Enacting authentic inclusivity using action learning
Enacting authentic inclusivity using action learning
By Children by Choice CEO Daile Kelleher, Project Officer Rachael Smith, and Education and Community Engagement Coordinator Bec Jenkinson.
Action learning is an inclusive form of professional development where people explore a topic and work towards growth and change in practice over time.
It is a strengths-based process that involves cycles of questioning, gathering information, reflection, action, and implementation.
Children by Choice is an independent Brisbane-based non-profit organisation, committed to providing unbiased information on all pregnancy options – abortion, adoption and parenting.
In July 2020, Children by Choice joined WorkUP Queensland’s Action Learning Project to get support for and enact authentic progress towards inclusive practice. Our Action Learning Project revolved around the development of Children by Choice’s Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP).
Supported by WorkUP Queensland and the Action Learning process, Children by Choice has built momentum for change across our organisation, with our staff team and Management Committee engaged in developing our Reflect RAP.
We identified a shared desire to explore and understand our organisational history and how we worked with First Nations peoples. While this will be challenging, it is also essential to acknowledge the role our organisation played in the ongoing structural violence against First Nations people. We also built the capacity of our team, with ongoing organisation-wide cultural training and team building activities focusing on Indigenous culture local to our service.
Through the Action Learning Project, we have also turned our attention outward, seeking opportunities to listen better to Indigenous communities. We partnered with Health Consumers Queensland to undertake Kitchen Table Discussions and hear from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women about their experiences of pregnancy decision making, contraception and abortion. We have also committed to visiting First Nations services when we travel across Queensland for other events.
While preparing for WorkUP’s Action Learning showcase in March, the genuine impact of this project quickly became evident. The most important learning has been our new understanding that the relationship is the project! This outlook helps us to slow down and focus on genuine relationships, which cannot be rushed.
We have relished the opportunity to look closely at and reflect on where we have come from, where we are right now and ready ourselves to create the inclusive future that Children by Choice aspires to.
This project has allowed us to make our Reflect RAP so much more than a box-ticking exercise – it has become an opportunity to show that we are doing genuinely meaningful work. We look forward to officially launching our Reflect RAP and incorporating it into our 50th anniversary celebrations.
We are excited and proud of where we have gotten to as a service and our ongoing commitment to reconciliation. Participating in the Action Learning process has been a huge part of that process.
WorkUP Queensland is continuing the conversation around diversity and inclusion with our upcoming intersectionality series. Click here to register.
Practice Studios can improve your service provision
Update: Cairns Practice Studio
Practice studios bring current evidence, research and knowledge to life in real-world settings. They implement new and emerging research via small projects funded through WorkUP Queensland. There are currently five practice studios underway in Queensland.
Cairns Sexual Assault Service is using their practice studio as an opportunity to enhance the capacity of services in the Cairns region to provide trauma- and violence-informed care to people who have experienced sexual assault. To inform this work, they are using knowledge gained through the ANROWS project, Women’s Input to a Trauma-informed systems model of care in Health settings: The WITH study.
In February, Cairns Sexual Assault Service reached a significant milestone with their practice studio. They hosted a workshop that brought together specialist and mainstream service providers who work with people who have experienced sexual violence across the region.
During the workshop, participants used the trauma- and violence-informed care framework to examine how the work is carried out across Cairns, and why it is carried out the way it is. The group discussed ways to improve trauma-informed care for their clients by working across sectors and silos. The group decided on three projects and recruited volunteers for all three. We will provide more information on those projects as they progress.
If you would like to find out more about Practice Studios, please contact Theresa Kellett at Theresa.kellett@anrows.org.au
Save the date! Daring, inclusive, feminist leadership
Save the date! Daring, inclusive, feminist leadership
‘Leadership is defined as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential”
- Brene Brown
WorkUP Queensland’s ‘Daring, Inclusive, Feminist’ Leadership’ series brings people across Queensland together to explore what it means to ‘lead daringly’.
In our latest online session, facilitated by Jan Ungerer Director Insightful Communications, we were joined by a host of inspiring people including Bri Lee, legal academic, author and advocate, who inspired us with snippets of her story and the leadership insights gained along the way.
