Connect 4 Kids: Collaboration in Rural Communities

www.benevolent.org.au

AUGUST 2013

Connect 4 Kids Collaboration in Rural Communities

Connect 4 Kids: Collaboration in Rural Communities The Benevolent Society

August 2013 2

Introduction to package This package is a living document and records, to date, the supportive theory, practices and tools that may assist workers to conduct collaborative programs with children, families, services and communities in regional and rural areas of Australia.

It has been developed in response to investment from both The Aussie Farmers Foundation and The Benevolent Society, who both wished to better understand how and why an organically developed mentoring program, conducted in partnership with the Wallangarra Country Women’s Association and the participants of the Brighter Futures Program in Tenterfield, initially comprised of Aboriginal Australians, began to see positive social impacts for all stakeholders by connecting people who had previously had little or stereotypical association with one another.

The attempt to understand, describe and share the learning from this innovative program has resulted in a closer relationship between practice and theory. It has also increased the capacity of participating individuals and organisations to determine if, when and how such programs may be developed in new areas.

At the time this document is being compiled, the Connect 4 Kids program is progressively expanding throughout the New England Region. We anticipate that the learning gained from this approach will feed into the future development of this living document and contribute to the body of knowledge in the practice of collaboration.

Produced by Debra Mill for The Benevolent Society, 2013


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Contents

Part 1: Collaboration – Why is it important?

1.2 Background of Connect 4 Kids: from practice to theory ................................................................ 9

1.3 Supportive Evidence for Connect 4 Kids ..................................................................................... 16

1.4 Bibliography and Additional Resources...................................................................................... 22

Part 2: Collaboration – How do we do it?

2.1 The Stages of Collaborative Change Management ...................................................................... 26

2.2 Flow description of Stages of Collaborative Change Management with Relevant Resources ........ 27

2.3 Collaboration in Practice Resources: ARACY Fact Sheets 1–14..................................................... 30

Part 3: Collaboration – Sharing it with others

3.1 Promotion: Relationships & Resources ...................................................................................... 32

3.2 Evaluation: The Art of Sharing What is Relevant......................................................................... 33

3.3 Additional Tools ........................................................................................................................ 34

COLLABORATION

Part 1:

Why is it important?

Part 2:

How do we do it?

Part 3:

Sharing it with

others


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Part 1: Collaboration –

Why is it important?


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Collective Impact: The theory in practice This document was prepared by Social Leadership Australia, a specialist consultancy within The Benevolent Society which offers coaching, training and skills development to organisations or communities who face complex adaptive challenges and are working to build a better Australia.

Our world is rapidly changing. There is more complexity and greater uncertainty about what lies ahead. Increasingly we are being called upon to be innovative and come up with new solutions. We can’t do this work alone – as individuals, or in our sectors, or indeed within our own function, value-set or even culture. We cannot rely on authority to have the answers to these challenges. Many of our toughest challenges require us to co-create solutions across sectors, values and cultures. To achieve large scale social change we have to work with others.

What is Collective Impact?

Collective Impact is a coordinated approach that brings organisations together from across government, community and the business sector to solve difficult social issues and achieve important social change. The underlying premise of Collective Impact is that no single organisation can create large-scale, lasting social change alone. There is no ‘silver bullet’ solution to systemic social problems, and these problems cannot be solved by simply scaling or replicating one organisation or program. Successful Collective Impact initiatives typically have five conditions that together produce true alignment and lead to powerful results:

1. Common agenda: All participants have a shared vision for change including a common understanding of the problem and a joint approach to solving it through agreed upon actions

2. Shared measurement: accountable: Collecting data and measuring results consistently across all participants ensures efforts remain aligned and participants hold each other accountable

3. Mutually reinforcing activities: Participant activities must be differentiated while still being coordinated through a mutually reinforcing plan of action

4. Continuous communication: Consistent and open communication is needed across the many players to build trust, assure mutual objectives, and appreciate common motivation

5. Backbone organisation: Creating and managing Collective Impact requires a separate organisation(s)with staff and a specific set of skills to serve as the backbone for the entire initiative and coordinate participating organisations and agencies

This Collective Impact framework was developed by a team from a US not-for-profit consultancy called FSG—John Kania, Mark Kramer and Faye Hanleybrown, who published articles about it in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. 1

Collective Impact is a framework not a model: it needs to be adapted to meet the needs of each community in which it is applied. Indeed, not all social problems are suited for Collective Impact solutions. Collective Impact is best employed for problems that are complex and systemic rather than technical in nature, and is currently being used to address a wide variety of issues around the world, including education, healthcare, homelessness, the environment, and community development. Many of these initiatives are already showing concrete results, reinforcing the promise of Collective Impact in solving complex social problems.


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The role of collaboration in Collective Impact2

Collaboration is essential to Collective Impact. Sustainable change which addresses complex issues requires people from different sectors, different functions, different cultures and diverse geographies to come together to be part of the solution. A government department looking to offer more citizen-centred services needs to work with other departments, as well as the NGO sector, to achieve its goal. NGOs need to find new ways of working with each other if they are going to better serve communities. And business won’t find the answers to the complex challenges of sustainability, corporate responsibility and innovation within the four walls of their organisation. Little wonder, then, that there is so much talk of collaboration, and the Collective Impact framework, as a solution to our problems. It sounds simple: if we all work together towards a shared purpose we will achieve great things. Yet it seems to be hard to put into practice. Developing capacity in the community to understand how to work collaboratively is essential to adapting a Collective Impact framework.

Barriers to collaboration

Creating lasting, positive change in a community has to come from everyone who lives and works there, but letting go of power, and allowing others to lead and be empowered is challenging. Real leadership is about empowering others to work together and take action to solve their own problems. The allure of the collaborative venture is strong. It promises so much: better outcomes for clients, reform that sticks, innovation, better policy and lower costs. “If we just work together,” the thinking goes, “we can create or implement something that eludes us when working alone.” Sadly, this rarely happens. Collaboration, as many who have ‘been there and done that’ know, is difficult work. This is because collaboration is not about just working together, it’s about co-creation. And co-creation requires a different way of working and different skills. It’s more challenging. It’s also more time-consuming. The challenge is that we have some magical thinking about collaboration that by working together it will be a panacea in itself. The reality is that most collaboration takes place with systems and people that don’t really want to change—including us. We want to collaborate as long as we are the beneficiaries of the change. No-one wants loss. This dynamic brings forward a number of traps which can kill collaborative efforts before they get too far. We call these traps the 3 C’s of collaborating. They are Competition, Control and Commitment.

