food store there, they give out food for free, you just take. And that is survival. And I think that the more networking we've got, the more connections we can build, I think the better for the client. Thanks for Radhika, a takeaway message. So when I'm listening to a worldview or a perspective that's very different to what I know and what I feel, I would like for us practitioners to not see it as a contest, but to be able to with open hands and open heart to make that a space of learning, listening and teaching from each other. So perspectives can flourish. Thanks Radhika. And Francis. Once again, I will do a small show and tell of a young person walking with their, I'll call it grandma, an elder person from their village. Let's start holding hands together to support people with mental health. And as the rural commission report has come out, let this be a practical and enduring setting for people with mental health. People should be able to walk into any service and within the service on the day, not to come back tomorrow or come back until we start. If I could write a book on my negative experience, but I won't ask to end up on a positive note that today is going to be a new day in the mental health services in Australia and in the world. And COVID, despite the negativity that is produced, it's going to end up with us being positive. Of course, we are all flying again. What happened to September 11th? The planes stopped. The planes are back in the air. The airport is quiet. The air, the planes will come back. So let's end up with a positive environment for our mental health clients. Thank you. Thanks, Francis. And now, as facilitator, I'd like to provide just a very brief summary. Tonight's conversation has provided us with some important glimpses into both the opportunities and the complexities involved in culturally responsive mental health care during the pandemic and beyond. Our conversations, every one of them, of course, invited greater depth than was allowed by an hour and 15 minute time constraints. Hopefully, our conversations have also stimulated a raft of other questions that can be reflected on in an ongoing way. The supportive resources posted in the support tab will also assist in this regard. And you will receive, subsequent to this webinar, some follow-up communication from the mental health practitioner network. MHPN also supports the engagement and ongoing maintenance of practitioner networks. You will be advised of how to contact MHPN if this is of interest or indicate via the exit survey which we encourage you to complete. Our next webinar, an interdisciplinary cross-cultural conversation, exploring the meaning of healing and recovery, is scheduled for March 31. We do hope that you can join us. In final conclusion, thanks again to our panelists for inviting us into this very interesting space. Thanks also to all involved technical, admin and production roles which have enabled this webinar to be possible. As someone frightened of technology, my own view is that this process is magical in terms of bringing together around the metaphorical fire side with our cups of hot chocolate or red wines, given us a chance to engage with hundreds of people in Victoria and beyond in our musings, in our reflections, in our dialogue around how we make sense of, how we demonstrate justice and humanity and relationship to those in our community who are refugee or asylum-seeker background and or culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. So, thank you, Vu, your contributions have been really rich. Radhika, very wonderful insights to get us thinking. And Francis, your international perspective and the comments that you've made in terms of your local work have also stimulated, I'm sure, lots of interest and lots of thinking. So, and to all of the participants, thank you for your engagement with this topic. Thank you for your participation in this webinar. And we hope that it has been useful in stimulating some thinking in affirming many of your practices, many of your approaches to engaging with cultural and linguistic diversity. In a time of pandemic and beyond. On behalf of everybody, good night and thanks.