The Healing Foundation CEO Fiona Cornforth (formerly Petersen) shared, from the heart, her reflections on leadership, including what it means to have a high-profile, outward-facing role centred around driving change. Gabrielle Borggaard, Owner and Principal Consultant at Inner Vision Consulting, provided some practical insights into what makes a good leader in the domestic violence sector.
Here are four of their key insights for enacting daring leadership:
1. Make space at the top. Encourage all women to lead, understanding that this looks different for everyone.
2. Be authentic. Remind yourself every day ‘I am enough’.
3. Take care of yourself. Maintain your passion, but do it in a way that doesn’t exhaust or deplete you.
4. Create a legacy. Not a statue that can break, but a living thing.
If you would like to explore further insights from the leadership symposium individually or as part of your team, please download the Leadership Resource. This is a simple resource with some key insights, questions and a reflective tool to assist you to do so.
Our next leadership symposium will focus on what it means to be an inclusive leader. We will be announcing speakers in our Facebook group soon, so be sure to join here.
Register here for the next symposium, in Brisbane on 30 July. For more information, contact Christine on 0400 999 184 or christine@healingfoundation.org.au
Thank you for everyone who joined us last time, and we look forward to seeing you again soon.
Feedback from participants:
‘The panel was amazing, very high level, lots of experience.’
‘This was extremely well done and engaging for our entire time.’
‘Reassuring – this work is hard ... necessary, and worth it.’
Build a stronger workforce with a $10,000 grant
Collaborative Workforce Grants - Applications now open all year
WorkUP Queensland is excited to announce we are updating our Collaborative Workforce Grants Program to a continuous opportunity to allow organisations to take advantage of project ideas as they evolve. A total of $50,000 is available every six months to support innovative partnerships.
The Collaborative Grants program supports eligible organisations* to partner with others to develop the capacity of their staff and services to respond to workforce challenges. It provides up to $10,000 for an activity or project that may have been on the agenda but needs additional support to complete.
The grants align with WorkUP Queensland and the sector’s shared workforce priorities to grow, retain, develop, support and connect the workforce, and sustain services. A primary goal of the grants is to increase collaboration across the domestic and family violence, sexual assault and women’s health and wellbeing workforce. Please refer to your region’s workforce plan for more information about priorities that have been identified in sector consultations.
Please see below for the Application Guidelines and Application Form. Georgina and the WorkUP Team are happy to support you in the application process.
Any queries can be directed to Georgina Lawson at WorkUP Queensland: georgina@healingfoundation.org.au or 0419 106 290.
The following organisations^ are past recipients of the grants in 2020 and 2021:
- Micah Projects: We are all Works in Progress: Developing the skills of those working with domestic violence perpetrators
- Brisbane Rape and Incest Survivors Support Centre: Practicing: Cultural Healing and Diversity (CHAD)
- Children by Choice: Sharing knowledge: Working with women with intellectual disability at the intersection of violence, reproductive coercion and unplanned pregnancy
- Cairns Sexual Assault Service: Lifting the Lid 2021
- Mercy Community Services SE Qld: Working with Domestic Violence & Cultural Sensitivity –Yarning Circle
- SPEAQ: SPEAQ Forum 2021
- Save the Children Australia: Communities of Practice (COP): Using the Safe & Together approach to shift practice, culture and systems
- NPA Family and Community Services: NPA & Torres Strait Women working together in the struggle against Domestic and Family Violence
- Ruth’s Women’s Shelter Cairns: A Trauma Informed Organisation
- Cairns Regional Domestic Violence Service: Our Voices Count
*eligible organisations in WorkUP Queensland’s target group are funded by the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney General, Office of Women and Violence Prevention to deliver domestic and family violence, sexual assault and women’s health and wellbeing services. There must be at least two eligible organisations listed to be considered for this grant.
^ lead organisation or network listed only
Collaborative Workforce Grants Applicant Guidelines 2021-22
Collaborative Workforce Grants Application Form