Multicultural mental health training in Australia

for the conversations services avoid

LEXs delivers training across Australia in CALD/multicultural mental health, suicide prevention, culturally responsive practice, for teams working with CALD/multicultural communities and families. Workshops are designed and delivered by Michael Elwan, an award-winning Accredited Social Worker and national advisor, and customised for organisations, peer workforces and leadership teams, drawing on lived/living experience and current evidence.

Tailored mental health and suicide prevention training for organisations, social workers and human service teams working with multicultural communities.

Mental health and suicide prevention work becomes more complex when culture, migration, masculinity, grief, family silence, stigma and help-seeking all sit in the same room. These are often the conversations services know matter, but struggle to open safely.

I provide tailored training for organisations and professional groups across Australia, for social workers, mental health practitioners and human service teams working with multicultural communities. I shape each program with the commissioning team, drawing on lived/living experience, social work practice, applied research and case-based learning. The aim is practical: to help teams hold complex conversations with more clarity, humility and skill.

Multicultural mental health and suicide prevention training

My training is designed for teams working where mental health, suicide prevention and multicultural practice intersect. This includes social workers, mental health practitioners, suicide prevention teams, settlement and multicultural services, schools, universities, community organisations, PHNs, local government, family services and human service teams.

The work goes beyond general cultural awareness. I focus on the practice moments where professionals may feel uncertain: how to ask about distress without closing a person down; how to recognise shame, silence and indirect communication; how migration and family roles shape help-seeking; how to respond when suicide risk is present; and how to work respectfully when culture, faith, gender and system pressures all matter.

Training can be delivered as a webinar, workshop, conference session, half-day program, full-day program or multi-session series. Delivery is available online across Australia.

This work complements accredited programs such as ASIST, safeTALK and Mental Health First Aid, taking up the culturally complex conversations those programs are not designed to cover.

Signature training streams

These streams are the strongest fit for organisations seeking specialist multicultural mental health and suicide prevention training. Each is an established program that can run as it stands or be tailored to your workforce and setting.

1- CaLD men’s mental health and suicide prevention

Men from culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) backgrounds may experience distress in ways that services do not always recognise early. Some present late. Some present only at crisis point. Others carry expectations around provision, family duty, masculinity, silence, spirituality or shame that shape whether support feels possible.

This training supports practitioners and teams to work more thoughtfully with CaLD men across mental health, suicide prevention, community, hospital, settlement, justice, family and education settings.

Depending on the audience and format, training may explore:

cultural constructions of masculinity, role expectations and help-seeking
stigma, shame, grief, spirituality and family responsibility
how underemployment, visa stress, racism and service mistrust affect presentation
indirect language, metaphor and body-based prompts in engagement
suicide prevention conversations that are respectful, direct and culturally responsive
adapting assessment and support approaches without reducing people to culture
practitioner reflection on assumptions, risk, identity and power

This stream is suited to organisations that know CaLD men are under-engaging, presenting late, or being misunderstood by services, and want practical ways to respond before crisis becomes the only point of contact.

What participants have said

Participants in my national AASW training on supporting mental health in men from CaLD backgrounds have described it as insightful and well-structured, noting in particular how it helped them adjust their approach with CaLD men, including reframing silence as carrying significant meaning, and the reflective insights they intended to bring into practice.

2- Mental health conversations in CaLD families

Silence around mental health in CaLD families is rarely simple. It can protect people from shame, hold family dignity together, or keep painful histories out of view. It can also leave distress unnamed, widen generational distance and make help-seeking harder.

This training supports practitioners who work with CaLD families across family services, child protection, education, mental health, settlement, community and social work settings. It focuses on how to open safer mental health conversations across generations without shaming families or flattening cultural complexity.

Depending on the audience and format, training may explore:

how intergenerational and cultural dynamics shape family silence
stigma, migration histories, belonging and identity
culturally responsive questioning and reframing strategies
psychoeducation, narrative approaches and practical conversation tools
working with family roles, loyalty, grief and expectation
supporting dialogue between young people, parents, carers and kin
practitioner reflection on one intentional shift in everyday family work

This stream is suited to teams who support CaLD families and want practical tools for opening conversations that honour culture while making distress easier to name.

This stream builds on my AASW workshop, Across Generations: Practical Tools for Mental Health Conversations in CaLD Families, which focused on stigma, intergenerational silence, migration histories, identity-affirming communication and practical tools for opening safer family conversations.

3- Culturally responsive supervision

This training is for supervisors, managers, team leaders and practice leads who want to build culturally responsive supervision capability across their teams. It is different from receiving supervision with me. This stream teaches supervisors and leaders how to strengthen their own supervision practice when supporting workers from multicultural and CaLD backgrounds.

Training may explore:

how culture, identity and systemic barriers shape supervision
the invisible labour carried by many CaLD workers in professional settings
reflective questions that make culture visible without putting the burden on the supervisee
feedback practices that attend to identity, belonging and power
case-based supervision scenarios
practical shifts supervisors can embed in their next session

This stream is especially relevant for social work supervisors, team leaders, managers and multidisciplinary services wanting supervision to become more reflective, culturally responsive and professionally safe.

