Multicultural Service Officers (MSO) 101-05100000

The MSO Program connects migrants and refugees to the agency's information, payments and services. MSOs work together with Community and Third Party Organisations (CTPO) and staff. They promote and improve access to our products, payments and services for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) customers and communities. CTPOs include providers and agencies such as:

• Migrant Resource Centres
• Community Health Centres and,
• local charities

MSOs play a main role in ensuring our services and products are relevant and accessible for our CALD customers. MSOs are able to highlight gaps or issues CALD customers may be facing when accessing our services. They do this by:

• conducting outreach and
• liaising with multicultural community agencies

There are about 70 MSOs located in service centres throughout Australia

• CTPOs
• Service Australia customers
• Service Australia staff

MSOs form and maintain strong relationships with CTPOs. The MSO role is vital in identifying and feeding back to the agency local community issues and service delivery gaps. They often work together with CTPOs to provide the best outcomes for CALD customers. Some of the work MSOs undertake in the community include:

• Working with CTPOs to recognise emerging trends and issues in local communities
• Developing strategies to address issues faced by CALD customers
• Attending various stakeholder meetings to keep CTPOs informed of key changes to policy, payments or procedures that may affect CALD customers
• Promoting the agency's services, payments and products to increase CTPOs knowledge
• Delivering education and information sessions on agency services
• Attending state based Multicultural Advisory Forums to foster relationships, build knowledge around CTPO services and programs and work with stakeholders
• Obtaining feedback on agency program and services to improve service delivery to CALD customers
• Establishing local focus groups to help design services that are accessible to CALD people

CALD customers may encounter specific challenges or barriers in accessing services. The role of the MSO is to assist in educating and informing customers to lessen these barriers. MSOs consult with communities, deliver information sessions on our services and liaise with other specialists to escalate and follow up on CALD customer issues. MSOs support CALD customers by:

• connecting them to the appropriate service channels and ensuring they have access to our payments, products and services
• organising and delivering information sessions to CALD customers to inform them of payments and services. They engage with interpreters as required
• working with CTPOs to address local issues mutual customers may be facing in the community
• assisting CALD customers that face multiple and complex issues. MSOs help them navigate the system and can refer them to other specialists or community agencies
• seeking customer feedback to identify service gaps and escalate or resolve issues
• delivering the newly arrived refugee information session within the first 4 to 10 weeks of their arrival

MSOs play a key role within Service centres, supporting staff by:

• providing specialist advice to staff around cultural considerations or direct involvement in complex cases involving CALD customers
• providing staff training and support on access and equity, cultural information and available resources to increase capability in working with multicultural people
• ensuring that local service centres are able to meet the language needs of people with a preferred language other than English
• providing staff training on how to access and use language services including
• interpreters
• translators and the
• Multilingual Phone Service (MPS)
• providing staff with information on language programs such as the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) and the Skills for Education and Employment (SEE)
• providing service centres with a list of local contacts for migrant and refugee communities
• ensuring local service centres have appropriate multilingual signage and information
• producing community profiles on local migrant and refugee communities
• identifying local needs and barriers to service delivery for multicultural customers and the community and develop innovative strategies and solutions
• escalating issues to the service zone or national Multicultural Services team that impact delivery services to CALD customers
• supporting the national Multicultural Training team by sourcing guest speakers and providing local knowledge in preparation for multicultural awareness training

Find a local MSO in Office Locator. The Resources page contains a link to Office Locator and instructions.