1. Competition

We often operate under an illusion that we’re all working together when the reality is that our motives and agendas are inevitably diverse. Stakeholders in any system are often in unspoken competition for resources, authority, recognition or power. That’s just on the surface. Underlying this, we also have competing values and interests that demand to be maintained or looked after. In the government sector, most federal policy reforms require both cross-departmental and cross-sector collaboration. With functional silos so common in government, leading across a department’s borders requires change agents to have increasing agility in looking past their own functional interests to the broader departmental and systemic purpose and goals. In the community sector, organisations are often in highly competitive tendering processes for government funding, yet are also required to work together to deliver services that benefit clients. And when they’re working for the ‘greater good,’ competition becomes the elephant in the room. Fear of losing funding, or losing long-term sustainability, or losing their role in the community, can be a barrier to collaboration


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efforts for NGOs. And it’s not helped by a funding system which rewards individual effort rather than collective impact. In the corporate sector, organisations often have unspoken factions that align according to whose needs are most important to serve: shareholders, employees, customers or the greater community. It’s not surprising that marketing, human resources and finance often find it so hard to speak the same language, let alone collaborate. And that’s just within the organisation. These ‘competitions’ become amplified beyond an organisation’s borders. Competition is inevitable when different values and beliefs are being negotiated. Yet it is often not the competition that gets us stuck, but the silence and difficulty we have in acknowledging when, and with whom, we are in competition. This silence is a result of our challenge in acknowledging the different levels of power and resources that we all bring to the table. It means that those with less power and fewer resources (or with lower ‘rank’) can feel unappreciated, devalued and—consciously or unconsciously—end up blocking progress. The result is often unspoken competition for whatever power is available. Collaboration requires us to understand, surface and speak to the underlying values and potential fears that are really at the heart of making change or progress: to show not only that we understand what’s at stake, but that we also are willing to give up something to make progress. As Richard Sennett states in Together:

‘By its very nature, competition breeds resistance, since the loser doesn’t want to lose. Competition must embrace the loser’s share in this exchange.’

To be able to work with competition in collaboration we need to firstly be able to work with it in ourselves. We often deny this trait in ourselves and project it on to others. Yet, the gift of competition is that it also represents positive values. These include survival, care for our family, community or tribe, a desire for progress and an interest in learning. These are useful values to bring to any collaboration if we can appreciate, accept and know how to use our own competitiveness.

2. Control

Collaboration requires us to let go of control. We have to suspend the known and our current view of the world. Inquiry and curiosity are some of the meta-skills that enhance collaborative interventions, rather than a dead end advocacy for our own particular way. This can be a hard gig, particularly when we are used to having power, being in control and looking competent. Collaborating necessitates letting go of some control. For example, it can be hard for government when collaborating with the community sector to genuinely enter a creative space and let go of the ‘master-servant’ relationship they may hold. Levels of power and authority are always unequal in collaboration. When we feel we have less power and are undervalued or unacknowledged, we hang on to what we have in the power and resources stakes. If we are struggling to trust our partners in the collaboration and feel we need to hold on to what we have or know, the harder it is for us to innovate, take risks, and be open to difference and diversity. The more we innovate, take risks and are open to diversity the more we can lead across borders.

3. Commitment

One of the big barriers that we come up against in collaboration is that of competing commitments. It is highly unusual for a collaborative venture to have all parties with equal motivation and levels of commitment. There are nearly always competing commitments. Competing commitments—in and of themselves—is not the problem. It is when they are unacknowledged or misunderstood that they can immobilise or block progress.


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Surfacing these differences challenges the assumption that we are equal collaborators in terms of commitment and effort. This inevitably brings some level of conflict. Many collaborations fail when people believe, often rightly, that they have more commitment to the outcome than other stakeholders. This might manifest in stakeholders failing to deliver on what they’ve committed to do. So one stakeholder may just take over and others might be accused of not pulling their weight. Often stakeholders don’t commit to creating the right processes to allow adaptive collaboration to happen in the first place. In other words we want to work differently together but use the same approaches that are designed to maintain the status quo. We get half way through the work of collaboration and realise we didn’t really put enough resources, time and thinking into enabling us to work differently and creatively. A new learning space is needed for collaborations to be successfully adaptive, to shift thinking and co-create new solutions requires. We call this the creation of a holding environment.

Collective Impact and collaboration skills

Collaboration across difference is the primary work of leadership. With a greater awareness of what traps we can fall into, we can then develop the skills required to collaborate successfully. Generally, the skills we think are required tend to be technical. Having the right structures in place, with clear goals and processes is important. However the main skills needed to sustain collaborations are predominantly interpersonal. It is our self-awareness and how we work with others that are the most crucial elements in successful collaboration. As a Benevolent Society manager puts it: “You can’t force collaboration, you have to keep inviting. It can be messy. If you’re the sort of person who needs to have everything clear from the get go it would be hard.” Our ability to be open, to explore possibilities, to hear different views, to empathise and to experiment tends to make the difference between whether we collaborate well or not. Social Leadership Australia has applied this approach to collective impact and whole-of-system collaborations in the government and community sectors. The Benevolent Society is the facilitating partner in the delivery of a range of collective impact initiatives, including government funded Communities for Children and Early Years Centres in Queensland. Social Leadership Australia is a specialist consultancy within The Benevolent Society which offers coaching, training and skills development to organisations or communities who face complex adaptive challenges and are working to build a better Australia. Our expertise lies in helping people and organisations to work within systems and build capacity to solve their own problems by understanding the nature of their challenge at a deeper level and working collaboratively to create new solutions. The Benevolent Society and Social Leadership Australia are able to support organisations to develop their skills and capacity to overcome the barriers to effective collaboration to achieve strategic partnerships and collective impact. For more information on the range of support available, visit www.benevolent.org.au/think. 1 Hanleybrown F, Kania J & Kramer M, Stanford Social Innovation Review 2012 For more information on the Collective Impact framework visit http://www.fsg.org/

2 This model for understanding the collaborative challenges in Collective Impact is the work of Social Leadership Australia. The material presented in this paper is drawn substantially from Chapter 8, ‘Leading Across Difference—The Great Australian Challenge’, of the forthcoming book by Geoff Aigner and Liz Skelton, The Australian Leadership Paradox— What it takes to lead in the lucky country (Allen & Unwin) which will be published in July 2013. Visit www.benevolent.org.au/leadership for more information.

http://www.benevolent.org.au/think


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1.2 Background of Connect 4 Kids: from practice to theory

History and development of the program

Connect 4 Kids began in 2008 as a cooking and craft-based mentoring project of The Benevolent Society’s (TBS) Brighter Futures program in Tenterfield, in northern NSW. Brighter Futures is an early intervention program supporting families with young children who face challenges affecting their capacity to care for their children. Margaret Donnelly, a Benevolent Society family worker at the time, was passionate about reducing barriers to education. She was inspired by an ABC radio segment to initiate a series of conversations and activities between participants of the Brighter Futures program, who were mostly Aboriginal, and members of the Tenterfield Country Women’s Association (CWA). There was good buy-in from the participants to the cooking, crocheting and mending activities despite each party having some initial anxieties from having little previous, or stereotypical, association with one another. These activities encouraged the discussion of life matters and contact occurred between some of the CWA group members and the participants in the township, beginning to break down some barriers. These facilitated activities ceased at the end of 2008 following Margaret’s move interstate.

The activities encouraged the discussion of life matters and contact occurred between some of the CWA group members and the participants in the

township, beginning to break down some barriers.

In 2009 new TBS staff members, Jane Hynes and Paula Petrie, again initiated contact with the Tenterfield CWA to reinstate the cooking activities. However, at the time,the Tenterfield CWA did not feel they had the capacity (low numbers, ageing members and competing responsibilities) to continue. In 2011 Jane discovered the neighbouring Queensland town of Wallangarra (20kms from Tenterfield) had a CWA branch that was very receptive to the idea of working together to support local families. The Wallangarra CWA saw this type of program as fulfilling their core values: “service to the country, through country women, for country women, by country women.” The Wallangarra CWA had witnessed firsthand the lack of support often available to young families who are isolated from their extended family and don’t always have a positive social network to fall back on. The CWA women had also observed the deterioration of local government services and resources and the impact it had on the community. Brighter Futures participants and TBS staff members were invited across the border to the Wallangarra CWA to informally get to know each other and build relationships and ideas about what was possible. After a number of social activities, the QCWA and Brighter Futures ‘Life Skills & Mentoring Program’ was born.


