The First Door Is Digital: Designing Multicultural-Ready Mental Health Access Pathways
Before someone speaks to a worker, they may already have tried to understand a service webpage, complete an intake form or make sense of an automated reply. Each step asks something of them: language, information, confidence, time or trust.
For an organisation reviewing multicultural mental health access, a useful starting point is to follow that first journey. Can someone understand whether the service is relevant, what happens next and how to get help if the digital route does not work for them?
Make the next step clear
A service page should help a person understand who the service is for, how to contact it, whether a referral is needed, what costs apply and what response to expect. Language assistance and other ways to make contact should be easy to find where they are available.
Those details need to match the service's actual arrangements. A welcoming message can create confusion if the form, eligibility rules or response process tell a different story. The organisation needs someone responsible for keeping the pathway and its information aligned.
Let people describe their situation
An intake form can make familiarity with professional terminology a condition of entry. Someone may understand their need through family responsibility, sleep, work, grief or a change in daily life before describing it in the language a service uses.
Review which questions are necessary at the first step, explain why sensitive information is requested and provide room for the person's own words. Test whether instructions remain understandable when read on a phone or with language support. Translation is one part of this work; the underlying questions and process also need examination.
Provide a workable alternative
Some people will need help using the digital pathway or will prefer another way to make contact. That option needs to be specific enough to use: the contact route, when it is available and what happens after the person reaches it.
A useful review follows the whole journey rather than stopping at the homepage. What happens after submission? How is receipt confirmed? What can someone do if there is no response, the service is unsuitable or the next instruction is unclear?
Connect lived experience input to design decisions
People with relevant lived and living experience can help an organisation question what its pathway assumes. The participation arrangements matter: who helps define the problem, whose language and cultural experiences are included, what support and payment are available, and which decisions remain open.
The organisation also needs to identify who can change the form, service information or response process. Record what contributors recommended, what was decided and what happened next. This gives lived experience knowledge a clear route into the design and operation of access.
Start with one journey
Choose a common entry point and invite people with relevant experience to walk through a realistic scenario using test information. Ask what they think each step means, what they expect next and where they would need help. Avoid assuming one participant can represent every community.
Use that discussion to identify a specific change, its responsible owner and how it will be checked with the people expected to use it. A walkthrough provides practical questions and examples to investigate. It does not, by itself, establish that an entire service is accessible.
About the accepted online poster
The First Door Is Digital: Designing Multicultural-Ready Mental Health Access Pathways is my accepted Poster 76 for the Global Mental Health Summit in Perth, 14 to 16 October 2026. My contribution to the summit is through two online posters, without attending in person.
This companion article considers the service design questions connected with that topic.
Working with LEXs
Through LEXs consultancy, I work with organisations on lived experience participation, co-design and the connection between advice and decisions. If you are reviewing an access pathway, describe the service decision you need to make and whose experience needs to inform it.
Michael Elwan is the Perth-based Founder and Director of Lived Experience Solutions (LEXs), an Accredited Social Worker and PhD candidate researching lived and living experience leadership in mental health.
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