Why develop a RAP

Our achievements

The Innovate RAP 2020-2022 focused on three key principles: Listen. Understand. Act.
 

Listen

To ensure the RAP was guided by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices and perspectives, the College established an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Committee in 2020, whose role was to provide advice and input into the RAP. The Advisory Committee met monthly to review progress and has since been re-structured to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Steering Committee (outlined below). We have included strengthened commitments to maintain and amplify the voices of this group across the College.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Faculty was established in 2010 and is governed by an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led Council and Education Committee. Alongside our two governing bodies for the RAP, the RAP team works in close collaboration with the Faculty, ensuring the RAP is aligning with, communicating and promoting the strategic priorities and key projects in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, such as the fourth edition of the National guide to preventative healthcare for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, developed as part of a long-standing partnership with the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO). While this work is exceptional, we need to focus on supporting all teams across the College to build and strengthen their own local relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Since the launch of our previous RAP in 2020, we are extremely proud that the representation of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander employees across the RACGP has increased from three (or 0.75% of our total workforce), to 18 (or 1.65% of the total workforce). This increase has led to a diversification of the roles and positions held by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team members. We’re now focusing our efforts on implementing our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment strategy, which for the first time includes specific employment targets, initiatives to build relationships and peer-support amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees, as well as increasing levels of leadership representation across the College.
 

Understand

A key focus of the Innovate RAP 2020-2022 was on cultural learning. The RACGP worked to increase levels of cultural awareness by introducing mandatory cultural learning as part of our onboarding process. All new RACGP employees (330 to date) were required to complete two cultural learning modules organised by the Koorie Heritage Trust. Since the transition of general practice training to the College in 2022, we’re a much more geographically and culturally diverse organisation, meaning our existing approach to cultural learning no longer met the diverse training needs of our employees. To respond to this challenge, we worked hard to review and develop our cultural capability framework and ensure cultural learning provided to staff is locally relevant and specific to their position within the College. We’re currently rolling out a nationally relevant online cultural learning module for all employees and in this RAP, we’ve introduced new and strengthened commitments to ensure employees continue their cultural learning journey by completing locally relevant training in addition to the nation-wide online module. We’ve also committed to particular teams undertaking specific cultural capability training that is relevant to them and their role. In collaboration with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Steering Committee, we’ve also developed several guidelines and resources that focus on providing staff with the knowledge and tools to respectfully engage and build relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including how to develop a personalised Acknowledgement of Country, appropriate language and terminology and the history of 26th January. These resources continue to be actively used, shared and promoted. As an example, our resource on language and terminology, reached over 600 team members. With overwhelmingly positive sentiment received, team members reflected on how useful this was to guide a safe and inclusive workplace culture and we received feedback from our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Steering Committee that the resources are reducing cultural load.
 

Act

The College has long supported the implementation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full. In 2023, the year of the referendum for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament, we reaffirmed our support for this publicly and with our staff. This support was in recognition that positive health outcomes are achieved when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a say in matters that affect them, that self-determination is key to addressing the health inequities that continue to exist today and that the Voice to Parliament would be a key mechanism in advancing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights. This included developing an engagement plan with three key objectives:

• Inform staff, RACGP members, and the public of the College’s position for a Voice to Parliament.
• Establish and strengthen protective mechanisms and resources for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff and members to support their cultural and psychological safety during the referendum process.
• Critically reflect on our own governance structures to consider how the College can embed the principles of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

While the referendum outcome was deeply disappointing, we remain unwavering in our support for the self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and progressing the priorities outlined in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. In response to the referendum outcome, we invited RACGP employees to complete a post-referendum survey which found that 98% of survey participants want the RACGP to either maintain or increase its commitment to reconciliation and that truth-telling is a key reconciliation priority. We listened to this and immediately acted on the findings by making an organisational submission to the Yoorrook Justice Commission, Victoria’s first truth-telling process into historical and ongoing injustices experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Our challenges

Since our previous RAP was endorsed in 2020, we’ve faced significant challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns, vaccine rollout, and recovery tested the nation’s GPs like never before and with the world now gradually moving into post-pandemic recovery, GPs continue to play a

critical role in their communities. The impact of the pandemic on the College was significant – it was a challenging time, but we faced those challenges head on. The College has also seen structural change since our previous RAP, as we prepared for the transition of the Australian General Practice Training (AGPT) Program back to the RACGP and Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM), coming into effect on 1 February 2023. Transitioning general practice training back to the RACGP was a significant undertaking, including the recruitment, onboarding and mobilising of more than 700 staff from regional training organisations (RTOs), opening eleven properties around the country to support general practice training, and entering into a joint venture agreement with ACRRM to establish Joint College Training Services (JCTS). 2023 then saw a cost-reduction exercise, with employee numbers reduced to a sustainable level. These events have undeniably had an impact on our RAP and our reconciliation process. This is why, with a focus on financial and cultural stabilisation and investment in our systems, the decision to develop a second Innovate RAP, in our view, is the right one. As we continue to experience significant transformation, we’ve developed a RAP that is ambitious, while being realistic and focused on creating long-term, systemic and cultural change.

Lessons learned.

As we prepare for the launch and implementation of our next RAP, we’ve identified three key learnings or guiding principles to carry us through the next stage of our reconciliation process:

• Start from within: the RACGP has undergone significant change and transformation over the last 12 months. For the next two years, we need to focus on strengthening relationships and engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, building capability across our increased workforce, and aligning the RAP with our diversity, equity and inclusion program of work.
• Simplify: value over volume. While we’ve strengthened our commitments significantly, we’re not trying to do it all. Under each RAP pillar, we’ve identified a ‘high impact’ objective to ensure staff across the College understand and are proactively progressing reconciliation within their own unique sphere of influence.
• Stabilise: we’re focusing on better resourcing, measuring the impact and communicating our reconciliation work. We need to develop effective and meaningful approaches to track, report and measure our progress as we set ourselves up for long-term success.