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COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS INITIATIVE
Initiatives that demonstrate a commitment to working with and/or in the community to achieve positive outcomes.
Judging Criteria
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➢ Impact on broader sector ➢ Transferability ➢ Complexity of outcomes and number of partners involved ➢ Effectiveness of collaborative effort ➢ Leadership demonstrated
Winner
High Commendation
➢ Maroondah City Council, Maroondah Positive Education ➢ Glenelg Shire, Macedon Ranges Shire and Benalla Rural City Council, Live4Life
WINNER Community Partnerships Initiative
Tailored Social Enterprise Partnerships are driving inclusive economic growth, sustainable labour market participation for disadvantaged groups, local job creation, and social cohesion in Banyule.
Created using a shared value lens, each partnership is tailored to appropriately respond to the unique needs, challenges and opportunities of the social enterprise, those of the Banyule community, and considers how Council is best placed to support.
These partnerships have enabled more than 25 economic participation and development outcomes, and supported each partner to build business capacity and skills, increase market access to social procurement opportunities and other new markets, and increase their impact and innovation.
Tailored Social Enterprise Partnerships exist to create inclusive place based job opportunities for vulnerable community members in Banyule and to support the development of Banyule’s social enterprise ecosystem.
This approach realises that social enterprises play a valuable role in the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of communities; and can provide a sustainable place based response to challenges in Banyule without ongoing reliance on grants.
Banyule Council is the first Local Government authority in Australia to have a dedicated Social Enterprise business unit that focuses on developing innovative approaches to place based employment creation through social enterprise partnerships.
A defining feature of this initiative is that it is founded on a business strategy of shared value which delivers on purpose and profit simultaneously. As a result, social enterprises are supported to overcome unique barriers they face in respect to increasing their business capacity, skills, access to new markets, and increasing their impact and innovation in alignment with their social cause. The outcomes achieved to date include:
• 15 work placements for people living with disabilities in Banyule
• Eight jobs for local asylum seekers
• One job and four volunteer roles for local job seekers experiencing disadvantage
• Access to tailored capacity building support for several social enterprises.
While social enterprises often require financial support or assistance to get their business off the ground, the goal is for them to become commercially self sustaining. Each partnership is formed by understanding how each social enterprise works, their business model, financial performance, challenges negatively impacting their business, and opportunities for business and impact growth.
Therefore, instead of a short term focus of access to finance, Council seeks to assist their development through a set of agreed shared value initiatives and projected long term outcomes. This helps to reduce the financial burden to the social enterprise in the short term and strategically increases their ability to effectively and sustainably deliver products and services in the long term.
Local Government collaborating with social enterprise is an innovative approach in the sector to inclusive place based employment creation. Three new social enterprises now operate in Banyule, and more than 20 new economic participation and development opportunities have been created for local people experiencing barriers to employment.
Following the development of Maroondah City Council’s Youth Strategy, Council partnered with 27 schools, the Department of Education, the University of Melbourne and the Institute of Positive Education to change the way education is delivered in Maroondah.
Using a Collective Impact Framework, the partnership has facilitated a shift towards positive education as an evidence based approach to raising student wellbeing. The project has attracted investment from the Victorian Minister for Education and has enabled hundreds of school, community and Council staff to be trained in the science of positive psychology to improve outcomes for young people in Maroondah.
The aim of the Positive Education Project is to mobilise the local education system towards the goal of raising youth wellbeing. Council partnered in a community wide implementation of positive education combining the science of positive psychology with best practice teaching to support schools and individuals within their communities to thrive.
When developing its Youth Strategy, Council identified the need to measure how local young people were faring so that they knew where to invest resources to get the best outcome. Council partnered with University of Melbourne’s Centre for Positive Psychology on a scientifically validated measurement tool which provided high quality wellbeing reports for each local school, alongside municipal-wide data.
As a result, schools in Maroondah are now:
• Collaborating and sharing practice
• Connected and supported by Council and other community groups
• United around wellbeing as a primary foundation to improve academic outcomes.
Live4Life is a community grown, evidence based, rural youth mental health initiative to prevent youth suicide. The program aims to ensure that young people, teachers, parents and the wider community are better informed about mental illness and trained to proactively identify the signs and symptoms of emerging mental health issues before a crisis occurs.
Building on evidence that shows young people go to friends and parents before they seek professional help, Macedon Ranges Shire Council developed the Live4Life model to wrap young people in protective factors that are strongly associated with positive mental health outcomes – such as supportive relationships, support at critical times, positive help seeking attitudes, connections to family, school and community, and positive peer role models. Live4Life is unique in establishing cross sectoral partnerships between Councils, health services, secondary schools and community groups to work towards the common goal of better mental health for young people living in rural Victoria.
All Councils and staff involved in Live4Life have taken a collaborative approach to program implementation, working with schools and community partners to ensure the model is relevant and responsive to the unique needs of individual communities.
Independent program evaluation has shown that Live4Life has increased knowledge of mental health issues in young people and adults, who are now more confident to both seek and offer support.
