Partnership with government
2024 Roadmap
Looking back and
moving forward
Partnership with Department of Education
Early Help Family Services Trial
Sharing learnings from the partnership
Federal Government engagement
Colman Education Foundation’s long-term partnership with the Victorian Department of Education serves as the foundation of our collaborative approach in supporting schools and communities. This enduring partnership undergoes review and renewal every three years, with the latest version in June 2023.
The updated partnership includes a continued commitment to core principles of success. It recognises the investments made by the Victorian Government and Our Place’s philanthropic partners, a commitment to data sharing and evaluation, and acknowledges the impacts of COVID on site implementation.
Our partnership comes to life through shared governance structures, which allow for joint oversight of implementation progress, addressing issues, and discussing emerging lessons from the work conducted by Our Place and our partners.
The commitment to our Partnership was further evident in the 2023 Victorian State Budget, which provided $1.03 million over three years to fund the work of Our Place in Mooroopna. This provides an opportunity to test a model of state funding for the important role of The Glue and having independent skilled people connecting families to education, services and supports. A further $80,000 was also provided to support the Our Place approach at Doveton College.
Since 2022, Our Place has been working with the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing to enable
the delivery of the Early Help Family Services Trial at Our Place Morwell and Northern Bay.
Within the school setting, the Early Help trial provides family services, flexible support and soft entry programs such as playgroups and Baby College. A qualitative evaluation of the trial has revealed the invaluable benefits of embedding child and family services within Our Place school settings:
- The trial provides positive impacts for families. Families are discovering and accessing new services, leading to meaningful changes in the lives of parents and children. Parents have noted increased knowledge, skills, and confidence.
- The benefits for family services include being able to reach a diverse range of families in a non-stigmatising
setting and provide earlier intervention in collaboration with early years and school staff to enhance family
support. - The Our Place partnership has optimised the Early Help model and family services have benefited from
established relationships and governance structures. Our Place staff are boosting family participation
through referrals and engagement and local knowledge of the community’s needs and aspirations.
In 2019, Our Place published What it means to walk alongside: Exploring the Our Place partnership, which
explored the lessons of what it took to establish the landmark agreement between philanthropy and the
Department of Education.
Given the evolution in the partnership, Our Place published a follow-up report in 2023 titled Insights for walking alongside: Lessons learnt from the Our Place partnership.
The new report captures the lessons of moving from establishment to implementation. Importantly, the scope
of the report was widened to capture the experience of other Victorian Government departments as well as
local government in its findings. The key lessons from the report are:
- Creating a shared vision to hold to purpose is crucial during challenging times. As the initiative scales, it’s vital to translate this vision to be locally impactful.
- Key relationships and trust must be at the core even as an initiative scales and grows. These relationships are essential for fostering shared understanding, problemsolving and a ction.
- Maintaining buy-in from senior leaders provides permission for a different way of working. Theimportance of this kind of sponsorship of innovationshould not be underestimated.
- Investing in people who can work across boundaries enables the complications of the competing norms of organisations to be navigated successfully.
- Sustaining the approach beyond individual relationships is essential for sustainability. This includes
establishing governance structures, investing in onboarding new partners, and documenting principles
for implementation. - Evidence must be embedded to support joint decision-making along with agreed measurable indicators of success that secure the conditions for sustainable improvement.
The level of interest and appetite for the Our Place approach has also deepened across other jurisdictions, as the potential for integrated school-community approaches gains wider recognition. The Hon Dr Anne Aly, Federal Minister for Early Childhood Education, visited Our Place Frankston North to meet with partners and families to learn more about the positive impact the Our Place approach is having on the community.
Federal Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, The Hon Andrew Giles also visited Our Place Doveton to see the important role of playgroups in providing early intervention and engagement for new migrant families.
The Independent Expert Panel for the Federal Government Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System visited Our Place Frankston North. The final report made extensive commentary on the value and potential of ‘full service school’ models including the importance of The Glue in ensuring their effectiveness.
The report has recommended that all governments take steps to implement this approach to better integrate services within schools, prioritising schools and communities with high levels of disadvantage.