The purpose of this web page is to provide guidance for the development of policies and procedures in various settings and communities.
It includes protective behaviour advice for:
It also provides public health messaging and answers to frequently asked questions.
The Scanlon Foundation has launched an online survey — Refugee Experiences in Australia Study.
By sharing your experience you can help to improve the settlement and integration journey for refugees and humanitarian entrants who come to Australia in the future.
The survey is available online and in Arabic, Dari/Persian, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Burmese, Karen, Chin Haka, Swahili, Nepali, Hazaragi and Tigrinya.
If you want to know how to find a house, enrol kids in school, find a job or learn how the health system works the MyAus App can help! Everything you need to settle in Australia is here – in English, Arabic, Dari, Hazaragi, Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu, Pashto, Hindi and Ukrainian – with more languages coming soon.
Australian communities, especially those with high levels of ethnic and cultural diversity, are vibrant, cohesive, and well-connected places. This cohesiveness does not always show up in the survey data and the numbers that are collected. However, awareness of racism is rising in the community and this is a good movement of national opinion.
The 2022 Mapping Social Cohesion survey indicates Australians continue to strongly support ethnic diversity and multiculturalism, in line with a long-term positive trend.
But people also continue to experience discrimination based on their skin colour, ethnic origin, or religion. Negative perceptions also persist in Australia about different groups, including Muslim Australians and non-European migrants. While 90% of respondents have positive views about migrants from Europe or the United Kingdom, this drops to 70% for Indian immigrants, and about 60% for arrivals from Ethiopia, Lebanon, China, Iraq and Sudan.
While the problems persist, the overall trend is positive. In 2020, 52% of respondents reported having positive feelings towards Chinese immigrants. In 2022, that increased to 61%. During that same time-frame, respondents with negative attitudes towards Muslims decreased from 40% in 2020 to 29%.
The 2022 Mapping Social Cohesion Report continues to provide us with the most significant and detailed profile of social cohesion in Australia today. Again, it reveals our perceptions of immigration, trust in government, multiculturalism and our neighbourhoods. Importantly, it enables each of us to better understand how we can strengthen bonds between people and build a welcoming and cohesive society.
The Edmund Rice Centre – in collaboration with seven LGA’s and many settlement services – presents the Settlement Cities Report, a major new report by the Edmund Rice Centre about the settlement experiences of refugees in Australia. The report takes a place-based approach to refugee settlement, focusing on the LGAs where refugees most frequently settle in Australia.
Embrace Multicultural Mental Health will conduct a webinar on Understanding Mental Health and Stigma in Congolese, Arabic-speaking and Mandarin-speaking Communities. This is an opportunity for you to hear about the key findings and to better understand mental health and stigma of CALD communities, in particular those from Arabic, African and Chinese communities. The zoom session will take place from 1.00pm – 2.00pm (AEDT) on Monday 14 November.
This three-hour virtual interactive training provides foundational knowledge in understanding family violence and responding to disclosures of family violence. It prepares participants to recognise indicators of family violence, ask questions and provide a safe, simple and sensitive response to a disclosure from an adult victim survivor experiencing family violence. The training takes place on 14 February 2023
The Ethnic Council of Shepparton and District notes the passing of Dr. Apollo Nsubuga-Kyobe, Vice President and long-standing board member of the Ethnic Council. Dr Apollo was a pioneer in the African Victorian community for over three decades. He tirelessly supported the settlement of new and emerging communities across metropolitan and regional Victoria and empowered African Victorians of all cultures, backgrounds and generations.