Page 2393 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 30 July 2019
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We recognise that it will take time to change the culture overall of the health services, but a lot of work is already underway within both the ACT Health Directorate and Canberra Health Services around embedding the values they hold and ensuring that staff are aware of those values and are empowered to speak up when they see behaviours that are not acceptable according to those values, and they will be heard.
MRS KIKKERT: Minister, in addition to implementing the 20 recommendations, what is the short-term plan to deal with the current problems?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mrs Kikkert for her supplementary. As I have just mentioned, the first recommendation of the culture review was to re-engage with staff to ensure that values are lived and embraced at all levels of the organisation. Within Canberra Health Services there has been a wide consultation with staff about the vision and role that they have for Canberra Health Services, and that has then led to a second consultation about values and behaviours. The final part of that consultation is currently underway where they have identified four key values relating to behaviours, and staff are being asked to identify specific sentences that speak to them about the way that they expect everybody in the organisation to behave.
Within the ACT Health Directorate they have undertaken a significant values refresh process, engaging 25 staff to work up that process and then more than 200 staff will be participating in a world cafe style discussion about what those values will be. It is the start of a process.
There are also processes underway with both the CEO of Canberra Health Services and the Director-General of the ACT Health Directorate making themselves directly available to staff who want to come to talk to them about the way that they experience the workplace and any issues that they have. There is also work underway in terms of strengthening the human resources capability of both the directorate and, particularly, Canberra Health Services.
We know that the experience reflected in the culture review was that the response from the human resources areas was not what we would have expected. There is significant work underway within Canberra Health Services to both expand and strengthen the human resources capability so that when staff have complaints those complaints are handled appropriately.
MRS DUNNE: Minister, what is your plan to ensure that immediate action is taken to address the issues highlighted, for instance, in today’s Canberra Times and also highlighted at the ALP recent conference, that bullying, harassment and racism are still at this moment rife in the hospital?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mrs Dunne for the supplementary question. I have spoken to some of the work that is underway within both the Health Directorate and particularly in Canberra Health Services. It is always disappointing to hear that staff are subject to bullying, harassment, workplace stress or, indeed, occupational violence. These are not acceptable in our health service or across the ACT public service. That is why the ACT public service as a whole is developing both an occupational violence strategy and a workplace mental health strategy.
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