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QCWA and Brighter Futures Life Skills & Mentoring Program

The Brighter Futures (BF) participants and Wallangarra CWA ladies met on the 1st Thursday of each month in the Wallangarra CWA hall. Over a few meetings they determined together what the program would look like and how it would run. All parties (BF, TBS & CWA) participated enthusiastically in the meetings and discussed cooking and child care activities. Friends of the BF program participants were invited along as it maximised the development of social and support networks. Participants and CWA members brought along recipe ideas and TBS provided all ingredients. TBS staff also cared for the children so the parents could concentrate on the activity and develop relationships with the CWA members. Parents and CWA women could participate in cooking at one end of the hall while also observing and interacting with their children taking part in craft activities at the other end. Jane observed that the Wallangarra CWA ladies enjoyed watching the progress of participants, their enthusiasm and hearing of their successes at home when they practiced a recipe they had been introduced to during the sessions. The CWA members expressed their pleasure at observing the growth and confidence that occurred due to participants having direct input into the program. Kerry Hampstead and Kris Cole from the CWA explained “it was always a goal that the program would be driven by the participants rather than us dictating what would be accomplished. It has been a joy to meet new people, their families and feel that we have been of assistance. We have been able to create an environment of true acceptance where people can relax and not fear judgement and know that they are welcome anytime.” Due to the limited cooking facilities in the hall and their desire to expand the program, the Wallangarra CWA applied for and received funding from a Volunteers Grant to purchase equipment and modify the kitchen. The expansion of the program to more women had significant health benefits as one of the BF participants had diabetes and had friends who were gluten intolerant. New themes emerged in the cooking, such as healthy lunches, cooking for special events such as Christmas and Easter, school lunches and catering for special diets. The group discussed opportunities to extend the activities to art and craft, gardening, self care, exercise and having guest speakers such as dieticians, family health nurses and early childhood specialists. They also expressed interest in developing a playgroup.

“We are not just viewed as old ladies drinking tea.”

Of particular interest to the CWA and TBS was the benefit of inviting the friends of BF participants. “Opening up the group to participants of other service or welfare organisations has resulted in the network growing”, said Kerry. The cross-border journey that the Wallangarra CWA and Tenterfield BF participants have undertaken has been reported within the Queensland CWA monthly journal, division newsletters and the QCWA website. Other QCWA branches have responded positively and are now investigating the opportunity to provide similar programs in their regions. Existing members have been motivated to have discussions with other community members about the Mentoring Program which has increased understanding and interest in the impact that the reinvigorated CWA is having in the community: “We are not just viewed as old ladies drinking tea”. It is hoped that the program will increase membership and the Wallangarra CWA see their involvement, in part, as succession planning. Sharing their experience with TBS Project Manager, Jess Wilson, has been useful in helping her develop a formal partnership between the Queensland branches of the CWA and TBS in Queensland.


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The Wallangarra CWA members and Tenterfield TBS share a vision for this program to be self-sustaining and evolve to meet the needs and views expressed by the participants. A formal evaluation plan is not yet in place but it will be developed. To date, immediate feedback from participants, their enthusiasm, attendance and input into the sessions demonstrate that it has been something of great value. A cookbook has been compiled including recipes and photos that represent the shared accounts and personal journeys. Jane and Paula (TBS) have been impressed with the enthusiasm of the CWA ladies and participants. Both groups have embraced the opportunities being offered to network and provide support which would not have occurred without this program. To date, Jane has heard participants comment about the program, “I enjoy interacting with the older ladies and getting new ideas”, “we are enjoying their company and socializing with them”, and “learning more about budgets was really helpful”. One BF participant told a story about being stopped while doing her grocery shopping by one of the CWA ladies who expressed her pleasure at seeing her, asked about her children and whether she was attending the next session. Jane recalls the smile on her face when she was telling this story. Jane remembers thinking “It was lovely to witness the power of social acceptance and connectivity that is developing between these women”.

“It was lovely to witness the power of social acceptance and connectivity that is developing between these women.”


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Aussie Farmers Foundation and Connect 4 Kids

In 2012, the cross-border Life Skills & Mentoring Program was going well. People were attending and both the CWA and TBS workers could see it was having an impact beyond the parents and children. It had the potential to build stronger connections between families, service providers and the local community; essentially buffering the effects of isolation and hardship experienced by many in regional communities. So far, the program had grown organically from pure passion and local interest and TBS wanted to understand explicitly why it was working, how to enhance it and how to use this approach elsewhere. They approached the Aussie Farmers Foundation and requested their investment in a project that would discover the answers to these questions.

Funding purpose and objectives

A grant from the Aussie Farmers Foundation funded a position for one year dedicated to building TBS’s and the community’s capacity to deliver the Life Skills and Mentoring Program in collaboration with the Country Women’s Association (CWA) members in other communities through the New England and Central West regions of NSW. Project worker, Debra Mill, was employed in late 2012 to:

1. Develop a workable and sustainable model of working in collaboration with local CWA branches that can be tailored to and implemented in all rural regions in which we work, delivering benefits to clients and their families, to the CWA and the wider community.

2. Develop a program that stimulates a new approach to addressing challenges specific to rural and remote communities.

3. Develop tools and processes for evaluating the Life Skills and Mentoring Program.

4. Demonstrate effectiveness of collaboration in building community capacity to assist vulnerable families in rural communities.

This work has resulted in people working together across different levels within and outside of TBS. The benefits of this have been a wider engagement in and sharing of innovative approaches to the issue. It has also resulted in an evidence-base for such programs, the development of a model, and a resource kit with evaluation tools to assist workers to conduct collaborative projects. Future support structures have been developed (described later in this document) to ensure sustainability of the ideas beyond the funding period. Significantly, the project has explained the nature of collaborative enterprise and how to build the ‘readiness’ of local workers, organisations and communities to embrace and drive change.

The project has explained the nature of collaborative enterprise and how to build the ‘readiness’ of local workers, organisations and communities to

embrace and drive change.

The investment by the Aussie Farmers Foundation has enabled us to identify the key factors in this program’s success, namely creating the right conditions to bring together sections of the community that rarely interact, so as to provide opportunities to contribute diverse perspectives, encourage buy-in and increase strength and capacity to solve local issues. The benefits of building and maintaining these community alliances will likely be greater participation in local activities, increased social (personal) and economic (work-related) networks and, importantly, increases in the breadth and depth of social supports available to families and children to buffer the effects of isolation and hardship. The name of the program has changed as TBS staff began to identify the key factors and values underlying the program. “We wanted the program to be desirable and not stigmatizing”, said Jane. Connect 4 Kids recognizes that families and communities are interdependent; that each has strengths that the other


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needs. The project workers recognised that if the right conditions were facilitated and maintained, then the families and their community could build and support each other. Building knowledge around the key factors related to the success of the program has resulted in a review and greater clarity of the project aims and objectives, which follow:

Aim

Work collaboratively with local families, organisations and community groups to engage in community building activities to buffer the effects of isolation and support local child rearing.

Objectives

1. To collaboratively resource and conduct activities that are relevant to and helpful for building connections between families and their community.

2. To increase accessibility to local social and economic networks. 3. To increase the breadth and depth of personal and social supports.


