28 July 2009

Subject:Eastern and Central Africa Communities of Victoria Inc, (EACACOV) Submissions to African Australian: A report on human rights and social inclusion Discussion paper: Australian Human Rights Commission March 2009

1Organisation Background

The Eastern and Central Africa Communities of Victoria Inc. (EACACOV) is a state-wide emerging and inclusive organisation that aims to bring together African-Australians in Victoria, who mainly traces their genealogy from various African countries and those who feel connected to Africa. One of the main objectives of coming together is to address issues that impact on their settlement in Australia.

EACACOV manages the “African Holistic Settlement Service in Victoria” on behalf of the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA), under the Community Settlement Services Scheme (CSSS). This service was established in 2001 to provide holistic and culturally appropriate sensitive settlement services to all African-Australians who require an alternative option to mainstream, ethno-specific or local services, with an emphasis on assisting families and youth, refugee and humanitarian entrants, as well as individual men and women.

  1. How can governments go beyond consultation and support the genuine participation of African Australians in decision-making about program and service design and implementation across all areas?

1.1Employment and training

Employment and training are critical to successful settlement. African Australians who want to build their new life and contribute to Australian society but many, especially newer arrivals, have to confront numerous barriers when accessing employment and training.

Common barriers faced by African Australians are visible difference, access issues related to English language skills, and lack of local Australian working experience in the employment arena.

The community has no powerful and influential networks in government , business area etc.

These and many more barriers are often linked to discrimination and barriers maintained by professional bodies, business, and government departments etc.

1. Can you tell us about your employment and training experiences in Australia?

  • Gaining employment in Australia has been hard for most African Australians. Even when you get a job on merit you are likely to lose it if you are placed under a manager who is prejudice

Access to training

1.1What barriers do African Australians face in accessing training opportunities?

  • Discrimination in accessing these trainings, as most Job Networks would not send African Australians for training or apprenticeship or any skills training.
  • They are only willing to send them to high risk jobs which other people are not willing to take such as security guards at night clubs. Most African who are taxi drivers have qualifications obtained in Australian universities, colleges, TAFE, but are not given opportunities to train or gain practical experience in their fields to get Australian working experience.

1.2What specific training opportunities would be most helpful to newly-arrived African Australians?

  • Training sessions on the job market in Australia and how it does operate.
  • Organise career advice for those who are intending to go for higher education
  • Mentoring program to guide those who are in universities on how to be competitive in job market after school.
  • Vocational Training
  • Apprenticeship
  • Cross cultural training to job networks.

1.3How can interpreting and translation services be improved to provide better access and assistance to African Australians in the training and employment sectors?

  • Improve interpreters training opportunities so that interpreters have the skills and languages to provide specialist translating/interpreting services especially in the areas of health and the law.
  • The government should pay for interpreting services for everybody. Most GPS do not provided engage interpreters services and parents are made to relay on their children to access medical services.

Employment and training needs

1.4Can you give examples of genuine training and employment pathways available to African Australians?

  • AMES– Employment
  • Ecumenical Migration Centre (EMC)- Given the chance employment program

1.5Please comment on what is meant by ‘securing meaningful employment’ from your personal and/ or professional perspective?

  • By having a job that one feels dignified.
  • Levels of unemployment are high for African communities and many are unemployed, underemployed, undertaking menial work despite most people having tertiary qualifications and overseas skills. The need to feel productive, contribute to the family functioning and to be an active member of society is particularly strong for some people and has the potential to affect their mental health significantly.
  • Barriers to employment include: lack of networks, lack of Australian work experience, lack of recognition of overseas work experience and qualification and language problems.
  • There is a need to recognise the importance of practical issues such as employment for these people, and also work towards addressing these needs that, left undressed, can lead to further metal health problems

1.6What career advice is helpful for newly-arrived African Australians?

  • If you have overseas qualification up date them with Australian recognised qualifications
  • Get Australian training - Learn English and Australian way of life
  • Find meaningful connections/networks and influential friends

Employment services

1.7What barriers do African Australians encounter in using services of employment agencies (including the Job Network)?

  • Lack of computer skills
  • Language barrier
  • Lack of past employment history and/or having overseas referees that are unreachable
  • Lack of trust from employment agencies to let newly arrived Africans get “mainstream” jobs due to lack of Australian work experience and references.
  • Stereotyping – that Africans are incompetence.

1.8Do employment agencies provide culturally appropriate services to African Australians? If yes, then how?

  • Sorry never heard of it …

Government, employment and training policies

1.9Have you as an African Australian (or anyone else you know) had your/ their overseas qualifications recognised in another developed country similar to Australia?

● Yes, in countries such as USA, Canada and UK a number of overseas qualifications were recognised.

