cohealth’s bicultural program values the shared language, culture, lived experience and community connections of bicultural workers (BCWs). We recognise their unique skills and expertise in engaging their communities and believe they are best placed to design and deliver community-led programs that respond to their community’s needs.
The bicultural program aims to
A bicultural worker is employed to use their cultural knowledge, language skills, lived experience and community connections to work with people who they share a lived experience with and with mainstream organisations. Bicultural workers elevate community voices, advocate for their needs, co-design and deliver programs, share information and facilitate cultural safety (cohealth, 2019).
Bicultural workers:
cohealth employs a team of highly skilled, multi-lingual bicultural workers who have all graduated from our bicultural internship program. They have extensive community networks, an in-depth understanding of different cultural perspectives and expertise across a wide range of specialised areas.
cohealth also facilitates The Victorian bicultural workers network, which has over 400 members. The network provides regular capacity building, networking, peer support and reflective practice for BCWs from across Victoria. Events are delivered both in person and online.
If you are a bicultural worker and would like to join the network and mailing list you can register here: https://forms.office.com/r/DRmDPqfjPp
Organisations and businesses can engage cohealth bicultural workers as consultants. They can support with community engagement, co-design, research, delivery of community-based projects and much more.
If you are interested in learning more about how bicultural workers can support your work, please read these documents and email Jasmine.Phillips@cohealth.org.au for more information.
Read the Bicultural worker payment policy (PDF 169KB) and Bicultural worker position description (PDF 82KB).
To build on bicultural workers’ expertise and develop organisational capacity to employ bicultural workers in a culturally safe way, cohealth has developed a set of professional standards in collaboration with bicultural workers and other staff from across the community sector.
cohealth delivers Professional Standards for Bicultural Work Training to staff and organisations all across Australia.
In this training you will learn about cohealth’s professional standards for bicultural work and approaches to implement them in ways relevant to your work. You will learn new strategies to collaborate effectively with bicultural workers, to deliver culturally safe community-led projects and effective community engagement.
This training is for people who work with or employ bicultural workers and for bicultural workers interested in developing new strategies to manage the complexities of their work.
To find out more about training topics, pricing and registering your interest for future training, complete the expression of interest form.
cohealth’s bicultural program is the proud winner of the Health Award at the Victorian Multicultural Awards for Excellence 2022.
This podcast creates space for Bicultural Workers to share reflections from their communities about mental health, wellbeing and experiences navigating mainstream services. These conversations aim to deepen understanding of the cultural, social and migration experiences that shape how people understand distress, healing, and recovery.
Through these stories, bicultural workers highlight the barriers many refugee and migrant communities face when accessing support, while also demonstrating the important role BCWs play in bridging communities and services, supporting culturally safe practice, and advocating for system change.
Hear from our bicultural workers about the program, and how they’ve been able to support their communities.
For more information about the bicultural work program, email jasmine.phillips@cohealth.org.au or call 0448 411 734.
cohealth is a not-for-profit community health organisation. We provide essential health and support services in Melbourne’s CBD, inner-north and inner-west, and the east coast of Tasmania.
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