One year on: our Innovate RAP in action

Since launching our Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) in June 2025, we’ve continued to build reconciliation into the way we work across the ADC. In the first year of the RAP, we progressed actions across the pillars of Relationships, Respect and Opportunities, with more than 68% of deliverables either completed or underway.

This work is guided by our RAP Working Group, which includes staff from across the organisation and provides oversight of the ADC’s reconciliation actions. The group is supported by proud Noongar/Ballardong woman Jaynaya Winmar, founder of Blakbone Sistahood, an Indigenous-owned consultancy, who brings expert guidance and advice to this work.

Staff learning and engagement is an important priority within the Innovate RAP. As part of onboarding, all new staff complete the Indigenous Allied Health Association’s Cultural Responsiveness Training course, helping to build cultural awareness and support a culturally safe and responsive workplace. We are also working to help ADC staff build confidence and capability in cultural learning areas they have identified as priorities.

Throughout the year, the RAP Working Group also runs activities that encourage ongoing cultural learning. To begin this year’s program and mark Close the Gap Day, staff attended the exhibition Cultural Medicine: The Art of Indigenous Healing at the University of Melbourne’s medical museum. As part of our activities to recognise National Reconciliation Week, we invited Eva Jo Edwards, a Boonwurrung, Mutti Mutti and Yorta Yorta woman, cultural educator and survivor of the Stolen Generation, to share her story with our team.

To ensure the ADC are engaging with First Nations peoples in a consistent and culturally responsive way, we have developed a Cultural Protocols guide. The guide outlines culturally responsive practice across our work, covering everything from acknowledgements and ceremonies to terminology, communications and engagement, helping embed respect, inclusion and cultural responsiveness into our everyday work.

We are embedding First Nations voices and guidance into our wider business operations. In 2025, we established the First Peoples and Allies Reference Group, whose members have already provided valuable guidance specific to Domain 6: Cultural Safety during the review of the Accreditation Standards. The group is also helping to improve how we support education providers to implement this standard and how assessors evaluate its application.

Alongside these initiatives, we have progressed a number of practical policy and process changes to better support First Nations inclusion. This includes introducing cultural and ceremonial leave, enabling staff to participate in NAIDOC Week events, and progress towards an anti-racism policy.

We have also reviewed existing policies to identify and strengthen anti-discrimination provisions and future needs, embedded cultural capability into our professional development framework, and updated recruitment processes to remove barriers for First Nations candidates. In addition, we are strengthening our approach to procurement to better support First Nations businesses.

From a governance perspective, we’ve also strengthened the systems we use to track, measure and report on our RAP commitments. We share progress regularly with staff and senior leaders to support transparency and collective accountability for reconciliation outcomes.

Together, these actions reflect steady progress toward a more culturally responsive and inclusive workplace as we continue delivering our Innovate RAP through 2026 and into 2027.