Join us – Practice Studio showcase
Join us on 7 December – Practice Studio showcase
Practice Studios support organisations to meet workforce and service needs through small, funded implementation projects that translate the latest research in the family and domestic violence space into practice.
Join us in person or online on 7 December to hear from organisations supported by WorkUP Queensland as they share insights into their experiences with evidence-informed approaches.
Speakers include:
- Melissa Kulan from Women’s Health Queensland. Melissa will share insights from the Community Ally practice studio, as they worked to upskill community members from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to recognise and respond to domestic violence.
- Liliana Sanchez from Children by Choice. Liliana will share resources about reproductive coercive control and choice, developed with and by community members from diverse cultures.
- Julie M from DVConnect. Julie is working in partnership with multicultural and settlement services to improve their capacity to respond to people experiencing violence, while at the same time learning more about what DVConnect can do to support culturally and linguistically diverse peoples to access support.
- Talia van Gils from Community Action, Gympie. Talia will talk about the challenges faced in implementing an ambitious practice studio that involved developing a tool for use in Queensland civil courts, which supports women to tell their stories. She will discuss the complex patterns of coercive control and abuse and how they can be better understood.
- Marta Barnes from Cairns Sexual Assault Service. Marta will launch an implementation report sharing what was learned during work to implement trauma- and violence-informed practice across the Cairns service sector.
WorkUP Queensland will also launch the next round of practice studios and answer all your questions about becoming a host.
Details:
When: 2:00pm, 7 December
Where: WeWork building, 25 King Street, Bowen Hills, Brisbane, QLD, 4006
Accessibility: accessible to all people.
Register here
To learn more, please contact workforce@healingfoundation.org.au
Assistance in understanding and implementing practice standards and regulatory frameworks
Assistance in understanding and implementing practice standards and regulatory frameworks
Did you know that WorkUP Queensland offers flexible and tailored support to assist services to understand the DFV practice standards and regulatory framework and how they apply in practice?
If you have any questions or concerns, or just want to check if you are on the right track, we offer support via phone, email, Zoom, or Teams. You can also request support here.
After we receive your request, Gabrielle Borgaard Nicholson will be in touch. Gabrielle is a DFV specialist consultant and will arrange a mutually convenient time to gain more understanding about your needs.
This involves engaging in a structured, reflective conversation about the practice standards and regulatory framework, which may take up to one hour. You may find that you are on the right track, or you may identify areas where you would like additional support or resources.
Gabrielle will work with you to understand your specific needs and make tailored recommendations to support your service. These could include one-on-one targeted support, group support sessions in key areas, referral to other specialist support or resources.
To learn more, please contact Christine at WorkUP on 0400 999 184 or christine@healingfoundation.org.au
Complete our Workforce Survey for your chance to win a $200 self-care package
Complete our Workforce Survey for your chance to win a $200 self-care package
The WorkUP Queensland annual survey will provide a collective understanding of our workforce across Queensland.
Understanding our workforce will help us to plan and also support the sector and your organisation to:
- Respond to emerging needs
- Understand what is happening for you, your organisation and clients, and its impact on the workforce
- Strengthen workforce planning
- Tailor workforce strategies
- Support stronger advocacy
- Encourage continuous improvement
- Strengthen the sector through understand shared workforce issues.
If you are a worker in a Sexual Violence, Domestic and Family Violence, and Women’s Health and Wellbeing service funded through Office of Women and Violence Prevention, Department of Justice and Attorney General we want to hear from you.
Click here for Individual survey
Click here for Organisational survey
Previous surveys provide us with a baseline we want to build on. Each year’s survey fills out the picture, particularly through these rapidly changing times. It is important to understand the impact of the last 12 months to inform what we all focus on in building a stronger workforce.
Once the survey is completed we will use it to inform our workforce planning with data on the profile of the workforce such as age and qualifications, as well as information on issues of attraction and retention, length of employment, and skills requirements. You can also use this data for your own workforce planning and advocacy.
The more participation by both individuals and organisations, the more robust the results will be and in turn the more useful for the whole sector.
We appreciate your time and as a way to say thank you, each survey offers the opportunity to go into the draw for 3 x $200 self-care package for the organisation survey and 1x $100 for the individual survey.
If you have any questions please contact us at workforce@healingfoundation.org.au
Continuous improvement to build a stronger workforce
Continuous improvement to build a stronger workforce
What adaptions to the way you work have helped you through the COVID-19 pandemic?
What are the workforce challenges that have emerged during the last 18 months, and how can we learn from these to create a stronger workforce?
For the past two years, WorkUP Queensland has been working to deliver on statewide and regional workforce plans created by the domestic and family violence, women’s health and wellbeing, and sexual violence sector.
Input from workers in the sector has always been crucial to ensuring what we deliver meets the sector’s workforce current and emerging needs.
If you work in the domestic and family violence, sexual assault and women’s health and wellbeing sector in Queensland in any role, at any level, we would love to hear from you.
Join us at a new series of catch ups to share, listen, and create useful and engaging workforce strategies together, and to set the agenda for the coming two years.
The ‘CatchUP with WorkUP’ series provides an opportunity to share feedback on the workforce strategies delivered so far and the learning approaches we have used.
CatchUP sessions will be offered in 11 locations across Queensland, to:
- Share our learnings from working through COVID – what do we want to carry into the future?
- Provide feedback about our workforce activities so far – what worked well and what can we build on?
- Discuss the critical workforce issues you have encountered and work with us to create solutions.
- Learn about exciting WorkUP Queensland workforce activities underway and how you can get involved.
Click here to register.
$20,000 scholarships coming this September
Scholarship Program September 2021 – Supporting professional development
WorkUP Queensland is excited to launch a new round of our scholarship program for the workforce of organisations funded by the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney General to deliver domestic and family violence, sexual violence and women’s health and well-being services.
Scholarships to the value of $20,000 are granted towards fees for accredited training and higher education for workers of any level across organisations.
We encourage you to explore the range of opportunities available, from frontline workers to managers. Applicants must demonstrate the impact the qualification will have on their role and work within the sector, how they will share their knowledge with colleagues, and the application must be endorsed by their employer.
Our awarded scholarships to date have included a range of courses including:
- Graduate Diploma of Domestic and Family Violence Practice
- Graduate Certificate in Business (Philanthropy and Non-Profit Studies)
- Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Trauma and Recovery Practice
- Graduate Certificate in Facilitating Men’s Behaviour Change
- Master of Domestic and Family Violence Practice
- Bachelor of Psychological Sciences
- Graduate Certificate in Applied Coaching
- Master of Human Rights
Please see the guidelines and application form below. Applications close on Friday 22nd October 2021.
Scholarship Program Applicant Guidelines 2021
Scholarship Program Application Form
Padma Raman joins ANROWS as CEO
Padma Raman joins ANROWS as CEO
WorkUP would like to welcome Padma Raman PSM, who commenced as ANROWS CEO in July. Padma joins the WorkUP Queensland steering committee and reference group.
Padma has a wealth of experience as a senior executive at both state and federal levels, and in 2018 was awarded the Public Service Medal. For the past 11 years, she has been Chief Executive of the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Prior to that she established and was chief executive officer of the Victorian Law Reform Commission for nine years. She has a Master of Laws in research focusing on the experiences of immigrant and Indigenous women under the Australian legal system.
Padma is following Dr Heather Nancarrow, who recently retired as ANROWS CEO. Heather has been with ANROWS from its inception and played an instrumental role in the establishment of WorkUP Queensland.
We would like to acknowledge Heather’s generosity and creativity in shaping our work and supporting ways to bring knowledge and research to life through our Practice Studios.
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