Here are 10 projects we’ve been busy with during COVID-19
It’s been a while
This is our first blog post for a while. With all the chaos that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought, including some change in personnel with our team, we’ve been a bit slack with sharing what we’ve been up to.
But rest easy, as we’re planning to get back into the swing of communicating consistently about our work. We hope there’s plenty of tips and tactics we’re able to share with organisations to help plan, design, implement and evaluate their programs and services.
It’s been quite a ride over the last few months as we’ve seen many projects being completed, some projects having to undergo big changes in direction to respond to COVID-19 restrictions, along with new projects starting up.
As you can see from the sample of projects we’ve either finished or been working on over the last few months, we’ve been involved in some really interesting projects.
Some of the projects we’ve been working on during COVID-19
For our friends at Wesley Mission Queensland, we completed a re-design of their Paradise Kids service model. Paradise Kids is a longstanding service model based on the Gold Coast for children experiencing grief and loss. Based on a review of leading research and policy, we advised WMQ around some changes to help the model be more impactful and sustainable to deliver.
We supported Children’s Health Queensland the Statewide Child Protection Clinical Partnership with design and implementation planning for the draft Child Protection Capability Framework. This was a partnered approach with child safeguarding expert Brad Poynting from Poynting Consulting and Advisory. It’s always great to collaborate alongside people who bring expertise in specific areas.
A COVID-enforced change of direction led us to delivering a digital community education approach with Relationships Australia Queensland for their elder abuse prevention services. This project was a bit more ‘hands on’ than some of our pure advisory work, which was awesome to work closely with the RAQ team on developing and distributing educational content.
Through a mix of policy and evidence review, data analysis and stakeholder engagement, we’ve been working with Brisbane South PHN to scope out a service response for child and youth mental health in Logan and Beaudesert. These communities have been identified as experiencing particularly high needs for children and young people, alongside several service gaps and supply issues, so it’s been rewarding to work with the PHN in an area that has the potential to make a huge impact.
As a COVID-specific project, we are working with Brisbane North PHN and Metro North HHS to lead a series of co-design sessions with general practice representatives to help identify potential solutions relating to specialist outpatient services that improve outcomes for patients in Brisbane North. We’ve just started the (remote) engagement activities this week, with our approach to go broad with a fact-finding mission initially, then refine and develop a handful of solutions closely with PHN and HHS reps.
We’ve been supporting Roses in the Ocean who have been tasked with leading a co-design of the Alternatives to ED Safe Spaces initiative on behalf of NSW Ministry of Health in 15 local health districts across NSW. Our role complements the great work that Roses do in co-design and engaging people with lived experience, while we support by documenting the process and developing the co-design products and resulting service specification.
A key milestone was achieved for our work on the Carer Support for People Experiencing a Suicidal Crisis program for the Gold Coast, where we transitioned from the design to implementation phases and handed over to lead partner Wesley Mission Queensland to commence delivering the trial service for the next 12 months or so. We’ll now run alongside the service in a monitoring and evaluation role, with a report due mid next year to help measure the impact of the model and inform possible replication in other areas.
Our friends at Open Minds were recently recognised for their capability as a headspace lead agency with being awarded the new headspace Strathpine site. We were stoked to be able to work with key staff at Open Minds with some external project management support during the critical establishment period.
Many people across the sector know about the important work that Foodbank Queensland do for vulnerable individuals and families. We’ve been connecting with a number of Foodbank Queensland’s member charities to hear their experiences of contributing to the hunger relief mission, and identifying areas to further strengthen these important partnerships.
Lastly, not a client project, but we have been pleased to welcome a couple of University of Queensland students completing their Master of Public Health to do their work placement with us. It’s always nice to meet keen and clever people starting out in the health sector and we look forward to helping them build on their experience.
As always, we’re very grateful for the opportunity to partner with people and organisations doing great things—thanks for inviting us along for the ride!
If you’d like to learn more about any of these projects, drop us a line at info@beaconstrategies.net as we’d love to share more.