Community initiatives in suicide prevention

Community initiatives in suicide prevention

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The health and welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

The recent report ‘The health and welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples: 2015’ produced by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Through our association with BasicNeeds, Orygen Youth Health, the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre and the Mental Health Association of Central Australia (MHACA), Community Works has been involved in initiatives relating to suicide prevention for some years now. We recently contributed to a series of publications on suicide prevention and social media (see the publications page of the Community Works website).

People often start their own projects to combat the tragedy of suicide in their own communities. Reducing the taboo around the subject is part of the battle. MHACA’s Suicide Story training resources are a good example of the long-term commitment that some community organisations have made to reduce the high incidence of suicides, in this case in Central Australia although the resources have been used for training programs in other places too. The MHACA website is currently under reconstruction but a summary of the resources can be found through HealthInfoNet.

The recent report ‘The health and welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples: 2015’ produced by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, noted that during the period 2008–2012 the suicide rate for Indigenous Australians was almost twice the rate for non-Indigenous Australians (based on age-standardised rates). For 15–19 year olds, the rate was 5 times as high as the non-Indigenous rate (34 and 7 per 100,000 population). Suicide is the most common external cause of death of Indigenous people, at 4.8% of all deaths (see http://www.aihw.gov.au/publication-detail/?id=60129550168). According to The Age, if compared with sovereign nations, the suicide rate for Indigenous Australians is now the twelfth highest in the world, with Australia as a whole being 64th.

Yugul Voice

Yugul Voice

I was working recently in Ngukurr, a community of around 1,000 people located in the Top End of the Northern Territory, as part of the Stronger Communities for Children program to which Ninti One is contributing with support from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. While in Ngukurr I met Ambrose of Yugul Voice, a local band, one of around sixteen bands in the community. Yugul Voice has written a song on suicide prevention called Moving On, which can be found here. This is another example of a local effort to break the silence around this subject.

Speaking on the ABC, Professor Pat McGorry of Orygen Youth Health recently described suicides as similar to the road toll in Australia in that both represent preventable deaths. He argued that greater emphasis on community-based interventions and a preventative model will save both money and lives.

Being enterprising about policy

Being enterprising about policy

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BasicNeeds has coordinated regular meetings with government and other agencies on mental health policy

We recently received a request to develop material on policy entrepreneurship for a professional group working on improved policy frameworks for mining in a country in South America. Within a local policy environment that was effectively paralysed on the subject of mining, the group was seeking to find a way forward. They believed, as they put it, that mining could be a tool for development.

Taking a different approach to conventional NGO advocacy methods, policy entrepreneurship is the process of forging a collective effort to support policy development and change. In writing on the subject in ‘Policy Entrepreneurs and Change Strategies (2010)’, Meijerink and Huitema presented an analysis of case studies from sixteen countries spanning five continents. They offered insights on the ways in which conventional business development methods such as building networks, identifying opportunities and brokering partnerships, can apply to policy.

The extent to which policy entrepreneurship is simply a new way of framing political lobbying is open to debate. Attempts to influence policy to benefit a particular group within society is part and parcel of everyday governance. Negative gearing in the Australian housing market is one example. Disputes over the management and use of water is another. In this context, policy development can be subject to manipulation and exploitation.

Marching for affordable medicines in El Salvador

Marching for affordable medicines in El Salvador

On the other hand, enterprise in policy is surely welcome. For subjects like infrastructure, energy, health and education, where the gains and losses from a particular development in policy fall heavily across society, there is a need for coalitions to be built. New perspectives need to be sought and a productive means of overcoming barriers have to be discovered. The example above of the mining policy group is a good one. If valuable mineral resources are available in a poor region, then the right kind of policy entrepreneurship ought to be one way to explore options. The result could be a transition to a new policy framework in which the benefits and their distribution far outweigh the losses.

Too often, the voices of important groups in society do not feature in collective efforts on policy development. The challenge for policy entrepreneurship is to achieve awareness and participation beyond a narrow set of interest groups.

