This workshop aims to do three things.  First, it will support participants in understanding community development principles and methods. Second, it will create spaces to explore and elicit the meaning and implications in their own context/work places.

Third, it will offer a case study of a paediatric-palliative care hospice’s journey in community development. The community development approach integrates an action learning approach to public health and place-based work , drawing on the globally recognised Compassionate Communities approach, that involves:

 

-       Enhancing community and social connectedness for families who’s children have life-limiting illness;

-       Advocates for social and community inclusion and access to public facilities;

-       Facilitating compassionate community conversations, which build social capacity for compassionate neighbours and supports;

-       Building partnerships with families, communities and other stakeholders, to ensure the work is community and family-led. 

 

The workshop aims to shift people’s approach to ‘being helpful’ (not helping) families-in-communities, being attentive to language, discourse and power.