Multicultural Quick Reference Guides

Overview

Multicultural Quick Reference Guides (QRGs) are summaries about communities, developed by the Cultural Advisory Unit (CAU) specifically for use by operational police within the Queensland Police Service (QPS).  The Multicultural QRGs project aims to help the QPS provide the community with appropriate and non-discriminatory police services by enhancing the capacity and knowledge of its members.

The QRGs contain country and community profiles, police multicultural resources, recent police support and initiatives, details of interpreting services, common phrases, a guide to religions, diplomatic and consular support and community organisation contact details.  To ensure usefulness to operational police, the QRGs have been limited to two pages (to be printed back to back). 

Typically the QRGs are broken into the sections listed below.  Research and feedback has indicated that this is the most appropriate breakdown for use by operational police:

Full Name of country; Capital; Population; Languages; Religions; Current issues (including a brief history as appropriate); Community Profile in Australia; Community Profile in Queensland; Policing Environment; Police intercepts; Greetings and customs; Death and related issues; How should police approach a place of worship (protocols); QPS Resources; Police Liaison Officers (PLOs); Other persons or units; QPS Operational Procedure Manual – relevant sections; Interpreting and translating services; Phrase guide; Religious guide; Recent QPS initiatives or  events; Community Contacts; Diplomatic and  consular; Organisations in Queensland; External Reference and sourced material.

The QRGs are available on the QPS intranet so police can easily refer to them when responding to issues involving communities.  This also allows the editors to update information regularly to ensure currency.  The CAU will however review the information contained within the QRGs on an annual basis to ensure currency of information, particularly contact officers, consular addresses and other relevant details.

The Cultural Advisory Unit (CAU) developed the QRGs in response to the growing number of requests from operational police and specialist units for easy to use guides for diverse or multicultural communities.  

To ensure usefulness of the final product, the CAU researched publicly available information and consulted with members of the QPS from the relevant diverse backgrounds.  The second phase involved consultations with government and community stakeholders to enhance and consolidate information.  The final phase was to test the QRGs with relevant officers to ensure that the documents served the purposes of the original brief.

For example, the first QRG was developed for the Sudanese community and was endorsed by the Police Ethnic Advisory Group (PEAG), Sudanese community leaders through members of the Queensland Police Service Sudanese Consultative Group and the President of the Sudanese Association of Queensland.

The QRGs do not contain sensitive information, the majority of the information is ‘open source’.  Internal QPS information such as employees with relevant language skills, current projects and directions to the Operational Procedures Manual are not considered sensitive, but are not ‘open source’.  Feedback indicates that the QRGs achieve a balance of necessary current information and some historical information necessary to understand current cultural, social and political issues of those countries. 

A QRG for the Sudanese community was developed in 2008.  Since then QRGs for Maori, Samoan and Tongan communities have been developed and finalised.  QRGs for South East Asian, African and Middle Eastern communities are currently in development with 15 expected to be finalised in late 2009.

For more information

Cultural Advisory Unit
Office of the Commissioner
Queensland Police Service
(07) 3364 3934