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Connect 4 Kids 2013

The current program participants – BF clients, their friends, other members of the community and the Wallangarra CWA ladies –meet monthly in the CWA hall in Wallangarra. Jane and Paula, from TBS, continue to transport and provide activities for the children. Jane and Paula’s focus is to facilitate introductions and helpful conversations between the participants and CWA members, aiming to reduce barriers, build community interaction and extend social networks. Jane organises the space to maximise conversations and relationship development. The CWA women and participants organize themselves into teams around the activities they are undertaking and together decide what the next activities are likely to be. The expansion of the Connect 4 Kids program has begun in both Tenterfield and Glen Innes. The participants of the program expressed an interest in increasing the frequency of the meetings, so Jane and Paula again approached the Tenterfield CWA to invite them to work together to provide alternating activities with the Wallangarra CWA. The Tenterfield CWA circumstances had changed and they agreed. They subsequently held a Meet, Greet & Planning morning with BF participants and TBS in July 2013. At this meeting all parties contributed ideas and participants expressed a desire to do a wide range of craft and cooking activities alternating with Wallangarra CWA activities. Jane invited participants to engage in further leadership development which has resulted in one participant assisting Jane to organise and document activities.

Additionally, in Tenterfield, Jane invited the local Aboriginal Land Council to work in collaboration with TBS and the CWA to increase trust and connections across people and organisations which have historically had little association. Our desire is to ascertain whether working together and building connections may be a catalyst for positive social change towards a more inclusive and resilient community.

Our desire is to ascertain whether working together and building connections may be a catalyst for positive social change towards a more inclusive and

resilient community.

Jane also approached the Glen Innes CWA to further expand the program to assist their BF participants living in this community. The Glen Innes CWA were welcoming and supportive of the concept but were concerned about their capacity (given the ageing of members) to deliver the program. Jane further explored who may be able to assist in Glen Innes and the Anglican Church catering group was suggested, some of whom were also CWA members. An initial phone call, followed by face to face meetings and attendance at a Church Board meeting, secured their interest and all agreed to participate. Together, they are planning their Meet, Greet & Planning day with Glen Innes participants of the BF program and TBS workers in August 2013. They aim to have their first session in September 2013. On all the occasions when Jane has approached organisations to collaborate, there has been an enthusiastic response to the concept of the program due to the obvious benefits to all. Initially, it was envisaged that a formal presentation may be required to promote its expansion. What we learnt, however, is that the informal approach is most effective, through dialogue and acknowledging common interest. Supportive promotional resources requiring technology are useful in sharing the learning with corporate and government entities, but in remote and regional Australia it is the relationships that are critical, particularly given the unreliability of technological resources. The funding from the Aussie Farmers Foundation has enabled TBS to share with the collaborating parties the strengths of this organically developed program and how to sustain it in remote areas. Making tangible, what has previously been intangible, has been critical. The key processes that have contributed to this program’s success are embedded in the collaborative approach, specifically:


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1. Developing and maintaining genuine relationships across all stakeholders

2. Defining and working with ‘readiness’ for collaboration

3. The development of locally shared values and vision

4. Working with individual and organizational strengths

5. Sharing developments and learnings with each other

Additional monitoring and evaluation tools have been developed to record the achievements of the program and the impact of the collaborative relationships. TBS has offered ongoing support for evaluation if funding is secured to progress this program. Ensuring a continued culture of collaboration requires ongoing reflection, the facilitation of helpful processes, capacity-building in new areas, as well as sharing the knowledge and tools to support it. This way of working ensures sustainability through establishing a broad interest base and ownership of the issues and embedding the key characteristics in an Information Package. We anticipate that the culture of collaboration will be further ensured by leveraging the communication strengths of all the parties involved as they champion their achievements.

This way of working ensures sustainability through establishing a broad interest base and ownership of the issues.


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1.3 Supportive Evidence for Connect 4 Kids Raising children in our society is a complex task; something most of us only discover as we either begin the journey of being a parent or have the benefit of working closely with them. The child-raising experience depends not only on the individual parent or family’s internal strengths and supportive resources that they are able to access and maintain at the time, but also how they are situated, or able to position themselves, within the external social, economic and environmental factors that provide the conditions for support - otherwise known as an ecological model1. These complex and constantly changing factors include interactions between child-parent and other key relationships, neighbourhood and community characteristics, social norms and structures, regional economic and accessibility issues, governance and service delivery factors. Together, these interacting systems create and maintain the conditions in any community for supporting or hindering child-raising and the parenting role2.

Conditions impacting child rearing

Increasingly, across the world, inequality is being understood as the cause of many social and personal issues, including child safety and maltreatment34. For example, in Northern Europe, comprehensive support for child development is provided as part of a universal welfare entitlement, everyone has access to it if needed. This contrasts with the British and Australian systems where children need to ‘fail’ before they meet the criteria for special services. Comparison of these policy decisions show that a more equal society results in better child outcomes5.

Across the world, inequality is being understood as the cause of many social and personal issues, including child safety and maltreatment.

Research by an Australian, Professor Tony Vinson, has strongly linked high levels of confirmed child abuse with the socio-economic factors of education and training, unemployment, low income, poor health and ‘making ends meet’ through criminal activity6. Vinson mapped the distribution of disadvantage across six States and Territories of Australia (excluding TAS and NT) and ranked the areas according to most need. He was clearly able to link socio-economic patterns with concentrations of poverty. Towns within the New England region were prominent in this list and are disproportionately represented by Aboriginal Australians.

1Scott, D. 2013. Meeting children’s needs when the family environment isn’t always “good enough”: A systems approach. Child

Family Community Australia Paper No. 14, Australian Institute of Family Studies.

2Moore, T. 2006. Creating the conditions to support positive child development and family functioning: The role of the built

environment. Presented at the Creating Child Friendly Cities 2nd National Conference, Sydney, Australia.

3Rowlands, J. 2010. Services are not enough: child well-being in a very unequal society. Journal of Children’s Services, United

Kingdom, Vol: 5 (3) pp 80-88.

4Capobianco, L., Shaw, M. &Sagant, V. 2009. Community Safety and Indigenous Peoples: Sharing Knowledge, Insights and Action.

International Centre for the Prevention of Crime presentation to the Aboriginal Policy and Research Conference, Ottawa, Canada, 9-12 March.



6Vinson, T. 2007. Dropping Off the Edge: Mapping the distribution of disadvantage in Australia. Speech and presentation to

Parliament 28 Feb 2007. Power-point summary availablehttp://www.australiandisadvantage.org.au/ Report available by purchase online.


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International studies involving Indigenous peoples from diverse countries have found the social conditions that correlate with crime are the same as those that impact on community wellbeing and safety7. These include factors such as school retention rates, literacy, employment and meaningful work opportunities, strong parental abilities, vocational skills and protection of livelihoods. Education and strong connections between people and their community have been found to be helpful socio-economic factors that buffer and protect people from harmful social conditions8. However, a lack of access (financial or geographical) to educational resources and unfavourable family or community attitudes towards the relevance of education, impact greatly on the number of young rural Australians desiring tertiary education9. These attitudes, combined with lower socio-economic status, are related to lower levels of internet and computer usage10. The successful acquisition of these IT skills has a powerful impact on people’s ability to participate in a rapidly changing electronic society, and if not accessible, contribute further to social exclusion and disengagement11. Community-building activity and the role of social supports are increasingly being recognized for their role in buffering and improving the circumstances for parents and families1213. Contrary to perceptions, research on neighbourhoods which are characterized by high crime rates, lack of resources and general disorder, found no relationship to effective parenting14as long as community members had supportive relationships and there was supervision of neighbourhood children. Activities that centre on common values, fostering relationships of trust and reciprocal obligations were found to improve accessibility to social supports, in turn, encouraging more effective parenting.

