Bicultural Support Program
The Bicultural Support Pool will provide bicultural support to enable child care services to build their capacity to include children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CaLD), humanitarian refugee children, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
Bicultural Support
- assists in the initial settling-in period of children from CaLD, refugee or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds for a limited period;
- provides initial language assistance to children, parents and staff, in order to help families and the service communicate;
- introduces the child’s culture to the service by assisting children, staff and parents to develop and present multicultural games, songs, food, and culturally appropriate activities;
- assists staff to understand diverse cultural practices and child rearing practices of the children and families.
The Bicultural support worker pool will be time-limited and will be provided by consultants or casual bilingual or bicultural workers. This support can be provided when a CaLD, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, or humanitarian refugee child is enrolling at the child care service or soon after the child has started in child care. Access to bicultural support is provided to eligible child care services free of charge.
Note: For further information, please see Item 3.5.7: Bicultural Support Program; in the IPSP Handbook.
