Objectives

Guided by evidence and lived experience, MCRMC’s objectives are to:

1. Improve safety, quality and cultural responsiveness of maternity care

   • Increase the capacity of maternity providers and services to deliver equitable, culturally safe, trauma-informed care for migrant and culturally diverse women.

2. Reduce racism, discrimination and systemic barriers in maternity services

   • Challenge interpersonal and institutional racism in policies, funding, insurance and service design affecting migrant women’s access and outcomes.

3. Strengthen informed choice, autonomy and participation

   • Ensure migrant women have the information, language support and confidence needed to participate in shared decision-making throughout pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period.

4. Promote evidence-informed, community-co-designed models of care

   • Support implementation of models such as continuity of carer, multidisciplinary and community-based care, interpreting and social support that have been shown to improve outcomes for migrant and socially disadvantaged women.

5. Elevate migrant women’s voices in research, policy and practice

   • Embed lived experience at every level—from organisational governance to co-design of tools and advocacy agendas—so that reforms reflect the realities of migrant families.

   • Conduct, lead, collaborate on, and participate in high-quality health and medical research focused on maternity care for migrant and culturally diverse women, including consumer-informed studies, qualitative research on lived experiences, evaluation of culturally safe interventions, and projects addressing systemic disparities to generate new evidence that directly informs policy, practice, education, and advocacy.

Through these objectives, MCRMC seeks to transform maternity care in Australia into a system where migrant and culturally diverse women are safe, respected, and heard, and where their cultural identities are recognised as assets, not barriers, in every pregnancy and birth.