Cultural liaison workers: learnings from the Mensline Australia Cultural X Change project

Jenny Anderson discusses some of the barriers and enablers that influenced the ability of Community Liaison Workers to engage with men from a variety of cultural backgrounds which may provide ideas for other services.

Men are less likely than women to seek professional help for health or relationship problems in Australia. Finding ways to encourage men, including those from different cultural backgrounds and across all ages, to obtain help is a constant challenge for services within the family and relationships sector.

The Mensline Australia Cultural X Change Project was conducted from April 2007 to March 2008 with the aim of developing innovative models for delivering telephone counselling services to Indigenous men, men from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities (Vietnamese and Arabic), and young men aged 18-25 years. One activity integral to the success of the project was the recruitment and training of Community Liaison Workers. Their role in the project was to increase awareness and use of the Mensline Australia telephone counselling and referral service to a specific target group of men in their local area.

This paper outlines the main learnings from the project, including whether Community Liaison Workers can bridge cultural boundaries to promote telephone counselling services at the local level. Firstly an overview of the project is given, followed by an account of the barriers and enablers found when Community Liaison Workers were engaged with the specific target groups of men. The findings may benefit practitioners and project coordinators who work with men from a variety of cultural backgrounds and age groups in the family relationships sector.