Respecting cultural diversity through language skills
10th August 2020 | 3 mins
Honouring and respecting the cultural diversity, heritage, languages, values and beliefs of our residents and team members is incredibly important in our care communities.
To learn about and honour each individual’s heritage we embrace cultural days in our care communities, where residents and team members share stories of their history or cook traditional meals together. Recently our team and residents at Altona Gardens had a fabulous time creating Italian-style arts and crafts and cooking pizza on Italian Independence Day, while at Paynesville Gardens, residents served up chicken cacciatore and enjoyed an Italian dress up for the occasion.
In Western Australia, our team at Mandurah Coast spent time learning more about the cultural heritage of our Indigenous residents. A team member says, “We listened to traditional digeridoo music and learnt about the Bungaree Ku-ring-gai Broken Bay bedtime story.” Our team invited elders in the local Aboriginal community to share stories of Aboriginal culture and history with our residents. Mary, who lives at Mandurah Coast was honoured to make posters for fellow resident Ron, who has Indigenous heritage. “I have always respected the Indigenous culture, I do feel terrible that I don’t know enough about it but it’s so nice to do things like this for someone who is a part of the culture and learn things even at my age. What a pleasure.”
We strive to make our residents feel at home as much as possible and embracing the cultural diversity and the different languages of our residents is important in creating truly inclusive care communities.
Our team at Chiswick Manor has started bi-monthly language classes led by our Italian speaking residents who teach our care team. The classes, led by residents Teresa and Joseph have been a huge hit and they have had no shortage of attendees!
Nirav, our Lifestyle Coordinator at Windward Manor says “It’s an incredibly rewarding experience to help our residents share their culture and be front and centre in the process. As a team member, we play a very important part in providing the best quality personal care that they can receive. By speaking another language, we can provide better personal care to our residents who are not familiar with the English language. For residents, it’s very satisfying to be able to accurately communicate their care needs by speaking their native language with us.”
Our Chiswick Manor team is holding fortnightly Italian lessons and plans to expand classes to include other languages spoken within the home.
Start exploring Opal homes today
Find a homeHome stories from across Opal
News
Chef delights in Aged Care
Many chefs have a signature dish. For Samira, our head chef at Quakers Hillside, that special dish is baklava. Samira says that baking the decadent Middle Eastern treat instant
19th January 2021 | 6 mins

Home Stories
Christmas card community collaboration
This year Narraweena Grove Care Community, in association with the students of St John The Apostle Catholic Primary School, were chosen to be involved in the design and product
22nd December 2020 | 5 mins

Home Stories
The Year of Courage, Connection and Heart
We all agree that 2020 has been a year like no other, full of unique challenges and circumstances that none of us could have imagined possible. It has also been a year where, acros
14th December 2020 | 8 mins