CREATE Project Bulletin – May 31, 2019

May 24, 2019

CREATE May RoundUP

24^th May, 2019

WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING

From the Directors’ Desk – Professors Ross Homel and Greer Johnson (Co-Directors)

This month we saw the gathering of the Collective Impact Faciliators (CIFs) from NSW and Queensland in Brisbane to review their journeys as CIFs. Ross and Sara joined the CIFs along with Karen Russell from Walk the Talk who facilitated. This workshop is the focus of the feature in this bulletin. As you can see, rich information was gathered using a story telling process. We would like to thank those CIFs who will be finishing up in their positions at the end of June for the passion, intelligence, and energy they exhibited over the past couple of years. We wish them all the best for their future careers – which hopefully will include further stints in the community sector.

The CREATE Executive Committee came together on the 20^th of May. At this meeting members discussed the question, where is the voice of children in the project? This is a regular agenda item for the CEC to consider and helps the project keep grounded and ensure that we are hearing the voices of those at the centre of what we do. The CEC also progressed the idea of conducting a CREATE Coalition Health Check. The group discussed the items for the Health Check after considering the CREATE Coalition Wellbeing Survey and the VicHealth Partnership Tool. When the CEC meets next (August 12^th) we will identify a date for when to send the Health Check survey out. A collaborative process for reviewing the data and considering what needs to happen will occur prior to the project plenary meeting on November the 1st. At the plenary we will plan action based on the results of the survey. The agenda, attachments and minutes from all CEC meetings are stored in the Project Management Portal.

Ross attended a roundtable in Melbourne on the 15^th of May organised by the Myer and Reichstein Foundations. The focus was place-based initiatives to prevent or reduce youth crime, and participants (apart from a few academics) came from a wide range of Victoria-based organisations. Impressively, Ben Carroll, the Victorian Minister for Corrections, Crime Prevention, Youth Justice, and Victim Support, attended for the entire discussion, and was eager to hear about the innovative prevention and community development projects going on in many areas. The roundtable was a lovely experience of ‘full and frank discussion,’ laying the foundations for genuine research-policy-practice partnerships in Victoria.

Finally, in June most of the research team will be taking conference, recreation, long service, or study leave (‘enforced’ in some cases – we would all rather keep working!). As a result, there will be no Newsletter or Q&A in June. The Newsletter will resume at the end of July.

Contributions Welcome – Contributions from project partners to the RoundUP are welcome. If you have an idea for a feature, event or just something that made you smile please contact Sara Branch (s.branch@griffith.edu.au) for inclusion in future RoundUPs.

FEATURE – CIF Review and Workshop

Karen Russell (Walk the Talk – Workshop Facilitator)

The following is based on a summary of Karen Russell’s notes that she prepared following the CIF Workshop on the 9^th and 10^th of May.

On the 9^th and 10^th of May the CREATE Project gathered the Collective Impact Facilitators (CIFs) working in Communities for Children (CfC) sites in NSW and Queensland and the CIF working in the local government area of Muswellbrook for a two-day workshop. The primary purpose of the workshop was to allow the Project Research Team to learn more about the CIF journey. In particular the team was eager to hear what the major learnings for the CIFs were, how they approached their role, and to understand why the CIFs did what they did – especially in view of the fact that the project timeframes were significantly different to what had been expected. The second, but equally important, purpose was to bring the CIFs together under the auspices of the project one last time, to have fun while celebrating their journey and respecting their community.

Documentation prepared for the workshop and information gathered during the course of the workshop will contribute to the development of a report. This report will be written in partnership with members across the Project and is intended to be a tool for thinking about both the funding model and the work itself. The report will be fundamental to the shape of future Collective Impact work in the community so the learnings will be published to inform an international audience eager to learn about innovations in translational prevention science.

Insights from the CIF Experience

CIFs reported that it had been very difficult to describe to the Research Team what they had been doing, as so much of their time was taken up observing, thinking and building relationships. Nevertheless, the evidence showed that a great deal was done, with fascinating learnings along the way. As the discussion progressed, a number of key insights and messages emerged. These mostly focused on what worked well, but there were some examples of where things did not work well, which also provide very useful information for the Research Team and Project Partners in preparing the report.

The facilitator asked the group, from the position of experience that the CIFs now share, what advice they would offer to new CIFs? Their advice included:

Get yourself a list of systems thinking practices that you can use every day.
Use other CIFs. Develop the group. Build it. Trust it. It will be your ally.
When you find positive peers or mentors, hold onto them.
Whatever map you have in your head, be open to the journey. It might take you to unexpected places.
Sit with the uncertainty. Don’t punish yourself if you don’t know the answer. Be willing to say, “I don’t know”.
Ask questions.
Pause to think.
Be brave. Do something different. Stay open. Be curious. Ask why. Keep questioning the evidence and be wary of pseudo innovation.
Be prepared to fail!
Take your time. Relationships are worth the investment.
Worry first about coming to a common understanding of the problem you are facing rather that the solution that is needed. Everyone is of the view that ‘they’ have the answer – before the problem is clearly defined!
Work on shared language. Common language is essential. The same words can have vastly different meanings to different people. Understand when language needs to shift and change.

