Building Bridges 2 – A Pathway to Cultural Safety, Relational Practice and Social Inclusion

Recommendations and Next Steps

To further this work, we are proposing the following steps as a planning framework on cultural safety.

The Eastern and Western reports and a joint summary paper need to be broadly disseminated to inform dialogue and further the work.
Plan and implement a follow-up forum to review the results of the eastern and western focus group processes and move the thinking along. Invite funders, policymakers, academics, thought leaders, service providers and consumers. Document the forum to produce a DVD that can be used for educational purposes and to continue a broad-based dialogue.
Review and research best practices, including alternative and complementary models of service provision, and identify the key building blocks/components of culturally safe and holistic practices. For example:

- Build on the information collected in the focus groups by writing case studies as stories of those agencies that have found “good ways” to provide alternatives and complementary services to mainstream bio-medical models.
- Identify best practices for social inclusion and relational practice in western approaches, e.g. the integration of peer support programs into mainstream services. Find out what works, what doesn’t work, how it could be improved, and whether these practices are complementary with Aboriginal approaches.
- Develop and implement a research project to identify best and holistic ideas and practices within traditional Aboriginal healing approaches and identify ways in which these could be integrated into mainstream service models to serve non-Aboriginal people.

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) and Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF) Foundational Learning — Systematically mine RCAP and AHF for foundational learning. Find ways to remind change agents of the richness of Aboriginal perspectives, common sense and good solid recommendations for ways that work and next steps.
Create a website or use existing web capability of MHCC to share findings from above initiatives and to provide a forum for ongoing dialogue about relational practice and ethical engagement in mental health and addictions.
Invest in a more formal knowledge exchange and dialogue with international colleagues working in this area, beginning with Matua Raki, Christchurch, New Zealand

Group Dynamics Paper – Develop a paper that more fully captures the unique ways of working together developed by the FNIM Advisory Committee and the Cultural Safety Working Group as a contribution to describing alternative ways of working together.
Presentations and Publications – Invitations to publish or present the work at conferences and other gatherings should be taken and abstracts submitted to competitive processes in order to showcase the work, receive feedback, engage in the exchange of ideas and further develop the knowledge.
Audience-specific Short Papers – Develop a series of four to eight page papers building from this core document and targeted towards specific audiences (front line care providers, system managers, educators, policymakers, thought leaders, etc.). Make a case for cultural safety training by showing the direct and indirect benefits for service providers, service users and society as a whole.

Engage with educational institutions of health care service providers with respect to cultural safety and develop and disseminate education and training materials that: build the critical mental health literacy of care providers, group and system leaders by teaching the critical analysis skills inherent to and necessary for cultural safety; and teach relational practices and ethical engagement in mental health and addictions.
Engage with professional associations with regard to developing and integrating standards of practice for cultural safety and relational practice.
Provide training directly and through arrangements with training institutions to invest in capacity development throughout the system. Also, take emergent opportunities to build capacity into existing curriculum and training processes.

Work collaboratively to develop a lens or series of lenses to use in the analysis of policy propositions to test for cultural safety, supports to relational practice and assurance of ethical engagement between individuals, families, community, and service agencies.

Bring key stakeholders together to work collaboratively to develop program and service models as practical and helpful contributions to making the system over one piece at a time (sharing and development of building blocks to a renewed system).