title: Initiatives for improving mental health services to ethnic minorities in Australia.
abstract: Several major policy initiatives have been undertaken in Victoria, Australia's second-largest state, to address difficulties in providing accessible and culturally sensitive mental health services to ethnic minorities. These initiatives include the development and publication of a policy statement, alteration of funding formulas to take into account populations of persons with non-English-speaking backgrounds, incentive funding mechanisms, new funding specifically devoted to ethnic mental health, the establishment of service development positions in the major public hospital networks, and the establishment of a pilot project to employ bilingual staff as psychiatric case managers.
authors.affiliation: Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit at St. Vincent's Hospital, Fitzroy, Australia. s.ziguras@medicine.unimelb.edu.au
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Ziguras
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stankovska
authors.forename: I H
authors.initials: IH
authors.lastname: Minas
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D005006:Ethnicity; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D008605:Mental Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D008913:Minority Groups; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care