3.2.4 Emily Delahunty
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3.2.4 AWHN Conference 6 2010 Chancellor 1:Developing a Women’s Health Action Plan Women’s Health Grampians
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3.2.4 Emily Delahunty
- 1. Developing a Women’s Health Action Plan Women’s Health Grampians
- 2. WHG region
- 3. Why? • Collect targeted local data to increase WHG knowledge and capacity • Increase WHG profile and partnerships • Direct future work upstream by supporting service providers
- 4. Aims • Identify strategies to support workers to provide women’s health information to rural and regional women • Develop strategies to provide health promotion and gendered expertise to support women’s health workers • Inform WHG about best ways to improve health status of women
- 5. Process • Organisation readiness and support • Invitations through CEOs and Health Promotion Networks • Wimmera - 8 focus groups and 1 forum Grampians Pyrenees - 6 focus groups and 1 forum
- 7. Process • Broad questions • Two WHG staff members and one consultant lead discussions • Forum working document created from information collected • Forum held to validate data and suggest strategies to address issues
- 8. • Met with members of the Wimmera Primary Care Partnership and Grampians Pyrenees Primary Care Partnership prior to consultations • Liaised with key workers/organisations • All consultations held at Health Services or Local Council Offices Integrated Approach
- 9. • 40 organisations and services engaged • Use of consultant • Holding forum as follow up to focus groups • Improved data and partnerships • Use of partnerships and key people Process Evaluation
- 10. Impact Evaluation • 9 main themes and contributing factors identified • Increased data and knowledge to inform planning and support funding applications and advocacy • Increased partnerships • Increased WHG worker capacity
- 11. Outcome evaluation • Increased partnerships and project opportunities
- 12. Challenges • Engaging representation from all sectors and locations • No WHG worker currently based in GP region • Some people uncertain as to whether to attend
- 13. Acknowledgements WHG would like to acknowledge and thank the following for their support: Dr Lynne Gleeson, Springtech Services; Judy Perkins, Department of Human Services Grampians Region and the member organisations and service providers in the Grampians Pyrenees and Wimmera Primary Care Partnership regions.
Editor's Notes
- Acknowledgement of traditional owners, the Mouhenenner (moo-we-nee-naa) people. Pay respect to owners past and present
- The purpose of this process was to collect local data to support WHG and other organisation advocacy work and funding applications. WHG has had several changes in staffing and work approach and location in the western past of our region over the last few years. We also found that we had a lot of anecdotal evidence and data which raised more questions than it answered and didn’t give us clear directions on what was needed in this region or how or who we could work with. We decided to engage service providers who work with women in our consultations as WHG does not provide direct service so by supporting the workers we could then help to support women.
- Strategies would be identified with the participants throughout the consultations, using their own knowledge and experiences These strategies would be developed by WHG using the information collected through the consultations
- Full time staff member based in Horsham for almost 12 months which increased WHG profile, partnership and knowledge of this area. WHG board committed to supporting the project out of core funding even if we were not successful in obtaining external funding. Initial contact from WHG CEO was made to inform CEOs of key organisations. A hard mail out was sent to CEOs of all relevant organisations and then an electronic invitation was sent to all workers. We wanted to be thorough with the information and invitation process so that all relevant organisations and workers were given the opportunity to attend and enough time to plan for this. It was decided to hold 2 focus groups per LGA, thus 8 groups were held in the Wimmera and 6 held in the Grampians Pyrenees.
- We ran two focus per day, with each group being in a different LGA. For example focus groups for Edenhope in the West Wimmera Shire and Nhill in Hindmarsh Shire were held on the same day. The other 2 focus groups for those LGA’s would be held on a different day of the week, to increase the possibility for someone to attend a focus group in their area for example if they did not work full time.
- 7 broad questions were developed and little information about WHG’s current work was given to encourage as much information as possible. Attendees were asked to write down their initial responses to these questions, and a group discussion was had around each question. This was to give people the opportunity to write down any information they didn’t feel comfortable discussing in an open forum, and also to get their ‘cold’ reaction to the questions. Lynne Gleeson our consultant was the primary note taker and WHG workers Kim and Emily facilitated the discussion. All 3 were involved in teasing out issues and encouraging participation by all group members All information was put into the forum working document which summarise the main themes and the issues and contributors associated with these. Small groups worked on these themes at the forum and added in any additional information and made suggestions about how to address the issues.
- While we did not have a target number of attendees and represented organisations prior to the process, we felt that the total of 76 workers who attended the focus groups, the 22 workers who attended the forums and the 40 organisations represented was a sound response rate to our consultations. We believe the use of a consultant as an independent layer and with skills in facilitation, data analysis and report writing was good process and provided the opportunity of attendees to provide feedback independent of WHG if they wished. It also improved the capacity of WHG workers in facilitating groups, analysing data and report writing. Holding a forum a month after the end of the focus groups enabled us to compile the data collected and to provide workers with the opportunity to comment on this and provide suggestions on how to address these issues. We feel that it was a good process and a demonstration of our commitment to our work and partnerships, to follow up with the attendees and also those who could not attend the focus groups. It also confirmed the large amount of information we had collected. In some towns, the use of key people or organisations helped to attract workers to the consultations. Both PCP’s were very useful in promoting our work which helped to increase numbers attending. We feel that the range of locations that were not all centrally located also helped to encourage workers to attend, as well as plenty of forward notice and reminders (although possibly slightly annoying!) As we don’t currently have a worker who is based in the GP region, we think this could have been a barrier to reaching a wide range of workers and organisations. We also had several queries from people as to whether they should attend or not. Although we tried to be clear about the range of service providers who were invited to attend, there may have been some confusion around this which could then have been a barrier to a range of services and organisations being represented throughout the consultations.
- As we processed the large amount of data collected 9 main themes emerged. These were workforce development, service development, mental health, family violence, social connectedness, education and training, women’s health, parenting and transport. We were able to collect a large amount of data from a range of service providers to inform our next 3 year health promotion plan and 3 year strategic directions, as well as to support funding applications and advocacy for WHG and other organisations. We improved our knowledge of other services and also raised our own profile which has increased our opportunities for partnership. Whilst we had anecdotal evidence about the issues and gaps for women and service providers, we were able to confirm much of this through the consultation process.
- Initial outcomes are the increased data and knowledge of issues for women and the service providers who support them, as well as the increased opportunity for partnership through connected with a range of workers and organisations, while also increasing the profile of our own work. As one of the main aims of developing the action plan was to inform our own HP plan, this will be better measured once the plan is implemented in the Wimmera and Grampians Pyrenees regions. We obtained good basic data which had increased knowledge of the issues and gaps, however specific programs will require further consultation with key players.
- In some areas we had little or no representation from local government. We also had no representation from the Indigenous sector although there was still some interest in our work despite no attendance to the consultations. Stawell was the only location where there were no attendees
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