THE PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR BICULTURAL WORK 

This half-day workshop invites participants to engage with the Professional Standards for Bicultural Work (BCW): a practical framework developed to support BCWs, their managers, and the systems they work within. BCWs play a vital role in supporting access, engagement, and trust between services and refugee and migrant communities. Yet, too often, they are brought into projects without clear roles, supervision, or structural support. This training responds to a sector-wide gap: the need for shared understanding, ethical practice, and culturally safe approaches that recognise the complexity of BCW, centre lived experience, and support shared decision-making. The workshop is relevant to anyone working in services or projects involving refugee and migrant communities, including those who currently employ BCWs, are considering it, or are BCWs themselves. Together, we explore how to embed the professional standards in meaningful ways. 

 Topics covered include: 

•  Roles and responsibilities of BCWs 
  
•  Inclusive recruitment and supervision 
  
•  Managing community expectations 
  
•  Boundary setting 
  
•  Community-led practice and cultural safety 
  
•  Ethical considerations and collective care 
  

 The training is highly interactive and grounded in real practice. Through group discussion, case studies, and reflective activities, participants are supported to critically engage with the standards and consider how they apply in their own work and organisations. Since 2019, more than 2,450 people across Australia have taken part. Participants consistently report increased confidence in partnering with BCWs, deeper understanding of their roles and contributions, and greater capability to embed lived experience and cultural knowledge into service design and delivery. As the only nationally available training and framework of its kind in Australia, this workshop fills a critical gap. It creates space for honest conversation and shared learning, equipping participants with the tools, language and strategies to move beyond tokenistic representation and build sustainable, community-led models of culturally safe practice.

Workshop run time: 3 hours