This stream draws on my AASW workshop, Supervision That Sees Me: Culturally Responsive Supervision for CaLD Social Workers, which explores how culture, identity and systemic barriers shape the supervision experience for workers from CaLD backgrounds.

Established programs and custom design

There are two ways to begin. I offer a set of established programs that can run as they are or be tailored to your workforce, and full custom design where I build a program for your setting from the ground up. Most organisations start with an established program and shape it to fit; some commission something bespoke from the outset. An established program is the quickest way to begin, while custom design is a larger piece of work I scope closely with your team. Either way, I agree the shape with you before anything is confirmed.

The three programs above are the established ones, developed and delivered through national AASW professional development. Each can run as it stands or be tailored to your audience, sector and context. Tailoring might change the case examples, the practice setting, the balance between mental health and suicide prevention content, or the depth of the material for clinical, non-clinical, peer or leadership audiences.

Custom design is for work an established program does not cover, or a setting that needs a program built specifically for it. I usually develop refugee, migrant and settlement-related practice this way, along with any program shaped around a particular community, workforce or organisational context. A refugee and settlement program might take in migration stressors and loss, family role changes after migration, interpreter-mediated practice, and the point where trauma, culture and practical settlement pressures overlap. It is best shaped through a scoping conversation so it fits the community, setting and workforce involved.

A program from either path can be delivered as:

a focused webinar
a 90-minute professional development session
a half-day or full-day workshop
a conference or symposium session
a multi-session series
online across Australia

In design, I consider the audience, the sector, the level of practice experience, the sensitivities in the topic, the learning outcomes, the format, the case examples, and any organisational context that needs to be handled with care. I can adapt training for clinical, non-clinical, peer, community, social work, education, leadership or multidisciplinary audiences.

Why LEXs

My training brings together lived/living experience, social work practice, applied research and systems insight.

I am an Accredited Social Worker and therapist, Founder and Director of Lived Experience Solutions (LEXs), and a PhD candidate researching lived/living experience leadership in mental health. I have delivered training through national professional development channels, including AASW workshops on CaLD men's mental health, mental health conversations in CaLD families, and culturally responsive supervision.

My work in social work, multicultural mental health and suicide prevention has been recognised through state and national awards, including AASW Social Worker of the Year, the WA Mental Health Award for Lived Experience Impact and Inspiration, Suicide Prevention Australia LiFE Awards, and the WA Multicultural Awards.

The proof matters, but the training does not rely on biography alone. I design sessions around practical learning, reflective practice, real-world complexity and the needs of the people in the room.

Frequently asked questions

Can training be tailored to our organisation?

Yes. I shape training around your audience, setting, goals and the conversations your team needs to hold. A session for social workers will not look the same as a session for a school, community organisation, PHN, settlement service or multidisciplinary health team.

Can training support CPD requirements?

I provide a certificate of attendance stating the hours completed, which participants can use towards CPD records. We can confirm any formal CPD requirements during scoping.

Can suicide prevention training be delivered for non-clinical staff?

Yes, with careful tailoring. Suicide prevention content should match the role, responsibility and setting of the participants. Non-clinical staff may need practical confidence in noticing concern, opening a conversation, responding safely and knowing when to escalate. Clinical or professional audiences may need deeper work around assessment, formulation, cultural context and systems response.

How is this different from general cultural awareness training?

General cultural awareness training often introduces broad concepts about culture and difference. My training is more practice-focused. It looks at the conversations professionals are asked to hold in real settings: mental health, suicide prevention, family silence, help-seeking, masculinity, migration, supervision, service access and the systems that shape whether people feel safe to seek support. The focus is on practical judgement, reflective practice and culturally responsive communication, rather than asking participants to memorise cultural facts.

How does this fit with accredited programs like ASIST, safeTALK or Mental Health First Aid?

It sits on top of them. Programs like ASIST, safeTALK and Mental Health First Aid give staff a shared language and a basic scaffold for noticing concern and responding safely, and that scaffold matters. What they are not designed to do is work through what changes when culture, migration, faith, masculinity, family duty and shame are in the room. A worker can complete safeTALK and still not know how to ask about distress when the person in front of them treats disclosure as a betrayal of the family, or how to read silence that is carrying meaning rather than signalling nothing. My training takes the culturally complex conversation those programs leave to one side and works it directly, so an accredited foundation becomes usable with the communities your service is trying to reach. It complements that training rather than repeating or replacing it.

Do you provide supervision training?

Yes. I can provide training for supervisors, managers and practice leads who want to strengthen culturally responsive supervision capability across their teams. If you are looking for supervision with me rather than training for your team, visit the LEXs social work supervision page.

How are fees set?

Training fees vary depending on the topic, preparation required, duration, format, level of customisation, and audience size. I can provide a fee after an initial enquiry and scoping conversation.

Request a training proposal

If you are considering training for your organisation, team or professional group, you do not need to have the full brief worked out before making contact.

To begin, share: