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4.07am BST

Caitlin Cassidy:

Has Victoria’s mental health outreach improved among disadvantaged community groups?

The Victorian presser ends today with a timely reminder that while we are all living through the pandemic, not everyone is affected equally by it.

The main message I’d want to give is we need to work in partnership with cultural and linguistic sensitivity. We need to make sure we’re reaching out in the language that’s appropriate and make sure we deliver services in partnership with community organisations and take our advice from experts who work from the community groups, who can tell us the way we might need to adapt the services we provide.

If we think back to the concerns we had last year with public housing and the lockdowns that happened and how we managed that now, everyone has learnt more about cultural sensitivity … we have learnt a lot and we manage that in a much more culturally sensitive way. We always need to improve, but we’ve taken our advice from experts … to make sure we do this in a better way. We are never doing enough to help people that are vulnerable.

4.05am BST

In case you missed it during the NSW presser, here are the numbers for western NSW:

There were 23 new cases in the west: 18 in Dubbo, four in Orange, one in Brewarrina. And four new cases in the far west: all in Wilcannia.

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Source: The Guardian