How well does Platforms – our community-led approach to change – resonate beyond early childhood? Find out how Platforms has been applied to develop a decision-making framework to guide work in the Queensland agricultural sector.
Platforms is a place-based, community-led approach developed by the Centre for Community Child Health to improve the environments and experiences of children in the communities in which they are born, live, learn and grow. The approach is informed by evidence and over 15 years of experience working with early years services and community members across Australia.
Given our success in the use of Platforms across Australia, CCCH has been invited to share its expertise in other sectors demonstrating that the principles that underpin Platforms are replicable in contexts beyond early childhood.
One initiative involved facilitating the co-design of a model of practice for Extension Officers in the Queensland Agricultural sector.
In 2019-2020 CCCH facilitated a series of co-design workshops with QLD Extension Officers and farmers in the design of an ‘Extension Model of Practice’.
Figure 1: The Extension Model of Practice (EMoP)
This work was contracted by Canegrowers Isis and funded by the Queensland Government Reef Water Quality Program. The resulting model is a decision-making or service-delivery framework to guide the work of extension officers with individual farmers, groups of farmers, other extension staff and their organisations. It is designed to support extension officers to be intentional in their work and have greater clarity about what they are trying to achieve, and the factors and context likely to influence outcomes. The model is informed by Platforms and the Family Partnership Model (Davis & Day, 2010) and despite its specific application to the agriculture sector, it will resonate with a variety of helping contexts.
Our team unites expertise in early childhood, codesign, stakeholder engagement, knowledge translation and implementation, and recognises that how we work together is as important as what we do.