THINGS THAT MADE US SMILE THIS MONTH

This is where we share great things to read, listen to, attend and more! Let us know if you discover anything you would like us to share in our next newsletter.

Volunteers: The research team smiles whenever volunteers, like Richard Davey (pictured) and Mike Staunton, help with elements of the CREATE project. For the past two years Richard has been supporting the development of RealWell, which is the not-for-profit enterprise through which tools like Rumble’s Quest will be made available to schools and agencies on a cost-recovery subscription basis. Mike Staunton joined earlier this year and has been sharing with the team hugely important ideas and strategic advice based on his long and distinguished career in the Queensland education system, and in the education system in New York City. We are extremely grateful to Richard and Mike, and to others who have volunteered their time over the course of the project. Without them we wouldn’t be able to do half of what we have accomplished so far.

Logan Together: Logan Together made us smile this month when they highlighted on their website the invitation to schools to use Rumble’s Quest, titled: LOGAN’S SCHOOLS INVITED TO GO ON RUMBLE’S QUEST FOR STUDENT WELLBEING. To read the article click on the following link:

http://logantogether.org.au/news-events/news/logans-schools-invited-go-rumbles-quest-student-wellbeing/

UPCOMING MEETINGS AND EVENTS

Mark the Following Dates:

30^th October – Community Based Prevention and Implementation: Achievements and Challenges (open to all)

31^st October – Implementation Science and Practice: Introduction to Key Concepts (open to all)

Venue: The Ship Inn Function Centre, South Brisbane, QLD 4101

30 October 2019 Symposium:
Community Based Prevention and Implementation: Achievements and Challenges
9.00 am – 5.00 pm

31 October 2019 Workshop:
Implementation Science and Practice: Introduction to Key Concepts
9.00 am – 4.00 pm

Collaborative action to plan and implement appropriate supports for children, families, and communities can be a challenge. This is not due to any lack of good will but rather to the numerous barriers embedded in our organisations and communities, a lack of resources and tools that support collaborative evidence-driven practice, and limitations in how we think about ‘what is needed’. At the Community Based Prevention and Implementation Symposium and Implementation Science and Practice Workshop, we are bringing together leading Australian and international practitioners and researchers to share emerging knowledge about system transformation and how evidence-based services can be implemented to achieve measurable improvements in the wellbeing of children, families, and communities.

Speaking at each event will be

Dr. Brian K. Bumbarger

Brian is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Griffith University Institute of Criminology (Queensland) as well as Visiting Research Associate with the Prevention Research Center in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Colorado State University. For over two decades he has conducted research and advised policymakers on dissemination, implementation, and sustainment of evidence-based programs and practices to strengthen families and communities. From 2008-2016 Dr. Bumbarger served as Founding Director and Principal Investigator of the Evidence-based Prevention and Intervention Support Center (EPISCenter), a state-level intermediary supporting communities and government systems in the largest-ever dissemination of evidence-based programs and community collective impact coalitions, with over 300 sites. The EPISCenter has been cited internationally as an exemplar for bridging research, policy and practice to improve child and family outcomes and government services. Brian is currently working to replicate learnings from that endeavour throughout the United States and across the world.

Deborah Ghate, D. Phil, FAcSSDeborah is a researcher, analyst, consultant and organisational leader specialising in implementation science and practice for child and family services. She is Chief Executive of the independent non-profit Colebrooke Centre for Evidence and Implementation (www.cevi.org.uk) which works in the UK and internationally on research and consultancy in applied implementation science. Before that she set up and ran the Centre for Effective Services in Ireland (an implementation support centre funded by government and philanthropy) and founded and directed a leading independent policy research centre in London. She is Chair of the UK Implementation Society (UK-IS; www. ukimplementation.org.uk) and was elected a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences in 2016. Deborah is currently writing about and working on multiple themes in the application of implementation and improvement science in practice and policy, including systems leadership, co-creation, scaling and using theories of change for quality improvement.

Find out more or register here

Registration Type	Early bird registrations before 30 August 2019.	Registrations after 30 August 2019.
30 October Symposium registration	$220	$240
31 October Workshop registration	$250	$270
30 October Symposium and 31 October Workshop registration	$460	$490

1^st November – Project Plenary Meeting (invited project partners only) – South Bank Campus, Brisbane

WHAT’S NEW IN THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT PORTAL

(Items added in May)

Project Plans

Minimal – Optimal Contribution Request – June 2019 to June 2020 – posted 15-5-19

Project Governance – CREATE Executive Committee

CREATE Phase 3 – Risk Assessment to support Project Plan – posted 13-5-19 (note only downloadable)
2019 May 20th – CEC Agenda and Attachments – posted 14-5-19
2019 May 20th – CEC Minutes – posted 24-5-19

CIF Role – Updates to CIFs

Update to CIFs 15-4-19 to the 20-5-19 – posted 23-5-19

Project Updates – CIF Reports

2019 April CIF REFLECTION REPORT – posted 13-5-19
May 9-10th Workshop Write Up – posted 24-5-19

Please go to the Project Management Portal to view these and other project documents. All project partner representatives and CIFs have access to view these documents. To access the portal: http://www.creatingpathways.org.au/project-management/project-management-portal

Category: Project Newsletter

Posted by Creating Pathways Support