CREATE Project Bulletin – November 30, 2018

WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING

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

This year has been a big one for the CREATE Project. In March, project friend and collaborator Dr Brian Bumbarger presented at the Prevention Science Forum at the Children’s Hospital in Brisbane on March 26, jointly organised by ARACY and Children’s Health Queensland. His key messages were:

1. Most wicked problems are preventable;
2. Currently our public systems and community capacities don’t represent enabling contexts for our knowledge of what works;
3. The underlying theory that enables us to prevent costly problems also provides a heuristic for cross-system collaboration; and
4. Greater investment in prevention, coupled with greater investment in capacity-building infrastructure, can maximize the future potential of Australia’s workforce and economy.

The CREATE project aims to address the need for greater investment in capacity-building infrastructure, through research and development of resources, tools and the Collective Impact Facilitator role within CfC project sites. This is what we call the Prevention and Translation Support System (PTSS).

Various members of the research team visited eight of our nine project sites between February and April: five in NSW and three in Queensland. We greatly valued and enjoyed these visits. We were especially impressed with each site’s strong connection to schools, and with local Aboriginal Elders and groups. The site visits further highlighted the unique strengths of each site, as well as the complex, multi-layered nature of the local networks fostered by the CfC partnership through many forms of community engagement. The visits provided many opportunities to learn the diverse ways in which schools, families and community organisations are working together to support children. We look forward to learning more about this work during Phase three of the project (the ARC project).

The good news about the Australian Research Council Application, which was submitted in October, 2017, came through in late May. Very shortly all Collaboration Agreements will be signed, which will ensure we can access the new funding early in 2019. As the signing of the ARC Collaboration Agreements will see the official end of Phase 2, the research team are currently preparing an End of Phase 2 Report to partners. This report will be disseminated to partners in mid-December and will be available on the Project Management Portal.

At the end of June all project partners came together in Sydney for the project’s plenary meeting (many thanks to the Department of Education for hosting). This meeting was expertly facilitated by Karen Russell from Walk the Walk who facilitated the first plenary meeting in February, 2017. At this meeting we had representatives from almost all partner organisations and with Karen’s guidance discussed what was working, what were the benefits, what were the opportunities, what were the challenges, and what needs fixing so that we can progress this important project.

Another plenary meeting is planned in 2019, with the research team currently seeking funding to support a leading Implementation Science researcher and practitioner from the UK to join us. We hope to be able to hold a two day gathering, involving a workshop on the first day, followed by the plenary meeting on the second. Watch this space.

The CIFs, NGO Representatives and members of the research team met twice this year (June and September, with a further meeting planned for mid-December or mid-January). Many thanks to the The Salvation Army and The Benevolent Society for hosting us. Throughout these gatherings what the CIFs have been doing and learning about being a CIF were discussed along with challenges experienced. New CIFs in Logan also attended a condensed version of the CIF training in June this year. This training means that all members of the Communities for Children Logan site have received the CIF condensed training, meaning all members of the team can in a way act as a CIF or support the aim of a CIF (that is support coalition leaders and members to strengthen the functioning of the coalition including strengthening the methods and analytic techniques used by coalitions at each step of the CREATE Change Engine Cycle). This is a different approach to the CIF role in other sites so it will be interesting to see how it functions.

Ross Homel also gave two lectures as part of the Academy of Social Sciences 2018 Keith Hancock Lectures. The Hancock lecture series aims to communicate cutting edge social science research to the general community. Ross delivered the first version of the lecture in Brisbane on March 8 and spoke along similar lines to Brian, focusing on the urgent need in Australia to build a human and technological infrastructure for applying the fruits of prevention science research. This infrastructure will help to ‘shift the dial’ for disadvantaged children at the whole-of-population level. He used the methods and tools being developed for the CREATE Project as illustration. The second lecture was given at the University of Melbourne on September 13.

Unfortunately, despite strenuous efforts by our colleagues in the NSW Department of Education, principals in NSW will not be invited to participate in the Project and use Rumble’s Quest until early in Term 1 in 2019. While invitations were sent out to 148 Queensland public school principals in 9 CfC regions in Queensland, being realistic, and acknowledging the time of the year, it is likely that many Queensland schools will also not use Rumble’s Quest until Term 1 next year. One of the major learnings we and many of our partners are taking away from this project is that its multiple interdependencies can significantly affect the amount of time needed to achieve outcomes, especially when this involves innovative systems change. The general lesson is that attempting any type of change through collaboration is challenging, and that timeframes need to be both realistic and actively managed.