Community-building activity and the role of social supports are increasingly being recognized for their role in buffering and improving the circumstances

for parents and families.


International Centre for the Prevention of Crime presentation to the Aboriginal Policy and Research Conference, Ottawa, Canada, 9-12 March.

8Vinson, T. 2007. Dropping Off the Edge: Mapping the distribution of disadvantage in Australia. Speech and presentation to

Parliament 28 Feb 2007. Power-point summary availablehttp://www.australiandisadvantage.org.au/. Report available by purchase online.

9Wilks, J. & Wilson, K. 2010. Children, Young People and Social Inclusion: Mobilising to Address Disadvantage on the NSW North

Coast: a Literature Review. School of Education, Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour Campus





12Byrnes, HF & Miller, BA. 2012. The Relationship Between Neighbourhood Characteristics and Effective Parenting Behaviors: The

role of Social Support. Journal of Family Issues, 33(12) 1658-1687.

13Moore, T. 2006. Creating the conditions to support positive child development and family functioning: The role of the built

environment. Presented at the Creating Child Friendly Cities 2nd National Conference, Sydney, Australia.

14Byrnes, HF & Miller, BA. 2012. The Relationship Between Neighbourhood Characteristics and Effective Parenting Behaviors: The

role of Social Support. Journal of Family Issues, 33(12) 1658-1687.


August 2013 18

As the stability and structure of family units are impacted by neighbourhood, community, social and regional economic issues, a greater consideration of these systemic issues may need to be considered within service delivery. Vinson15 found short-term funding of programs of two to three years would see crucial improvements for young children, but cautioned a ‘boomerang effect’ could occur if services were withdrawn prematurely. He described the ‘boomerang effect’ as the potential for people to rebound to previous levels of disadvantage, perhaps resulting in greater harm. He cites overseas evidence showing funding commitments to programs of seven or eight years is critical for minimizing the ‘boomerang effect’.

Vinson’s research makes it clear that sustainable programs are important for effective change and this has direct implications for how funding models are negotiated. Services wishing to make a difference by reducing the numbers requiring intervention may be more successful if they attend not only to the needs of clients but also to the local, regional or national factors contribute to and maintain inequality16. This is particularly important if groups of people, towns and regions become defined by their disadvantage, further contributing to negative stereotyping, marginalization and disengagement17.

Collaborating to engage the stakeholders

Disinterest, disengagement, or ‘resistance’ are features of programs or services delivered to populations deemed by others to need them18. Socially inclusive approaches do not determine the outcomes for a group of people, but ensure they determine their own19. Their worldviews and voices contribute from the outset, in the identification of issues and in the decisions, direction and evaluation of response. Of course, none of this can begin without genuine relationships that bridge the social and economic divides.

Disinterest, disengagement, or ‘resistance’ are features of programs or services delivered to populations deemed by others to need them.

It is, therefore, not surprising that improving child outcomes in disadvantaged and regional areas, yet another outcome determined for a group of people, has been defined as a ‘wicked problem’; an issue notable by its resistance to change and the complexity and changeable nature of the issues20. In 2007, the Public Service Commissioner, Lynelle Briggs, stated these types of social issues required new approaches based on collaboration across all the stakeholders and called for a change in government policy. Holistic thinking, innovative and flexible approaches, working across Agency boundaries, accountability frameworks, stakeholder engagement, core skills relating to collaboration, understanding behavioural change, the co-development of comprehensive strategies, acceptance of uncertainty and a long-term focus

15

Vinson, T. 2007. Dropping Off the Edge: Mapping the distribution of disadvantage in Australia. Speech and presentation to

Parliament 28 Feb 2007. Power-point summary available http://www.australiandisadvantage.org.au/. Report available by purchase online.



17Vinson, T. 2009. Social Inclusion: The origins, meaning, definition and economic implications of the concept social

inclusion/exclusion. First in a series of commissioned papers on social inclusion/exclusion, prepared for the Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Commonwealth of Australia.

18Scott, D. 2013. Meeting children’s needs when the family environment isn’t always “good enough”: A systems approach. Child

Family Community Australia Paper No. 14, Australian Institute of Family Studies.

19 Jordan, K. & Hunter, B. 2010.Explaining Social exclusion: Towards Social Inclusion for Indigenous Australians, Australian Journal of

Social Issues, 45(2): 243–65.

20Tackling Wicked Problems: A Public Policy Perspective. 2007. Commonwealth of Australia, Australian Public Services Commission.

Report commissioned by the Public Service Commissioner, Lynelle Briggs.


August 2013 19

are fundamental issues for organizations responding to these issues21. Briggs recognized traditional approaches had failed, and no one organization could change things alone. Creative and collaborative solutions engaging all stakeholders are now required for sustainable change. It is in this context that the Connect 4 Kids program organically evolved between the joint interests of local parents, workers from The Benevolent Society in NSW and members from branches of the NSW and QLD Country Women’s Association in and around the town of Tenterfield. The program had strong relationships between key stakeholders and the spirit of collaboration and creativity at its heart. It demonstrated “the development of meaningful participation is key for facilitating ownership, leadership and building skills and capacity for helping change attitudes,” and that “strengthening social networks and building trust between the parties”22, are prerequisites to effective collaboration. The potential for this program to improve the lives of all was evident23. The ability of committed collaborations to organically develop their own effective responses to local issues and to raise their own resources to implement them within their own time frames, like Connect 4 Kids, has been well documented24. Collaborative practice resources, such as those developed by the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY)25, provide information and guidance on both the conditions for change and how to effectively work with the multiple parties involved. These Factsheets highlight the important processes for creating and maintaining collaboration to get collective impact26, or collaborative advantage27, the unanticipated and greater benefits that come from working together rather than on ones own. Collaborative approaches have a greater emphasis on the processes, interactions and relationships between the entities or parties involved. Imagining this as a diagram, collaboration focuses more on the lines than on the dots.

Collaborative approaches emphasise connection and processes, which has distinctly different goals in practice from cooperation or coordination, which

emphasise outcomes.

21

Tackling Wicked Problems: A Public Policy Perspective. 2007. Australian Public Service Commission, Commonwealth of Australia,

pp 35-37.


International Centre for the Prevention of Crime presentation to the Aboriginal Policy and Research Conference, Ottawa, Canada, 9-12 March, pp. 16.

23See Background of Connect 4 Kids: from practice to theory, linked to this Package.

