Social Inclusion at Barwon Health. Paul Cohen, Interim CEO

Transcription

1 Social Inclusion at Barwon Health Paul Cohen, Interim CEO

2 Driving Social Inclusion Barwon Health; Where can businesses influence social inclusion?; Impact of leadership; and Closing the Gap.

3 Barwon Health Large, diverse organisation spread across 22 sites; 7,000 employees, around 7% of Geelong s (approx.) 100,000 workforce; Large variation in nature of employment from professors and people who dispose of waste to doctors; Annual expenditure of around $600 million of which $430 million are salaries; Represents a very large footprint in the local Geelong ecosystem.

4 What is Social Inclusion? Have thought about this for a while: For Barwon Health has broad forms; Closing the Gap strategies to remove inequalities for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community; Providing employment opportunities for families who have been inter-generationally unemployed; Ensuring no discrimination against people, for example people who identify as GBLTIQ or are disabled ; and Sourcing products ethically. For example, we sell 85kg of Cotton On coffee through our cafes.

5 Importance of Leadership Proud to be part of a leadership team that takes social inclusion and our ability to positively impact our ecosystem seriously; This leadership has to be authentic and has to care about social inclusion; Needs to start by listening to communities to understand what's important to them; Should be realistic. Barwon Health can t resolve unemployment in Corio and Norlane, but already has 50 employees who ve come through traineeships and can target 100. Makes a significant difference for 100 families.

6 Strategy can be Opportunistic Doesn t require multi-million dollar investment; Does require consistency of purpose. Understand what we re doing and why; For example looking at existing roles as they fall vacant and identifying whether they can be filled with an Indigenous employee (for Closing the Gap) or a Northern Futures trainee; Leadership enables workforce to adopt these approaches.

7 Closing the Gap Federal and State governments have committed to Closing the Gap; Requires not just a focus on Aboriginal health, but also economic inclusion and improving employment opportunities; Within health, Victoria has developed a 1% employment target for health services.

8 Barwon Health Strategies Revitalised our Aboriginal Gathering forum for Aboriginal employees to raise relevant issues; Leaders attend community events to develop our understanding; Committed to (and now developed) our first ever Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP); RAP outlines a series of commitments Barwon Health makes to Closing the Gap.

9 Reconciliation Action Plan Three key areas of focus: 1. Making Barwon Health culturally safe for Indigenous customers and staff: Acknowledgement plaques on all sites; Acknowledgement to original owners and elders at meetings; Placing Indigenous artwork across organisation; Creating space for a family room; and Developing Cultural e-learning toolkits for managers and other staff.

10 Reconciliation Action Plan (ctnd.) 2. Increasing employment opportunities: Increased over 18 months from 15 to over 30 people employed; Currently recruiting Indigenous cadets in nursing and allied health; and Recruiting Aboriginal doctor in training will provide an important role model for others who follow. 3. Attending Community events to develop understanding; 4. Partnering with Wathaurong Aboriginal Cooperative to identify further areas for service support.

11 RAP Continued Started by outlining how large Barwon Health is as an entity. RAP needs to be owned by everyone; Isn't sufficient for a few leaders to develop an impressive document in top down approach. This has to be owned by middle layer of managers and all other staff; Managing top down risk through third tier managers having their own RAP actions that they have committed to and will be monitored against throughout the year.

12 Leadership Reprise RAP has been driven by Board of Directors Marcus Dripps, one of our directors, has chaired the RAP Working Party; Board has insisted that management report back, through Governance channels, on RAP progress throughout the year; Board modelling behaviours: e.g. acknowledgement before meetings and attending events; Also included RAP progress in annual Business Plan to ensure high level visibility.

13 Conclusion Haven't had time to go into real depth; Hopefully demonstrated the broad leadership approach to social inclusion; How a large organisation goes about providing leadership, developing and implementing plans; For Barwon Health this means we operate in a way that improves social inclusion and our Geelong ecosystem; and It s something of which we are very proud.