Wellington City Libraries Palm Tree Blossoming of Our Children - Kia Puawai Ngā Tamariki - 10th Australasian Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect

Everyday Communities - Working towards an Aotearoa which is free from child abuse, neglect and family violence.

Author

Marlane Welsh-Morris

Speaker

Sue Lytollis

Organisation

Department of Child, Youth and Family Services,
Wellington New Zealand


Everyday Communities is a child abuse, neglect and family violence prevention programme which uses a process of community engagement to achieve social change. Delivered in selected communities through a partnership between Child, Youth and Family and local community personnel, it includes a locally developed and delivered communications campaign and a calendar of community events. It's overarching goal is

"New Zealanders act to achieve wellbeing and safety for our children"

Everyday Communities has a number of key strengths which support the programme's ability to work effectively with communities on issues of common concern.

  • It's recognised amongst communities and the New Zealand public as a valued, priority activity.
  • It uses an easy to understand framework and can be adapted to reflect different local and cultural contexts. This promotes early achievement and transferability.
  • It uses communications mediums that maximise local content, draw upon existing local expertise and use personally relevant messages.
  • It deliberately encourages broad community engagement to achieve strengthening ownership of Everyday Communities' values, enhancing long-term sustainability.
  • It can align with and enhance other Community projects focused on social issues.
  • It enables skill development and capacity building in the community by drawing on Asset Based Community Development principles. These seek to identify and develop the collective strengths and knowledge within communities, to help them achieve their goal.
  • It highlights and promotes Culture as an effective solution.
  • It uses a wide range strength based prevention tools to engage families in a proactive journey toward self empowerment.

Evaluation

In the four communities where the implementation of Everyday Communities has concluded, results demonstrate a significant shift in the community's ownership of the issues and increased capability to continue addressing the issues.

Everyday Communities has a series of monitoring and evaluation reports that have measured the

  • Public's awareness of the issues and their ownership responsibility for preventing child abuse, neglect and family violence.
  • The extent to which Community capability has increased to utilise the methodologies and principles inherent in EDC to support sustainability.

Child, Youth and Family Services delivers Everyday Communities as its key Child Abuse prevention programme. Everyday Communities will be implemented across an aggregate of communities in the Northland Region of New Zealand in 2005/ 06 and in the Pacific Peoples communities in the Wellington Region.

Presentation

Paper

Biography

Sue Lytollis QSM, Dip Cty and Social Work, Dip Journo Sue has more than 15 years experience as a social worker and communications specialist within government. She worked on the high profile Breaking the Cycle campaign for CYF in the 90's and returned to CYF after several years working in Community communications for the Department of Labour.  She now manages the Public Education team of CYF and thus the direction and oversight of the Everyday Communities Campaign which focuses on education and prevention messages about family violence and child abuse.

Sue's 'other' life was as a well known Self Defence instructor of her 8 hour courses for women and girls throughout New Zealand. She considers the Everyday Communities Campaign an excellent vehicle able to combine the knowledge and energy of the community with government specialist knowledge and funding to create a 'tailor made' local response to family violence. The powerful partnership Everyday Communities has with Everyday Theatre, an applied Theatre technique, has meant that young and old alike can explore dialogue around difficult issues.