Empowering Merri Health staff to effectively
Co-Design with CALD Communities
Project Type:
Co-Design Training
Partners:
Merri Health
Location:
Melbourne, Australia
Understanding that the voice of their consumers is essential, the not-for-profit community health provider Merri Health asked us to design a program that would empower their staff to co-create person-centred solutions with the CALD communities they support. Specifically around the management of chronic conditions.
Whilst they had involved the voices of their clients in previous projects, involving a more significant number of culturally and linguistically diverse communities was proving challenging. They felt they needed specialised training in this area to be able to engage all communities in a way that was productive for all stakeholders and that would create better outcomes.
Approach
We designed and facilitated a training program that educated Merri Health staff on the Co-design process, whilst leveraging our own experience in Co-designing with CALD communities.
The training included specific considerations into the Co-design planning, set up and engagement, so that the team could confidently include people from CALD communities in their work.
The Merri Health on-line training program was enhanced with a range of interactive activities developed to support the team to achieve their vision to meaningfully include their clients in the design of any new programs. Providing additional information that included how to best engage different communities, designing the engagement for participation, biases and working with interpreters.
Outcomes
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20 Merri Health Employees have now completed the program, with 100% of them confident that they will be able to use what they learnt in their work.
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Some of the ways they have identified they will use this include;
- Using the frameworks to look at targeting lifestyle management/health promotion programs that are tailored to our unique and vulnerable client population
- Earlier engagement with consumers internally and externally on projects
- Using existing community relationships in CALD communities, to locate clients that may be interesting in being involved in these types of projects