As Portable’s Principal Design Strategist, I was responsible for leading on all community engagements and collaborating closely with the client team on critical decisions and alignments. In leading community engagement for Victoria's first-ever Statewide Wellbeing Plan, I shaped a comprehensive strategy that included diverse community insights into the plan's development. At the client’s invitation, I then became a co-author on the first draft of the Statewide Wellbeing Plan submitted to Department of Health stakeholders.
In leading community engagement for Victoria's first-ever Statewide Wellbeing Plan, I shaped a comprehensive strategy that included diverse community insights into the plan's development. I extended beyond the initial scope of our role to prioritise impactful additional outputs and communications, including the filming, editing and publishing of the community voices videos showcased at the symposium. Our efforts resulted in the client extending our contract to continue the collaboration as co-authors of the first draft of the plan itself.
This project reinforced the importance of community-centric approaches in policy development, particularly in mental health. I learned the profound value of integrating lived experiences into strategic frameworks, which not only enriches the content but also ensures the resulting policies are more inclusive and effective. In addition, this project’s timeline coincided with the launch of OpenAI’s public ChatGPT release, and we conducted safe, contained experiments with it to assist in content creation.
“Partnering with the Portable team ensured that the Wellbeing Plan was able to effectively centre the voices of different communities. Engagements were designed and delivered in a way that allowed participants to feel safe and comfortable sharing their stories. The outcome is a richer, more authentic and compelling story that supports the need to focus our efforts on improving people’s wellbeing.”
– Manager, Mental Health and Wellbeing Promotion Policy Department of Health
One of the ‘community voices’ videos I filmed, edited and exported for presenting at the symposia.
One of the ‘community voices’ videos I filmed, edited and exported for presenting at the symposia.
Our individual and collective wellbeing has encountered significant challenges, partly influenced by recent events like the pandemic and the rising cost of living. While there have been reforms to the healthcare system aimed at enhancing the experiences and outcomes of individuals with mental health conditions, it's equally vital to take proactive measures to prevent such suffering from arising in the first place.
The findings of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System highlighted the need to support people in Victoria to experience good mental wellbeing throughout their lives, particularly by focusing on places where we live, learn, work and play. It recommended formulating a Statewide Wellbeing Plan for promoting good mental health and wellbeing and the prevention of mental illness.
This Statewide Wellbeing Plan was envisioned to provide a coordinated approach to unite communities, service providers and government to prevent mental ill health and promote wellbeing and healing. Its purpose was to establish a strong foundation for meaningful and concrete action. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Division within the Victorian Department of Health (DoH) was tasked with overseeing its creation and engaged Portable to conduct the necessary community and sector engagements to inform the Wellbeing Plan’s contents.
Our challenge was to ensure we captured a broad and diverse range of perspectives from across Victoria, whether they were people going about their business in the main street or a shopping centre, passionate representatives of grassroots community organisations, experts within the mental health system or key decision makers who could translate the strategy into action.
To develop a Wellbeing Plan centred on conversations and activities around wellbeing experiences within our communities, we formulated an engagement approach that could balance safe and supportive conditions with flexible and dynamic activities. We used various in-person and online methods to capture countless stories, ideas and priorities from community members, sector experts and key decision-makers. Our first step was to establish clear guidelines for safety and trauma-informed practices in this work.
From the very beginning of our proposal, we outlined core commitments for the ethical and safe delivery of our engagements. These commitments became critical reference points and standards by which we held ourselves accountable throughout the project.
Our trauma-informed commitments: