Final Report on RREF 2001 - Department of Health

Part B: Development of Options for a Revised RREF
VARIABLE 3: CULTURAL DIVERSITY: % OF POPULATION IN LGA SPEAKING
A LANGUAGE OTHER THAN ENGLISH AT HOME
Data Source:
Census, updated every 5 years
Issues:
• There is a widespread perception and experience in service delivery that points to
cultural diversity being associated with increased need for HACC services, due to health
and disability status, strength of family roles and hence need for carer support, need for
interpreters and other factors that increase hours of service that have to be provided.
Cultural diversity is thus a need factor as it leads to additional hours of service inputs as
much as extra costs per hour of service.
• Cultural factors pose barriers to use of residential care and as a result, more of the frail
older people from these backgrounds remain in the community, and to higher levels of
dependency, and thus require higher levels of service. Only 9% of those in residential
care in Victoria had a preferred language other than English, compared to 17% of the
population born in a non-English speaking country.
• This lower use of residential care is important in interpreting the HACC User Data that
show those born overseas are represented among HACC clients in proportion to their
share of the population. The HACC data are a simple count of clients using any service
and do not show adequacy of services used in relation to cultural appropriateness or
level of service needed. The level of services used is especially constrained where
communities do not have access to services such as day care that offer relevant social
and cultural support. These factors together with higher levels of dependency
associated with lower use of residential care means that these groups need a share of
HACC resources that is above that indicated by their numeric representation in the
population.
• 22% of Victoria’s population speak a language other than English (LOTE) at home;
cultural diversity thus has the potential to have a substantial impact on need for HACC
services.
• Cultural diversity differs very markedly from LGA to LGA and presents HACC
services with very different needs in different areas. In 42 LGAs, less than 8% of the
population speaks a language other than English at home, and these LGAs receive no
weighting.
• The impact of cultural diversity on weighting is greatest in the small number of LGAs
in which high proportions of the population speak a language other than English at
home; in 10 LGAs, this proportion was over one third of the population.
<strong>Final</strong> <strong>Report</strong> July 2001 55