What an effective program is

What an effective program is

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Our partnership with Ninti One

Our partnership with Ninti One (www.nintione.com.au) is never short of complex and challenging work. Recent discussions have centred on the design and planning of programs. Frameworks for measuring impact, governance training and achieving an effective model for supporting the rollout of programs across a geographically expanded area of remote Australia have been central to the current period of work. It has been interesting to reflect on what makes for an effective program. Drawing on other programs managed by Ninti One and Community Works, six key ingredients come to mind:
  • Productive relationships, especially through investing in building trust and rapport with community organisations
  • A program model that everyone understands, meaning that priorities, ways of working, roles and responsibilities fit together in a manner that might not be perfect but is workable.
  • A strategy that navigates whatever complexities exist around policy, practice, local expectations and needs to achieve the desired results on a cost-effective way.
  • Clear-sighted communication with stakeholders, meaning the range of people with an interest in or affected by the program. It involves making sure people and organisations are kept informed, consulted with and participate in a way that is appropriate to the program.
  • A shared understanding of what success looks like, which is critical in situations where problems may be many and program participants consistently feel they are not achieving what they want.
  • Leadership, especially where decisions need to be made with clarity and confidence.
Yes, it may be true that financial management, accountability and other factors are not included above, but my focus here is on the human aspects of programs, which have to be central to programs and projects with a social focus. Work continues and we look forward to contributing to the determined, long-term economic and social development efforts of Ninti One and many people and organisations in remote Australia.
Ninti One’s Aboriginal Community Researcher network plays a central role in its programs
Learning development practice

Learning development practice

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The current design of the Masters program on Management in Development

The current design of the Masters program on Management in Development is in its third year and is being coordinated by Steve Fisher. The focus of the program is effective development practice and it is offered as five one-day participatory workshops on aspects of the subject:

It is always interesting to observe which elements of the program appear most engaging and relevant to students. Sometimes they can be surprising, such as the preparation of a proposal for an imaginary Men’s Shed project in Carlton. Using the outline below, four groups each wrote a section of the proposal.

We then read the whole document out as a single description of the need, design implementation and intended outputs and outcomes. This was the final part of a day of learning about the subject of communicating on projects, especially to attract resources for them. It was a strangely uplifting experience. I compiled the final version into a two-page concept paper.

Another part of the program that always proves interesting is on innovation, focussing on four aspects of the subject:

  • Conceptual frameworks (new ways to think). Example: Social inclusion
  • Process improvements (new practice). Example: Participatory impact diagrams/outcome mapping
  • Technical change (new technology). Example: Use of mobiles for development purposes
  • Organisational change (new ways to organise). Example: Social enterprise and social franchising.

Following success with a marketplace approach to learning in an event for over 100 participants on water and sanitation in Melbourne last year, we used the same method for this work. An advantage was that it enabled students to move around between subjects across a one-hour period, learning from and contributing to each. The end results were impressive and I will feature them in a future blog on the subject of innovation.

My appreciation to the excellent and dynamic student group of twenty-four people, representing ten countries. Many thanks also to Maria Rodrigues for her research support and to Ingrid Horton for design work on the program.

Mining and community engagement in Chile

Mining and community engagement in Chile

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Development and presention seminar at the Alberto Hurtado University

Community Works was very pleased to work with InnovacionAL (www.innovacional.com) to develop and present a seminar at the Alberto Hurtado University on 5th March 2015. The theme was Mining and Community Engagement. As well as the university, the event was supported by the Ministry of Mining of the Government of Chile and Casa de la Paz, an NGO in Chile with interests in improving the interaction between mining companies, communities and stakeholders.
Yanina Kowszyk, Director of InnovacionAL introducing Steve Fisher from Community Works

For the first hour, I presented materials on the subject drawn from Australian experiences, including case studies from projects in which Community Works has been involved, as well as the Aboriginal Community Research network of Ninti One Ltd (www.nintione.com.au) and others. The IAP2 Framework is a useful tool for discussion of the subject, as is the generational framework developed by Kemp and Boele and adopted as part of the best practice manuals promoted by the Australian Government Department of Industry. I presented both frameworks, together with other methods and approaches.

For the first hour, I presented materials on the subject drawn from Australian experiences, including case studies from projects in which Community Works has been involved, as well as the Aboriginal Community Research network of Ninti One Ltd (www.nintione.com.au) and others. The IAP2 Framework is a useful tool for discussion of the subject, as is the generational framework developed by Kemp and Boele and adopted as part of the best practice manuals promoted by the Australian Government Department of Industry. I presented both frameworks, together with other methods and approaches.

When working with the Queensland University of Technology on training programs for mining professionals, I have always found it useful to separate community engagement into strategic and transactional levels. Strategic refers to the choice of overall frameworks for how to work effectively with communities, such as partnership agreements. Transactional work refers to the day-to-day interactions between community residents or members and outsider professionals from companies, government agencies and NGOs. Facilitation skills are a part of these processes and the seminar discussed them in some detail. Clearly an underlying principle is the need to generate rapport and respect in both directions.

Seminar ‘Mining and Community Engagement’ conducted in Chile in partnership with InnovacionAL