Cultural awareness and responsiveness training facilitates understanding, respectful relationships and collaboration.
We have been working to ensure that our members have an understanding of the Indigenous Australian culture, history and people, and facilitating the cultural awareness and responsiveness of psychologists to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Thus far, about 600 psychologists have undertaken AIPA’s highly successful Cultural Competence Training for the mental health workforce, auspiced by the APS and rolled out throughout the country for Access To Allied Psychological Services (ATAPS) providers.
Further to this, all APS staff members and the APS Board participated in cultural awareness and responsiveness workshops in 2016.
Moving forward, the Australian Indigenous Psychology Education Project (AIPEP) remains a priority for us. One of the challenges for the future will be working towards embedding relevant cultural awareness and curriculum content across 40 higher education providers.
Under our first RAP we updated our ethical guidelines to provide further support to APS members and psychologists on culturally responsive work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.