Indigenous child health and culturally safe care — formative SAQs

SAQ 1 (10 marks)

You supervise a registrar who completed a cultural competence workshop. They say this means their care is automatically culturally safe for Indigenous families. ^[1]

1. Define cultural safety and contrast it with cultural competence. (3) ^{[1] [2]}
2. Using Jones’s framework, give one example each of institutional and personally mediated racism in a paediatric service. (4) ^[3]
3. State two organisational strategies (beyond individual politeness) that improve equity with Indigenous populations. (3) ^[8]

Model answer

Cultural safety is care free of racism as defined by the person receiving care. Cultural competence is clinician knowledge/skills; useful but incomplete if the family still experiences racism or power abuse. ^[1]

Institutional example: clinic hours/location/transport rules that systematically exclude remote or low-income Indigenous families. Personally mediated example: a staff comment that shames a caregiver for “non-compliance” or uses a stereotype. ^[3]

Organisational strategies: flexible appointment systems and outreach; Indigenous workforce and liaison roles; partnership with community-controlled services; anti-racism policies with complaint pathways; welcoming physical environments. (Any two well explained.) ^[8]