24Use of Community Coalitions to Drive Community Change. 2013. Community Interventions for Health Manual: An Oxford Health

Alliance Programme, found at http://www.oxha.org/cih_manual/index.php/community-engagement-evidence

25Keast, R. &Mandell, MP. 2009. Advancing Collaboration Practice. Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth, Advancing

Collaboration Practice Fact Sheets 1-14, 2013, found at: http://www.aracy.org.au/search?command=search&search_terms=Advancing+collaboration+practice

26Social Leadership Australia and The Benevolent Society, Collective Impact: The theory in practice,

2013,http://www.benevolent.org.au/act/be--part--of--an--event/2013/05/21/3rd--annual--building--partnerships--between--government--and--not-for-profits

27Keast, R. &Mandell, MP. 2009. Advancing Collaboration Practice.Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth, Advancing

Collaboration Practice Fact Sheet 1, 2013, found at: http://www.aracy.org.au/search?command=search&search_terms=Advancing+collaboration+practice


August 2013 20

Three key processes that have been highly relevant in the Connect 4 Kids program, to date, have been the importance of defining and holding to a collaborative approach; maintaining genuine and trusting relationships between the key stakeholders; and assessing and working with the ‘readiness’ of individuals and organisations to participate28. Collaborative approaches emphasise connection and processes, which have distinctly different goals in practice from cooperation or coordination29, which emphasise outcomes. Therefore, it is important to accurately match the approach to the goals of a program or project being undertaken. Trust, continual dialogue and feedback are essential for success in collaborative enterprise due to the creative, innovative and sometimes higher-risk environment required to produce results. Genuine collaboration demands an entirely new way of dealing with each other, as workers reflect and act on how personal or organisational practice contributes to or reduces barriers to developing trust with stakeholders. It is geared towards system change, both within and across organisations, for the benefit of all parties. The benefit of such an approach is that there is a greater chance of developing a holistic understanding of the issues and selecting the right responses. There is a greater opportunity to address the complexity of factors that often contribute to maintaining ‘wicked problems’30. The considerable trust that existed between individuals prior to and in the development of the Connect 4 Kids program has been integral to its success. This ‘development’ work is frequently unrecognized in funding models with the consequence that it is often only at the completion of projects that stakeholders may have developed a sufficiently rich relationship to be really creative and effective.

Readiness for change

Utilising collaborative approaches in regional localities requires determining and building community ‘readiness’. This often evolves from working with like-minded individuals to inviting the diverse stakeholders within a community to collectively identify the complexity of factors around an issue and develop a local and cooperative vision with strategic responses. The stakeholders invited to participate need to be relevant to the issues, agree that working together is a priority for achieving common goals, be willing to change and have the capacity to respond as required31.

The stakeholders invited to participate need to be relevant to the issues, agree that working together is a priority for achieving common goals, be willing to

change and have the capacity to respond as required.

28

See Background of Connect 4 Kids: from practice to theory, linked to this Package.



30Tackling Wicked Problems: A Public Policy Perspective. 2007. Commonwealth of Australia, Australian Public Services Commission.

Report commissioned by the Public Service Commissioner, Lynelle Briggs.




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Determining and facilitating the conditions for desired behavioural change with individuals has been well explained in theory and practice by Stages of Change Theory32and Motivational Interviewing33. When such ideas are used with communities it has become known as Community Readiness34, a model describing how communities go through stages in their desire for change and the factors that may help or hinder their endeavours. There have been over 400 communities that have successfully developed effective programs in response to social issues by using local knowledge combined with community readiness35. However, there does appear to be a lack of clear guidance about working with the combined and complex tasks of inviting and building readiness of workers, organisations and communities, all at once, for important changes. Knowing when to pull back and allow it to naturally flow and when to intervene and encourage further movement – not unlike the flow of water through and around stones in a stream – is important. If you create the conditions to respectfully share the diverse views within your community, then the energy for movement is there, you just have to get out of the way or work together to strategically remove the barriers. It is within this context that the Stages of Collaborative Change Management36evolved, to specifically describe and guide the Connect 4 Kids program. We hope that by sharing the journey of building and maintaining trusting relationships, working with our combined strengths and acting together on our learning that other communities or programs may benefit from our experience.

If you create the conditions to respectfully share the diverse views within your community, then the energy for movement is there, you just have to get out of

the way or work together to strategically remove the barriers.

32

Use of Community Coalitions to Drive Community Change, 2013. Community Interventions for Health Manual: An Oxford Health




34Use of Community Coalitions to Drive Community Change. 2013. Community Interventions for Health Manual: An Oxford Health




36See 2.1 The stages of Collaborative Change Management Model, in this Package


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1.4 Additional Resources The following articles, websites and presentations provide information to workers describing how to prepare themselves, evaluate organizational and community readiness and build their capacity to respond to the requirements of collaborative enterprise. Many of these resources can be found in Appendix 1 on the accompanying CD as well as at the websites mentioned.

Conditions Impacting Child Rearing

Byrnes, HF & Miller, BA. 2012. The Relationship Between Neighbourhood Characteristics and Effective Parenting Behaviors: The role of Social Support. Journal of Family Issues, 33(12) 1658-1687.

Capobianco, L., Shaw, M. & Sagant, V. 2009. Community Safety and Indigenous Peoples: Sharing Knowledge, Insights and Action. International Centre for the Prevention of Crime presentation to the Aboriginal Policy and Research Conference, Ottawa, Canada, 9-12 March.

Moore, T. 2006. Creating the conditions to support positive child development and family functioning: The role of the built environment. Presented at the Creating Child Friendly Cities 2nd National Conference, Sydney, Australia.

Rowlands, J. 2010. Services are not enough: child well-being in a very unequal society. Journal of Children’s Services, United Kingdom, Vol: 5 (3) pp. 80-88.

Sayers, M. West, S. Lorains, J. Laidlaw, B. Moore, T.G. Robinson, R. 2012. Starting School: A pivotal life transition for children and their families. Family Matters 90:45-56 Scott, D. 2013. Meeting children’s needs when the family environment isn’t always “good enough”: A systems approach. Child Family Community Australia Paper No. 14, Australian Institute of Family Studies.

Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care. 2012. Policy document ‘Improved Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Families in Early Childhood Education and Care Services: Learning from Good Practice’.

Vinson, T. 2007. Dropping off the Edge: Mapping the distribution of disadvantage in Australia. Speech and presentation to Parliament 28 Feb 2007. Power-point summary available here. Report available by purchase online. http://www.australiandisadvantage.org.au/

Wilks, J. & Wilson, K. 2010. Children, Young People and Social Inclusion: Mobilising to Address Disadvantage on the NSW North Coast: a Literature Review. School of Education, Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour Campus.

Engaging the Stakeholders / Collaborative Approaches

Grace, B. 2009. Advancing Collaboration Practice. Practical Paper: Corporate social responsibility and collaboration – a changing landscape. Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth.

New Models of Collaboration: An Overview. 2004. Centre for Technology in Government. Report commissioned in part by the National Science Foundation, Albany NY.www.ctg.albany.edu/projects/newmodels

Surman, T. &Surman M. 2008. Listening to the Stars: The Constellation Model of Collaborative Social Change. Social Space. pp 24-29.www.lcsi.smu.edu.sg/downloads/MarkSurmanFinalAug-2.pdf

Tackling Wicked Problems: A Public Policy Perspective. 2007. Commonwealth of Australia, Australian Public Services Commission. Report commissioned by the Public Service Commissioner, Lynelle Briggs.www.apsc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/6386/wickedproblems.pdf

http://www.australiandisadvantage.org.au/

http://www.ctg.albany.edu/projects/newmodels

http://www.lcsi.smu.edu.sg/downloads/MarkSurmanFinalAug-2.pdf

http://www.apsc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/6386/wickedproblems.pdf


August 2013 23

Social Inclusion

Hayes, A., Gray, M. & Edwards, B. 2008. Social Inclusion: Origins, Concepts and Key Themes. Australian Institute of Family Studies, prepared for the Social Inclusion Unit, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

Jordan, K. & Hunter, B. 2010 Explaining Social Exclusion: Towards Social Inclusion for Indigenous Australians, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 45(2): 243-65.

Peake, K. 2008. Achieving social inclusion through the early years national reform agenda. Power-point presentation to Brotherhood of St Laurence workshop on social inclusion and the early years by Department of the Prime Minister & Cabinet.

Sims, M. 2011. Social Inclusion and the Early Years Framework: a way of working. Pademelon Press: Castle Hill, NSW.