1.10Do government employment and training policy and program design meet the needs of African Australians? Please give reasons in your answer.

● No, the evident is currently seen in high percentage of unemployed African some of whom have Australian qualifications.

  • Also, governments used to provided train ship in area like ECC, Telecom, but all these were sold to businesses who are only interested in employing people with Australian experience

Employment opportunities

1.11What are the key challenges faced by African Australians in finding and retaining employment (e.g. recognition of qualifications, English language requirements etc.)?

  • Adjusting to new technologies and work environment.
  • Discrimination on the basis of colour, gender, looks, religion, hairstyle, accent etc.
  • Cultural differences – hard to fit in with colleagues, or to be understood by them.
  • They have to work five times as harder.

1.12What can be done to increase employment opportunities for African Australians?

  • Cross cultural training to employment agencies – Because there seem to be fearful of the “unknown” to these organisations. Hence their reluctance to employ Africans or send them for employment
  • Employing multicultural liaison officers at the Job Networks – to bridge the gap

1.13What are the health, social and cultural impacts of unemployment and underemployment for African Australians?

  • Increases the chances of mental illness – most people when they can’t find work become hopeless hence become depressed etc.
  • Socially unemployed people fall into the stereotype of being lazy and just relying on social security
  • Culturally not finding a job/not working takes away individuals role to care and provide for their family/themselves. There’s no Centre Link in Africa – being on social benefit just because you can’t find a job send a wrong message to people that you’re relying on handouts.

Consider the scenario below from one of our clients; - it proves how the system is failing a community.

Case study

  • A client asks for interpreters at a Job Network interview, the employment agent asks her why she couldn’t speak English and never worked although she had stayed in Australia for some time. The staff also added, “You’re just receiving money from the Government for nothing.”This conversation might have sounded simple; however, the impact was very significant to the client. She cried because she felt dependent, helpless and worthless, her self esteem was gone, and she became depressed – at a level of crisis

1.13As an African Australian, if you have not had difficulty in securing employment in Australia, please tell us about it and some of the reasons that contributed to your success?

  • We have not yet come across anyone who had had it easier in securing employment in Australia.

1.14Can you provide examples of how African Australians are treated differently when seeking employment and/ or training?

Consider examples below:

A person, who had overseas qualification/experience – with recommendation letters from previous employers, did not get the same job here in Australia because she did not have experience working in Australia. Although the experience she had was working for UNCHR, which is an international organisation and with Australian Consulate overseas.

Another person had Bachelor of Agriculture from University of Melbourne, one of the top universities in Australia, right? He applied for a position in a dairy farm; his transcript and certificate were provided to verify his performance. In the end he was ask to start with the position of milking cows to prove himself and later he can be move to a better position. He took the job, however; he was not “promoted” after five months of milking cows until he decided to leave the job.

1.15What is the impact of this discrimination?

  • Relationship breakdown
  • Depression and mental illness
  • Suicidal tendencies
  • Lack of self worth, feeling helpless.
  • Wakes the post-traumatic stress

How can African Australian workers be made aware of and supported to exercise their rights in relation to discrimination in the workplace?

  • Training sessions and meetings
  • Providing information.

1.16Are experiences of employment and training different for African Australians based on religion, age, gender, sexuality or disability? Please provide reasons in your answer.

  • Yes – Most Africans who are old, female and/or disabled are even more disadvantage by their heritage/background.

3.Health– Mental Health Issues

Sub-Saharan Africa: Pre-Migration and Health Issues

The recent history of Africa has seen war, famine and political upheavals. This has led to a high influx of refugees and migrants from this part of the world. Australia, like many other countries, has become a recipient in recent years of a number of refugees, many of who have experienced torture and trauma. They have left their countries because they have been in direct danger due to political, racial or religious persecution. In many cases they have been tortured and have witnessed the horrors of war, repression and have spent many years in refugee camps.

Settlement experiences in Australia—multiple health issues

There are a substantial number of people within the African communities who in the process of flight, asylum seeking in other countries and arrival in Australia as refugees, experience profound emotional, mental and physical distress and severe disruptions to their family relationships, schooling; work employment, loss of status, roles and local communities.

Pre-migration experiences together with grief and loss can have serious effects on the Africans and their families, often resulting in family break down, domestic violence, isolation, and mental health problems, especially if culturally appropriate support is not provided. Torture and trauma have a profound, immediate and long-term impact on their physical and psychological health.

It is becoming apparent that many services including mental health services do not know how to cope with the complex needs of these new citizens.

3.1 Service providers

The adequacy of various modes of care for people with mental illness in particular, prevention, early intervention/detection, acute care, community care, after hours crisis mental services are non existence in regards to African affected persons or African communities.

