Our Strategy for Participation and Engagement: The BHN Way
BHN is here to provide accessible care that meets the diverse needs of our communities, while using our influence to drive positive change. This draft strategy reflects months of thoughtful development, moving from an individual focus to a broader community perspective. It recognises that achieving meaningful and lasting change requires working across all dimensions of diversity, engagement, and inclusion in an integrated way.
Participation and Engagement Strategy Overview:
The Participation and Engagement Strategy will deliver on Pillar One of our Strategic Plan (2023-2026) by taking a whole-of-organisation approach. It focuses on strengthening our engagement with vulnerable or marginalised groups to improve their relationships with our service and reduce barriers to care. Over time, this strategy aims to deliver better health outcomes for our most disadvantaged community members by listening to their needs and co-designing services that work for them.
Pillar One of our Strategic Plan says 'we seek to understand the needs of our communities and we design our services through listening to them'. The priorities under this pillar are:
A)
Understanding and promoting safety for diverse communities and people using OUR services, especially First Nations peoples and people who might face barries getting health care.
B)
Impactful partnering with communities, organisations and leaders.
C)
Investment in growing and sustaining our Lived and Living Experience workforce at all organisational levels.
D)
Co-designing a modern approach to the client voice, accounting for regional nuance and service specific needs.
Key Objectives:
1. Building trust and strengthening partnerships with our clients and communities, while adapting our policies to meet their needs.
2. Enhancing the skills of our workforce, including policy makers, to ensure our engagement with communities is meaningful and fit-for-purpose.
3. Empowering communities to be active co-designers of health and wellbeing policies and programs, treating them as equal stakeholders.
Measuring Success:
We will track our efforts to ensure they create positive outcomes, influence social change, and contribute to systemic improvements in health and human services. We will work with you, listen to your needs, and collaborate with communities and partners to achieve integrated, impactful change.
Delivering the strategy:
This strategy will be delivered through a Framework of Principles and Practices for Participation & Engagement, ensuring we build stronger relationships and deliver better outcomes for our communities. The framework will represent a ‘maturity approach’, recognising that we need to take foundational steps and our capability and impact will grow over time.
The Framework will have ongoing opportunities for input and influence to ensure that our activities are planned, are useful, and reflect the priorities of diverse communities in our client groups, communities around us, and our staff and volunteer workforce.