Vinson, T. 2009. Social Inclusion: The origins, meaning, definition and economic implications of the concept social inclusion/exclusion. First in a series of commissioned papers on social inclusion/exclusion, prepared for the Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Commonwealth of Australia.

Cultural Safety

McGuinness, K. &Leckning, B. 2013. Bicultural Practice in the Northern Territory Children and Families Sector: Practitioners’ reflections of working two-ways. Menzies School of Health Research, Centre for Child Development and Education and Strong Aboriginal Families, together (SAF,T), Darwin, Northern Territory.

Shepherd, C. & Walker, R. 2008. Engaging Indigenous Families in Preparing Children for School. Kulunga Research Network, Telethon, Institute for Child Health Research, Perth, Australia. Prepared for the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth.

Working with Aboriginal people and their communities: A practice resource. 2009. Produced by Aboriginal Services Branch in consultation with the Aboriginal Reference Group. NSW Dept of Community Services.

Community Development & Change Processes

Edwards, R.W., Jumper-Thurman, P., Plested, B.A., Oetting, E.R. & Swanson, L. 2000. Community Readiness: Research to Practice. Journal of Community Psychology, 28(3): 291-307.

Higgins, D.J., 2010. Community development approaches to safety and wellbeing of Indigenous children: A resource sheet produced for the Closing the Gap Clearinghouse, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Commonwealth of Australia.

McCormack, S & Woods Weber, J. 2011. Building Prosperity For All. Community Conversations for Action and Change: Organiser and Moderator Guide. The Paul J. Aicher Foundation.

Pink, D. (2010). Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us. Royal Society of the Arts. At http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/04/08/rsa-animate-drive/

Scully, P. 2011. Strong Starts for Children: A guide for public dialogue and action. Paul Aicher Foundation. www.everyday-democracy.org

Seel, R. 2006. Emergence in Organisations. http://www.new-paradigm.co.uk/

Tesoriero, F. (2010). Community Development : community-based alternatives in an age of globalisation. (4th ed.). Frenchs Forrest, NSW: Pearson Education.

http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/04/08/rsa-animate-drive/

http://www.everyday-democracy.org/

http://www.new-paradigm.co.uk/


August 2013 24

Use of Community Coalitions to Drive Community Change. 2013. Community Interventions for Health Manual: An Oxford Health Alliance Programme, found at http://www.oxha.org/cih_manual/index.php/community-engagement-evidence

Young, S. 2006. What is the best modern evidence to guide building a community? Centre for Vulnerable Children, University of Western Australia, prepared for the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth.

Collaborative Practice Tools

Harrison, T. 2010. The Partnering Initiative: Driving effective collaboration for sustainable development. Power point presentation to the International Business Leaders Forum in Geneva. Keast, R. &Mandell, MP. 2009. Advancing Collaboration Practice. Fact Sheets 1-14. Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth. http://www.aracy.org.au/publications-resources/categories?id=6

Evaluation & Scaling Up Tools

Davies, R. & Dart, J. 2005. The Most Significant Change (MSC) Technique: A Guide to its Use. Care International, United Kingdom.

Evaluation Handbook. 2004. Developed by W.K. Kellogg Foundation for grantees. USA.

Plewis, I. 2002. Modelling impact heterogeneity. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. 165, Part 1, pp. 31-38.

Ramalingam, B. (2008) Evaluation and the Science of Complexity, power point presentation to the Evaluating Complexity Conference NORAD 29th -30th May found at http://www.outcomemapping.ca/resource/resource.php?id=183

The Program Manager’s Guide to Evaluation (2nd Ed). Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation.US Department of Health and Human Services, Washington. USA

http://www.oxha.org/cih_manual/index.php/community-engagement-evidence

http://www.aracy.org.au/publications-resources/categories?id=6

http://www.outcomemapping.ca/resource/resource.php?id=183


August 2013 25


How do we do it?


August 2013 26

2.1 The Stages of Collaborative Change Management This image was developed to provide a wholistic view of the stages involved in collaborative change. Even though we have depicted change in stages, we acknowledge that change is not necessarily sequential, with much movement forward and backward. The images surrounding the stages provide a visual story explaining the spirit of the various stages. Please see 2.2 for a written description of the Stages of Collaborative Change Management.

Image designed by Debra Mill, Margaret Sims and Jane Hynes for The Benevolent Society 2013. Inspired by both the ‘Stages of Change’ Model & the ‘Change Curve’ © Jeannie Duck and BCG


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2.2 Flow description of Stages of Collaborative Change Management with Relevant Resources The following description relates to the previous image. The articles accompanying these stages are listed in 1.4 and included entirely in Appendix 1 on the CD with this hard copy.

Pre-Contemplation

•IDENTIFYING FEATURES

• Significant and unaddressed community issues

• Sense of community frustration, stagnation, resignation, or hopelessness around these issues

• Extremes of community viewpoints

• Social groups distanced from each other & argumentative or avoidant & blaming each other for problems

Develop Connection

& Trust

• WHAT HELPS: FIND ALLIES & SHARE POSSIBILITIES

• Find allies in the community who may desire change & discuss possible visions

• Identify additional key stakeholders required for change & develop strategic relationships

• Regularly share evidence-based information on the issues

• Identify regular opportunities to feed back to the community & its representatives the possibilities for change

•See 1.4 Additional Resources: Conditions impacting child rearing

Contemplation

• IDENTIFYING FEATURES

• Willingness to identify or discuss issues

• Oscillation between hope for change & staying the same

• Interest in understanding viewpoints

• recognition of distancing & blaming as unhelpful

Develop Connection

& Trust

• WHAT HELPS: ENCOURAGE PUBLIC DIALOGUE AROUND THE POSSIBILITIES OF CHANGE & PATHWAYS OF ACTION

•Collectively identify the costs & benefits of staying the same Vs change

•Assess risks of inaction & action for individuals & community

•Continue to find opportunities to share evidence-based & helpful responses

•Facilitate community dialogue to action workshops around issues

•Strength-based approaches

•Identify communication processes that develop relationships & commitment to action

•See 1.4 Additional Resources: Engaging the community, Community Development & Change Processes.


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Preparation


• Desire for change is openly discussed & potential partnerships and/or collaborations formalised

• Plans & activities openly discussed

• Connections forming between groups with diverging views

• A sense of community momentum is present

Identify Strengths & Work Together

• WHAT HELPS: DEVELOP A SHARED VISION, STATEGIES & ACTIVITIES

• Identify & discuss readiness of collaborators for the stages ahead

• Collaboratively determine vision, strategies & activities

• Use collaborative & evidence based approaches

• Continue community dialouge; invite & seek to engage & resolve diverse opinions

• Continue to identify the barriers & strategise responses

• Develop collaborative decision making processes reflective in governance structures

• Identify & build organisational supports to reduce barriers

• Identify and obtain additional resources & support

•See 1.4 Additional Resources: Collaborative practice Tools. Evaluation Tools.

Implementation


• More people or organisations at many levels get involved

• Agreed activities are developed & undertaken

Identify Strengths & Work Together

• WHAT HELPS: MAINTAIN RELATIONSHIPS, MONITOR PROGRESS & PLAN FOR HARD TIMES

• Develop formal & continue informal communications around activities

• Undertake reflective & monitoring processes according to evaluation criteria

• Use evidence based to adapt systems as required

• Expect difficulties to arise & plan together how to communicate about it from the outset

• Identify & discuss what failure would look like to each party

• Discuss & develop exit plans which respects the other parties & enables continuation of relationships

•See 1.4 Additional Resources: Evaluation Tools. Collaborative Practice Tools.


