GCI held the sixth CREATE online seminar on 7 October 2020. A copy of the presentation slides and a recording of the presentation is available for viewing below. In this webinar the Collective Impact Facilitator Report – Overview was mentioned. This report summarises the results from a review of the Collective Impact Facilitator role in Phases 2 and 3 of the CREATE project. 

The CREATE-ing Pathways to Prevention Initiative (CREATE) is a series of collaborative research-based capacity building projects initiated by Professor Ross Homel and colleagues at Griffith University (and later ANU), in partnership with national not-for-profit organisations, interest groups, and federal and state government departments. Its aim is to strengthen ‘prevention delivery systems’ (chiefly what is done by primary schools and community agencies) by bringing the fruits of scientific research to bear on routine practices.

CREATE is a long-term applied research initiative based at Griffith University that works through the Commonwealth Government’s Communities for Children Program in New South Wales and Queensland. It built on successive stages of ARC-funded project work that included Pathways to Prevention (1999-2012), Creating the conditions for collective impact: Transforming the child serving system in disadvantaged communities (2013-2016) plus a ‘community establishment’ phase (2016-2018), and the most recent phase, Creating pathways to child wellbeing in disadvantaged communities (2019-2020). The aim of the initiative is to support evidence-based collaborative preventive action through the development of human and electronic resources that are responsive to the needs of children, families, community service deliverers, and schools.

CREATE is an acronym: Collaborative; Relationship-driven; Early in the pathway; Accountable; Training-focused; Evidence-driven.

These principles underpin a model of preventative action that:

  • empowers schools and community agencies to transcend system silos
  • foster ethical practices and respectful relationships
  • delivers goal-directed, quantitatively evaluated, evidence-based resources that promote child wellbeing in disadvantaged communities
  • helps deflect children from antisocial and criminal behaviours

Over the course of this project the CREATE principles were put into practice through a wide range of resources and methodologies including – as major examples:

  1. Rumble’s Quest, an on-line computer game and support system that measures child social-emotional wellbeing and empowers schools and child agencies to use the reliable and valid data that is generated to guide actions to improve child wellbeing.
  2. Collective Change Facilitators who are ‘system intermediaries that act as a bridge between the researchers and the consumers, deliverers, and designers of services

By developing capacity-building resources for schools and child and family serving agencies, the CREATE Initiative enhances the collective power of community coalitions to be successful agents of community-wide change for children and families.

This webinar will discuss the CREATE ‘big picture’ by reviewing the major outcomes and findings from the program as a whole, including where some ambitious goals were not realised.

This presentation will be led by CREATE Project Co-director Professor Ross Homel, Principal Research Fellow Dr Kate Freiberg, and Senior Research Fellow Dr Sara Branch – Griffith Criminology Institute.

View a copy of the presentation slides here.