Engaging With Diversity: Community Consultation and the State Public Sector

Ip D¹*, Johnson H¹* and Everingham J¹*

1. The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia

Traditionally, government policy, program and service delivery planning and development, in Australia as elsewhere, has involved a narrow range of community members. Those who are harder to reach, or are not comfortable with current methods of consultation, are too often not involved in the decisions that directly affect their lives. A significant group that is missed in traditional community engagement activities is people from diverse backgrounds including women, and people of linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. There is a need to broaden many government agencies’ approaches to diversity and inclusiveness and to develop models that demonstrate inclusiveness in a more coordinated way.

This panel discusses a recent research project that gathered data on how government agencies could improve the understanding and capability of public sector community engagement practitioners to engage inclusively with linguistically and culturally diverse peoples in Queensland, and specifically with women, by providing an evidence base of what works, for whom and in what circumstance. The results can inform relevant agency structures, policies and practices (institutional arrangements and practices) at state and local levels in a way that encourages more inclusive and enabling engagement practices. The data gathered by the researchers has been used to identify the skills, capabilities and knowledge already being used by community engagement practitioners, and to explore the gaps in knowledge that existed. The project has been crucial therefore to sharing knowledge within and between agencies and to developing effective practices of engagement.

Click here to view the full paper