Finally as this is the last newsletter for the year, and there will be no Q&A in December, we wanted to send our best wishes to you and your families for the end of the year and hope you manage to have a break over summer. It is a pleasure working with each of you and we look forward to what 2019 and beyond will bring for the CREATE Project. As a final point we would like to thank everybody who has contributed to the RoundUP over the year. Without you the newsletter would not be what it is. The newsletters will recommence at the end of February, 2019.

Yours sincerely,

CREATE Executive Committee (CEC): The CEC will meet on the 3rd of December. The minutes from this meeting and any other CEC meeting can be accessed on the Project Management Portal (CREATE Executive Oversight Committee (CEOC) -> Meetings Agendas and Minutes). Consistent with the strategic nature of the CEC, at this meeting the formation of the Sustainability Working Group will be discussed as will Project Plans for 2019. More information about this meeting will be in the February newsletter next year.

Coalition Wellbeing Survey in Business as Usual Sites: This month saw invitations to participate in the project and use the Coalition Wellbeing Survey and Coming Together Module on the Community Portal User Dashboard sent to Business as Usual sites. Similar to what occurred in Phase 1, both Action and Business as Usual sites are invited to use the Coalition Wellbeing Survey twice: first to plan and then to review. Most Action sites already used the Coalition Wellbeing Survey earlier this year and will be encouraged to use the survey again next year. Similarly, Business as Usual sites are being encouraged to use the survey twice, once each year with about 12 months in-between (for most this will mean early in both 2019 and 2020).

In addition to the unique value that the Coalition Wellbeing Survey holds for coalition members at each site, the project looks forward to continuing its use of aggregate CWBS data to highlight the importance of the role that the CIFs play in supporting their community coalition leaders and partners.

The use of the Coalition Wellbeing Survey in Phase 1 (2013-2016) provided some valuable insights and it is anticipated that this will be reinforced and extended in Phase 2/3.

In Phase 1 CIFs worked intensively with Action sites to improve their capacities to implement the CREATE principles. The Coalition Wellbeing Survey was a key tool used by the CIFs to help coalitions identify and improve areas of activity that were revealed as relatively weak. All communities received a detailed report on their coalition functioning profile, but only the Action sites were actively supported to improve by the CIFs. This element of our research is important since US research shows that the quality of community coalition functioning, particularly its orientation to the use of scientific research, is strongly related to the magnitude of improvements in child and youth outcomes. The research question that we wished to address (and still do) was whether the provision of the report on its own to a Business as Usual coalitions would be sufficient to motivate and enable improvements in functioning, or whether the support of a CIF ‘value added’ in this regard. Some key findings included:

1. At baseline in February 2015 there was apparent tension in some communities with respect to decision-making, the focus and operations of the coalitions, and the exercise of power. These issues appear to have greatly diminished over time, but did result in a large number of missing values on many questions in Wave 1, particularly in BAU communities.
2. Comparison of two waves of data showed that all coalitions improved on most elements of their functioning. 90% of the items showed positive change in the Action sites, but only 60% showed positive change in the BAU sites. Moreover, in the BAU sites 31% showed negative changes, compared with only 3% in the Action sites.
3. Action communities generally improved more in terms of practices related to the CREATE principles, while Business as Usual sites improved more in aspects of organisational capacity (e.g., strategic planning).

In Phase 2 and 3 we will continue this research along with understanding how Action sites and CIFs worked to respond to the results of the survey.

Brian Bumbarger Visit – Reflections

Valancy Hicking and Brian Bumbarger

In October and early November, US-based CREATE Research Team member Brian Bumbarger visited Tasmania and South Australia for those state’s respective state CfC conferences, where he presented keynotes and workshops on what is needed to embed good prevention and implementation science into Australia’s CfC framework. Miller CfC CIF Valancy Hicking capitalized on Brian’s visit to arrange a master class for the Miller CfC as well as several other CfC communities in Sydney. Valancy also arranged for Brian to offer a seminar and discussion for Mission Australia staff on using prevention science to strengthen communities. Valancy’s takeaways regarding the benefits of Brian’s visit to NSW included:

• The power of a working example. When trying to do something new, with many external pressures, it can be hard to keep focus on the reason you are trying to do things differently. Being able to hear about Brian’s collective impact experiences and explore how the application of a model has in fact been able to change a whole State is very powerful and was invigorating for both our own Coalition and the other CfC attendees from across Sydney.
• Validating the process we are involved in. Both for Valancy and the Miller CfC coalition it provided an opportunity to clarify the connection of the work they’ve been doing in the prevention science space. Many of the Miller coalition members were able to identify where they are in the phased CREATE process and identify and reflect and build on the learnings they had already developed around Prevention Science.
• Reflections on applications (and the reminder of importance of “do no harm”). The idea of doing no harm and being critical evaluators of prevention practice. CfC members and subgroups such as the Paint Liverpool ReAD (a collective that encourages reading in the early years) are considering applying some of the critical questions in their planning process for the next year.
• Extending the conversation. If we are to create real change it is also about creating broader system change. In essence there are many aspects of prevention science that can be used to inform work within the child-
  youth space, as well as others that are focused on strengthening communities and systems. Being able to engage with our research, policy and practice leadership teams (at Mission Australia) is important if we are going to form lasting opportunities within this space.

FEATURE – Program Manager

Alison Harwood

I grew up living next to a large bush reserve in Sydney, and spent most of my time riding bush tracks, climbing trees and bringing home wildflowers. Forests and flowers continue to be a passion for me, and I’ve both worked as a florist and sat in tree tops to blockade mining and motorways. My parents had a strong sense of social justice, and I was lucky enough to grow up with Faith Bandler as a neighbour. Mum and dad still have her signed books on their expansive shelves at home, and I will always remember her bright yellow sun hat and smile. Some of this may have influenced my choice of study – English, Anthropology and Human Geography, and my work – my early career involved working with Aboriginal communities around the impacts of mining and natural resource management on communities, culture and local economies.

I experienced a shift after having my own children. Keenly missing them as I travelled around Australia and the Asia Pacific, I made a decision one weekend to “bring it home” to my own community. As I read the job ads in my local café (in the days when they appeared in print!) I saw a Community Development Worker role that I thought for sure had been written for me. This work really brought home for me what I had felt in my natural resource management work – communities are the source of great strength and beauty and really have the answers for themselves. We “visitors” either need to walk alongside them and help create the path to positive change, or get out of the way.

I am fairly recently arrived in the world of child and family services, and I still hold try to hold this as a principle in my work. This has deepened over the past few years, as has my learning about place based social change. Now, as well as citizen led decision making, my other passion is being part of initiatives that seek to improve interventions and change systems around children and families (as opposed to “fixing people”).

A big focus of our work here is facilitating inquiry, design and decision making with a range of stakeholders. We work to create spaces where people can “go deep”, try to shift their perspective, challenge themselves and be challenged, and have difficult conversations when needed. We have found this the best way to better understand systems and our places within them, open up possibilities for disruption and leverage, and help break down some of the reinforced concrete that our silos are made of. We use for example human centred design, Appreciative Inquiry, Cooperative Inquiry and Asset Based Community Development methodologies. Sometimes this involves working cross culturally, and we are extremely fortunate to share the journey with Aboriginal community members and Worimi leaders and Elders.

The next steps for us are deepening the sense of shared leadership with our coalition. We find this comes in stops and starts and sometimes with little sense of cause and effect – I guess this is because the “problem” (better outcomes for children and families) is complex and the solution is emergent! So maybe we are getting somewhere….

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.

Changefest: What made us smile this month was Changefest. Ross Homel and Sara Branch were able to attend one day each. Emerging out of Logan Together, Changefest brought together community groups, services and interested organisations from around Australia and the world. There was a real buzz over the three days and we both came away feeling energised and hopeful for the future. While there we ran into some of the Collective Impact Facilitators, which was really great.

UPCOMING MEETINGS AND EVENTS

CREATE Executive Committee (CEC) Meeting: The CEC will meet on the 3rd of December. The agenda and minutes from the meeting will be stored on the Project Management Portal.

WHAT’S NEW IN THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT PORTAL

(Items added in November)

CIF Role – Updates to CIFs

• Update to CIFs – Weeks from 5-11-18 to the 16-11-18 – posted 19-11-18
• Update to CIFs – Weeks from 29-10-18 to the 2-11-18 – posted 5-11-18

Project Updates – CIF Reports

• 2018 October CIF REFLECTION REPORT – posted 2-11-18

Communications

• CREATE Project Bulletin – October 31, 2018 – posted 31-10-18

Category: Project Newsletter

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