After students and staff at Adelaide’s Thebarton Senior College were forced into lockdown last month following a COVID-19 outbreak, some felt confused, while others say they were ostracised by their communities for having links to the cluster.
Eighteen-year-old classmates Yen Trucry and Pham Nhat Hui Nguyen were at work when they received a phone call from SA Health to say a fellow student at the college where they are studying for their final school exams had tested positive for COVID-19.
The news panicked the duo, who both moved to Australia less than three years ago and speak English as a second language.
They knew the virus was impacting people in Australia, they said, but they didn’t fully understand how it spread or what quarantine meant.
“My feelings were really nervous and worried. It made me stressed a lot,” Year 12 student Yen told SBS News.
Both students were among 1,100 people quickly forced to isolate as part of the Adelaide cluster and the college was closed.
The Year 12 students were concerned about being connected to the cluster. Source: Sam Okely/SBS News
The cluster had originated from a man in his 20s who had returned from Victoria the previous month. Despite choosing to quarantine at a hotel to avoid infecting others at his house, he did not follow SA Health guidelines on self-isolation and came in close contact with two other people – a cleaner at the hotel and a student at the college.
The school’s principal Eva Kannis-Torry said her team did all they could to support their diverse cohort of students and their families - many of them from migrant and refugee backgrounds - but it was a big job.
“We have eight Bilingual Support Officers who work at the college and speak over 20 languages between them,” she said.
“Our staff were able to maintain contact with the culturally and linguistically diverse communities to support them through the isolation requirements and to provide accurate information. Because of the sudden disruption we made a choice to focus on wellbeing needs first to ensure the safety of our learning community and their families.”
But they wouldn't have said no to any extra support from the local authorities.
All of the school’s students were directed to self-isolate at home but for close contacts of the infected student - including aspiring teacher Hui - only an hour after the phone call, police officers knocked on his door, telling him to quickly pack his belongings for a two-week quarantine stay at a hotel.
“That’s a day I will never forget. I was given just one hour to pack up everything I needed, my laptop, my phone, just two or three clothes and that’s all,” he said.
As a result, he lost his casual job as a kitchen hand, but fears then turned to his family of seven, who were also told to self-isolate. It left them too with no income and caused uncertainty about how they were going to afford to put food on the table.
“My mother and wife also lost their jobs, everyone in my family was so very worried. They couldn’t even go out and get food for the isolation, they had no time to prepare,” Hui said.
Yen had to isolate at home, and like Hui, found herself out of work, even after the isolation period was over. She says her employer - whose first language wasn’t English - didn’t understand the COVID-19 safety messaging and considered her a risk to their business.
“This has affected my mental health because the people in my workplace are confused about my situation. I needed an interpreter to explain as at that time I was extremely stressed,” Yen said.
Both students reached out to non-for-profit organisation Multicultural Youth SA, which says it was inundated with similar reports of migrant students among the school cluster facing discrimination by their employers, and even by their own families.
“They are not being welcomed back at home anymore because their families are concerned that they are contagious or have the virus, which is not true," the organisation’s CEO Tamara Stewart-Jones said.
SA Health provided pamphlets in up to 12 languages, but there is no substitute for human support, she said.
“There were many different languages that these young people spoke so it was really important and crucial to make sure info was interpreted correctly, but making sure for those who had low English literacy … that we developed resources for them to be able to access.”
“Handing out a piece of paper isn’t really going to unpack these things and young people do really need an ear to listen.”
A survey released by the organisation in July found more than 26 per cent of all migrant and refugee employees in South Australia were working in a casual capacity.
The organisation is now urging the state government to lead the way and introduce ‘cultural liaison officers’ to help break down cultural barriers and reduce the stigma of being associated with a COVID-19 cluster for those in certain communities.
The officers would build on the successful “community constable” model used by SA Police - a program where officers within the force from a diverse cultural background use their knowledge of their communities to resolve challenging situations.
On average, 10 police academy recruits take on the roles each year to assist police and work as cultural liaisons.
“The cultural liaison officers who can go out into the community is a great idea because when I had a problem with my workplace I really wanted someone, an expert in the field, to explain to them,” Yen said. “Because if I explain, they may not trust me.”
A spokesperson for SA Health said in a statement it has interpreters available for people who test positive for COVID-19 and their close contacts, and that it is are working closely with community organisations including Multicultural Youth SA to ensure migrants have the correct information.
They did not confirm if the suggestion of cultural liaison officers would be implemented.
“We have developed translated resources in addition to what the Commonwealth Department of Health has developed and we have worked closely with migrant groups to ensure the accuracy of the translation,” the spokesperson said.
“When the Thebarton [College] cluster became apparent, a key factor that enabled us to manage the cluster was reaching out to the community to ensure as much information as possible was available, in a timely manner.”
Sam Okely is a freelance journalist based in Adelaide.
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