Project Description

This is a project about family. It's about the people, the places, the things, and the experiences which make us feel at home: comfortable and at-ease, special and important, strong and capable, grounded and going somewhere. We call all of this thriving. We don’t yet know how to enable thriving; we’ll work that out with families over the weeks to come.

We do know that it isn’t easy. Every family has its ups and downs; periods when the stress takes over. Too often families have to reach a breaking point before they can get some support. And when that support does come, it’s often not the right size or shape. It's about what a service can do for families more than what families and communities can do by and between themselves.

Jenny is a young mum we've met who wants to build the kind of home she missed out on as a kid: a home that brings out your best. Times have been really tough lately. So she asked for help. Now she has a social worker, a family support worker, a community counselor, a housing worker, and a playgroup for her kids. But she still doesn’t know any neighbours, have any good friends, or had any first-hand experience with a family that brought out her best.

Then there are those families that get by without any services. Dave and Alicia live with their three teenage sons and Alicia’s mum. Things are always busy, if not chaotic. They never seem to be in the same room at once. Dave’s unhappy at work; the eldest son doesn’t bother with school. But they haven't had a moment to pause and consider what could be different.

Over the next nine months, we'll be working with all types of families to learn what could be different in their lives and create some sort of in-community platform that makes different stuff happen. We don't know what this will look like, yet. We do know that it won't be another service. Instead, it will be something that brings families together with other families, neighbours, community groups, local businesses, employers, schools, etc. It also won’t be another coordinating body. Instead, it will be something that develops, incubates, and spreads new kinds of practices, experiences, and interactions in families, communities, and organisations.

We’re partnering with families in the city of Marion to do this project. We’re supported by the Department for Families and Communities. We’re learning from and with Housing, Health, and Education departments, voluntary organisations, business networks, and local community groups. While we’re starting in the city of Marion, our goal is to come up with a platform that can scale across communities, unlocking new resource and building people and organisational capacity to do different along the way.

Watch this space to learn, as we learn, what doing different looks and feels like here in South Australia.