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Determination


• A sense of failure may be experienced by one or all parties

• Threats to the continuation can surface due to internal or external events experienced as disappointments, misunderstandings, clashes, conflicts & successes

Learn & Develop Together

• WHAT HELPS: MAINTAIN RELATIONSHIPS, KEEP THE BIG PICTURE IN MIND, LEARN FROM MISTAKES, RESPOND STRATEGICALLY

• Maintain formal & informal communications around activities & reasons for attempting changes

• Continue to conduct ongoing reflection around the milestones

• Monitor learning around activities as well as the partnerships

• Ensure collaborative decision making around the issues

• Adapt according to learning

•See 1.4 Additional Resources: Community Development & Change Processes. Collaborative Practice Tools.

Progression


• Results may be limited or fully realised across multiple areas

• Decision to continue the same, adapt, abandon goals or expand the progam

Learn & Develop Together

• WHAT HELPS: MAINTAIN RELATIONSHIPS, COLLABORATIVELY REFLECT, LEARN & RESPOND

• Maintain formal & informal communications around the activities & evaluation data

• Evaluate activities according to the vision

• Collaboratively decide the adaptions required & next steps for each organisation & activity

• Record learning around activities, the partnerships & community impact

•See 1.4 Additional Resources: Evaluation Tools. Collaborative Practice Tools.


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2.3 Collaboration in Practice Resources: ARACY Fact Sheets 1–14

The Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth Factsheets are in Appendix 1, under Collaborative Practice Tools, on the CD provided with this hard copy. They can also be found on their website

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 1 - What is collaboration

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 2 - Why collaborate, and why now

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 3 - Collaboration and services

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 4 - When to collaborate

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 5 - Key elements of collaboration

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 6 - Collaboration getting going

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 7 - Are we ready to collaborate

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 8 - Managing collaborations

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 9 - Collaborative leadership

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 10 - Evaluating collaborations

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 11 - Consensus building and facilitation

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 12 - Collaboration negotiation

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 13 - Power and collaboration

Advancing Collaboration Practice - Fact Sheet 14 - Collaborative competencies capabilities

http://www.aracy.org.au/

http://www.aracy.org.au/publications-resources/area?command=record&id=21&cid=6
















August 2013 31


Sharing it with others


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3.1 Promotion: Relationships & Resources One of the key ways of promoting this program has been primarily through genuine dialogue and relationships and then by providing additional resources as desired or required. The Project Officer monitored the activities of The Benevolent Society workers as they expanded the Connect 4 Kids program into both Glen Innes and Tenterfield. Observations showed that informal connections involving dialogue was most successful. No other resources were required other than the worker being able to clearly describe the concept of the program and its benefits to all parties involved. The ability to clearly define collaboration and describe the spirit of the program was a critical aspect in the engagement of other organisations. Discussing these concepts with the TBS working team enriched our ability to appropriately articulate and share these ideas, enabling us to relate them to everyday experiences for people living and working in communities. We tested ideas with one another to gain clarity. An information package for workers was developed to be used with all stakeholders describing why working together is important, how to do it effectively and how to share it with others, including funding bodies. This package is expected to be useful for various organisations wishing to understand the evidence base upon which the program is based, as well as being able to concisely describe to funding bodies how and why it works. Further technological or printed resources may be added to this living document as it is tested by experience and time.


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3.2 Evaluation: The Art of Sharing What is Relevant Working in a collaborative way places emphasis on processes to achieve outcomes. The key processes in the Connect 4 Kids program describe how effective interactions get outcomes. These processes include:

1. Developing and maintaining genuine relationships across all stakeholders

2. Defining and working with ‘readiness’ for collaboration

3. Developing locally shared values and vision

4. Working with individual and organizational strengths

5. Sharing developments and learning with each other

Working with processes ensures impacts on individuals, families and communities. If you create the conditions for these processes to work then the outcomes will follow. Due to this, the Connect 4 Kids program has not used individual measures to record the impact of the program. To do so would do the program a disservice. Evaluation material has focused on describing and recording the key themes and processes experienced by the Connect 4 Kids stakeholders. By taking this approach, individual, organizational and community achievements can be recorded as they impact on each other. The ability to demonstrate the importance of processes in achieving outcomes when approaching funding bodies is essential. Making clearer what was previously intangible is the purpose of the following evaluation tools.


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3.3 Additional Tools Stakeholder Evaluation Questions

For all stakeholders involved in Connect 4Kids activities

Connection & trust Working collaboratively with strengths

Learning together

Organisation questions

What new relationships were formed across organisations?

How important were these connections for your organisation/activities?

How comfortable did people feel doing this?

What would help develop closer relationships?

What strengths did each agency worker contribute?

What were the highlights & challenges of working together with other stakeholders?

What did you learn from each other?

How important was that learning for your project and organisation?

What future thoughts do you have around this?

Program participant questions

When you think back to the beginning of the program, what new relationships or activities have you begun?

How important are they to you and your family?

How comfortable did you feel attending the activities?

What would help develop closer relationships?

What did you notice about how the parents, CWA ladies and TBS worked together?

What would you like more of in the program & why?

What would you like less of in the program & why?

What was the best thing from being involved?

How important is this for you and/or your family?

Do you have any future thoughts about this?

Community questions for both organisations & program participants

Have any of these new relationships continued outside of the program/activities?

How important is it for you or your family to continue these relationships/activities?

What good things have happened in the community because of these new relationships/activities?

Has anything negative happened?

Do any other relationships need to be formed?

What else needs to happen to improve relationships across the community?

If these relationships improve, how do you think this may affect you or your community?


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Connect 4 Kids Activity Evaluation

1. Program Entry: After engagement, facilitate conversations with participants at program entry. As a

part of normal conversation find appropriate ways to discuss the following topics via individual or

group conversation during transport or during the program, and record responses afterwards.

a. Current family needs & resources (food, clothing, housing, safety, love & affection, who they talk to

when stressed, value & worth, friendships, connections with other families, health care, parenting,

finances, child care). A way of discussing these issues with the group may be through the use of

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs reframed into a Hierarchy of Rights37 (figure below).

b. Knowledge of local support services and where to go.

c. Identify what prevents people from identifying or using these supports.

Likely Group Questions: “How do people manage when … happens? What can you do? Who can you

go to? What stops people going there/doing that? What could be done about that? Who could do

that?

2. Ongoing facilitated discussions: facilitate conversations with participants (individual or group) during

the program to ask them about:

a. their social supports (breadth of connections and depth of trust);

b. strengths they see in themselves and others; and

c. what they are learning from one another.

Likely questions are detailed on the Stakeholders Evaluation Questions sheet. Record notable answers

at the end of the day. 37Sims, M. 2011. Social Inclusion and the Early Years Learning Framework: A way of working. Pademelon Press: Castle Hill, NSW, p 24.


August 2013 36

3. Program Exit: follow up absences (if possible) by telephone as an opportunity for re-engagement or

closure if they are exiting. Discuss, if appropriate, and record the following:

a. What was the best thing about coming along for you /your family?

b. Did any new friendships from it?

c. Have you made any new friends/or connections to services/activities since coming along?

d. How important is it for you (and your family) to continue these activities/relationships?

e. What could we do to have closer relationships?

4. Debrief and document discoveries about the factors impacting on participants’ social supports after

each activity, and record in a case study-style. Information will build over time.

Connect 4 Kids: Collaboration in Rural Communities

Documents

Transcript of Connect 4 Kids: Collaboration in Rural Communities