Finding our own ways of working together : Reflections on implementing and facilitating a multidisciplinary and equity-oriented model of Group Pregnancy Care for women of refugee background

Objective
This paper explores professional staff experiences of implementing and facilitating a multidisciplinary equity-oriented model of Group Pregnancy Care for women of refugee background. This model was the first of its kind in Australia and one of the first worldwide.

Design and Setting
This exploratory descriptive qualitative study reports the process evaluation findings from the formative evaluation of Group Pregnancy Care for women of refugee background. Data were collected in Melbourne, Australia between January and March 2021 via semi-structured interviews, and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Participants
Purposive sampling was used to recruit twenty-three professional staff involved in the implementation, facilitation, or oversight of Group Pregnancy Care.
Findings
This paper reports five themes: knowledge sharing, bicultural family mentors – the critical link, finding our own ways of working together, power dynamics at the intersection of community and clinical knowledge, and system capacity for change.

Key conclusions
The bicultural family mentor role contributes to the cultural safety of the group, and increases the confidence and competence of professional staff through cultural bridging. Multidisciplinary cross-sector teams that collaborate well can provide cohesive care. It is possible for hospital and community-based services to establish cross-sector equity-oriented partnerships. However, there are challenges sustaining partnerships in the absence of explicit funding to support collaboration, and in context of organisational and professional inflexibility.

Implications for practice
Investing in change is necessary to achieve health equity. Creating explicit funding pathways for the bicultural family mentor workforce, multidisciplinary collaboration, and cross-sector partnerships would strengthen service capacity to provide equity-oriented care. Working towards health equity also requires a commitment to continuing professional development for professional staff and organisations to increase knowledge and capacity.

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