AMHC Blog Post - The Health Workforce We Need (But Don’t Have Yet)

By Isobella Halcrow, Communications and Policy Officer

Workforce discussions in healthcare tend to focus on supply: how many clinicians we have, where shortages are most acute, and how to distribute resources. 

These are critical questions, but they don’t provide a complete picture. 

Across Australia, practitioners working with multicultural communities are navigating complex and often systemic challenges: language barriers, fragmented care pathways, and services that aren’t designed with cultural safety in mind. 

These realities are well understood by multicultural consumers and those working on the frontline. They are less consistently reflected in how systems are designed. 

In many cases, it is individual practitioners, rather than the system itself, who are bridging these gaps, despite limited time, resources, or structural support. 

The result is a disconnect between system design, service delivery and patient experience. 

Why frontline expertise matters 

Frontline practitioners who care for multicultural patients bring a critical form of expertise. Their perspective is not only grounded in clinical practice, but in the day-to-day realities of working with multicultural communities.  

They see where access breaks down, understand the limits of standard models of care, know where adaptations are required to deliver effective, culturally safe services. This work often extends beyond clinical care, requiring additional time, cultural navigation, and system coordination that is not always recognised in workforce models. 

Recent work by the Australian Multicultural Health Collaborative has highlighted persistent challenges in building a health system responsive to Australia’s cultural and linguistic diversity. 

This raises an important question: whose knowledge informs decision-making? 

Designing anything – a building, a product, a service – is incomplete without consulting the people who use it every day. Yet these perspectives are not always embedded in policy and reform. 

The perspectives of frontline practitioners are crucial to bridging the gap between policy intent and equitable care for multicultural communities. 

What is needed for a culturally responsive healthcare system 

A culturally safe healthcare system requires a workforce that is consistently culturally responsive, with the skills and understanding to deliver care that meets the needs of multicultural communities. It also requires representation across the workforce that reflects the linguistic and cultural diversity of the people they serve.  

Formal mechanisms are needed for frontline perspectives to contribute their perspectives to policy and system design, rather than relying on informal, individual adaptations.  

Importantly, recognition at a system level that language services alone are insufficient is essential to ensure culturally safe care. 

These foundations enable practitioners to deliver care effectively and ensure equitable outcomes for multicultural communities. 

Strengthening the link between policy and practice 

To help address this gap, the Australian Multicultural Health Collaborative has established a Health Practitioners Network. This network strengthens how frontline clinical and service delivery perspectives inform efforts to improve health outcomes for multicultural communities, creating a more direct line between practice and policy. 

The Health Practitioners Network complements the Collaborative’s broader engagement approach, working alongside our Consumers and Carers Network, membership base, and community partners. Together, these interconnected networks help address the gap between policy and practice by connecting insights across community, workforce and policy.  

They ensure that policy and system reform are shaped by those closest to the challenges, translating lived experience, frontline expertise and community expertise into practical system-level improvements. 

By embedding these perspectives more consistently, the Collaborative is shifting the conversation from translation to system-level change. Real equity happens only when health systems are shaped by the people who use them and actually work for the communities they serve.

Isobella Halcrow is the Collaborative’s Communications and Policy Officer. She brings experience in strategic communications, social policy research and advocacy across the not-for-profit sector.