3.2Prevention, detection and early intervention strategies

  • It is our experience as African social and community support workers in the field that when we have clients who display psychotic disorders symptoms/behaviour or suffering from psychological disorders; mental disorder/illness, on a number of times we have contacted many mental health services providers and we have found that there are no strategies for prevention or early intervention.
  • On a number of times we have been asked if the person is harming him/herself or others. If the answer in no, the person is not regarded as in need of either prevention or earlier intervention and there is no service to assist them.
  • Most mental health services are more concerned of people, especially from culturally and linguistic diverse (CALD) background not accessing their services, of course at crisis point, but are not interested in prevention or early intervention and have no strategies in place to cater their needs eg. Language barriers.
  • Cultural distances of the African groups from mainstream often results in inappropriate referrals and follow up.
  • Mainstream service providers lack awareness about pre and post migration experiences, such as: torture and trauma, vast differences in cultural, religious and gender issues between countries of origin and Australia and their impact on family relationships and mental well-being.

3.3 African communities

  • Due to fear of stigma and lack of knowledge of symptoms of mental illness, families keep people at home until crisis point.
  • African communities lack information about preventative as well as treatment services
  • Furthermore, little awareness within the African communities early symptoms which might result in serious mental health problems if left unaddressed as a result, clients access services only when they reach a crisis point and in most cases African clients are taken by police and are admitted as involuntary clients to mental health institutions or clinics

3.4Acute care, community care and after hours crisis services.

  • Acute care and community care are not accessible by the African clients as there are barriers. Community care is only on voluntarily basis from the communities which is unreliable. Some of our clients have ended up in custody, immigration detention centres, rooming houses (which are inappropriate) because there was no appropriate respite care, nor after hour’s crisis services.

3.5The appropriate role of the private and non-government sectors is not appropriately responding to the needs of our clients.

3.5.1Barriers to services
  • Through ECACOV’s African Holistic Settlement Service Victoria, it is evident that African families and individuals do not adequately access mainstream services which could assist them. The different culture of assistance within the Australian community and the absence of a welfare state in most African countries leads to a lack of understanding by Africans new to this country of the services and institutions that can be utilised and their possible benefits.
  • A service such as The Victoria Foundation for Survivors of Torture (VFST) has long waiting list/period, before one can access services.
3.5.2 Communication – interpreters
  • Unlike ethnic with a large representation in Australia, it is often difficult to find interpreters who speak the appropriate language or dialect to assist them to access services. Most mental health organisations or community health centre, except some in large cities, are not equipped to deal with refugees with limited English/communications skills.
  • Also, in some cases there are no English words that mean the same as what is being said in the customer’s language.
  • Bilingual mental health or social workers are in short supply. Community members who have been in Australia for longer periods are under enormous pressure to provide support and face high levels of responsibility with limited resources.
  • Taken together, these factors act as a barrier between the Africans/refugees/new migrants and the mental health system.

3.6The extent to which unmet need in supported accommodation, employment, family and social support services is a barrier to better mental health outcomes.

  • There is no strategy for supported accommodation for people of CALD background, especially people from African background clients with mental health illness. The services providers fear to accommodate the mentally ill person on the ground that he/she will damage the property or harm him/her, knowing that the ill person will not have a support worker or family support.
  • There are also shortages of hospital beds which results in early discharge before clients are well and homeless. When people are discharged before they are well because of shortages of hospital beds, sometimes they are forced to be transferred/moved to different regions, were sometimes rooming houses or lodge accommodation is available. Rooming houses accommodation is seen by African as culturally inappropriate, not suitable for Africans with mental disorders.
  • Furthermore, lack of respite care and supported accommodation results in clients being sent to live in different regions, removed from their social support networks and familiar workers, case managers and this adds to their anxiety.
  • Due to this overall lack of resources, friends and families who may not be coping well themselves, are forced to provide accommodation and support.

3.6.1 Social support services.

  • Services which are available, such as support groups, are not accessed by Africans because they are not considered to be culturally appropriate or acceptable, and are conducted in English.

3.6.2 Homelessness:

  • It is common for people to become homeless when they are not well and on many occasions people in the community and African welfare workers get pressured in finding and are expected to provide accommodation and to care for these clients who are not well. For example:

In March 2008 EACACOV was requested to find accommodation for an African client who was homeless and who appeared ready tobe discharged from a Psychiatric Hospital in the South Eastern Region of Melbourne. The Hospital social workers put a lot of pressure to EACACOV staff and African communities’ members to find/provide accommodation for a client from Sudan who needed to be discharged from DandenongPsychiatric hospital. They were going to discharge him into a lodge/rooming houses accommodation, because he was occupying a bed while there was hospital bed shortages.