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Building wellbeing into regional decision-making

Supporting and enabling Australia’s rural leaders

Project Team

University of Canberra

Prof Jacki Schirmer

Dr Kim Houghton

Dr Kimberly Brown

 

University of Southern Queensland

Dr Geoff Woolcock

 

Funding partner

Gardiner Foundation

 

 

Find out more

To find out more, please contact a member of the project team:

Kim Houghton – houghton@canberra.edu.au

Jacki Schirmer – jacki.schirmer@canberra.edu.au

 

Understanding wellbeing is important

Providing a good quality of life to residents is essential for any community – but particularly for rural communities. Multiple studies show that whether a rural community thrives or declines over time depends on whether it provides a high quality of life for its residents. This high quality of life is driven by many things – only one of which is economic opportunity. Just as important as having a healthy economy is having a healthy local environment, good parks and recreation facilities, quality housing, well-kept buildings, a friendly and welcoming community, a safe community, and access to essential services and infrastructure, to name a few.

Rural communities lack easy access to the information they need

Investing in the wellbeing of rural communities is central to their future success. To be able to invest in wellbeing, rural leaders need quality, timely and local information on wellbeing that is relevant to their community. Rural communities need data for their community – not data showing what the ‘average’ rural community looks like.

Information on its own is not enough – communities need to be able to use it to support decision making

Communities not only need the ability to monitor how their wellbeing is changing over time: they also need leadership support to build capacity to act on this type of information. Building wellbeing into regional decision-making will embed consideration of wellbeing in community discussions.

Project aims

This project aims to support a group of regional leaders to understand what changing wellbeing means for their community, and how to build a wellbeing focus into decision making processes in order to support and grow wellbeing in their community. The project will develop and test a suite of resources designed to:

  • Create wellbeing frameworks tailored to small communities;
  • Enable rural communities to better understand and monitor wellbeing; and
  • Build the capacity of community leaders to use and integrate this understanding of wellbeing into discussion and decision-making processes in their communities.

Project outputs

The project will produce the following resources to support communities around Australia:

  • Regional Wellbeing Monitoring Hub: An online resource to help people identify how to monitor wellbeing in their communities, making it easy to understand and use a wide range of indicators of wellbeing, and linking to available data sources.
  • Three local community wellbeing frameworks: The project team will work with three communities to help them build their own bespoke wellbeing framework and report on the indicators in that framework; the lessons learned through this process will be used to improve design of the Regional Wellbeing Monitoring Hub, Wellbeing Dashboard Toolkit, and Wellbeing Leadership Program.
  • Wellbeing Dashboard Toolkit: A toolkit that communities can use to build their own Wellbeing Dashboard, using indicators relevant to their community, with the Hub providing a range of resources they draw on as part of developing their individual Regional Wellbeing Dashboards.
  • Wellbeing Leadership Program: Development and implementation of a rural leadership program that enables rural leaders across Australia to build capacity to identify and act on wellbeing challenges and opportunities in their community.

Frequently asked questions:

Throughout the project, there will be many ways to get involved, including via a community of practice where people engaged in building wellbeing into local and regional decision making can share experiences and learn from each other. Answers to frequently asked questions about the project are set out below.

In January 2025, we have asked Victorian dairy communities for expressions of interest to be one of three communities we work with intensively during the project to build localised wellbeing frameworks. Several communities have asked questions about the process for selection and we answer these in the document available here.

Project FAQs

Q: What is the aim of the project?

A: This project aims to support local communities to understand what changing wellbeing means for their community, and how to build a wellbeing focus into decision making processes in order to support and grow wellbeing in their community. The project will develop and test a suite of resources designed to:

  • Enable Australia’s rural leaders to better understand and monitor wellbeing in their communities, and
  • Build the capacity of community leaders to use and integrate this understanding of wellbeing into discussion and decision-making processes in their communities.

 Q: What are the main components of the project?

A; The project as a whole is developing three resources that will be able to be used by anyone with an interest in wellbeing in Australia:

  • Regional Wellbeing Monitoring Hub: An online resource to help people identify how to monitor wellbeing in their communities, making it easy to understand and use a wide range of indicators of wellbeing, and linking to available data sources.
  • Wellbeing Dashboard Toolkit: A toolkit that communities can use to build their own Wellbeing Dashboard, using indicators relevant to their community, with the Hub providing a range of resources they draw on as part of developing their individual Regional Wellbeing Dashboards.
  • Wellbeing Leadership Program: Development and demonstration of a program that can be delivered to rural leaders across Australia to build capacity to identify and act on wellbeing challenges and opportunities in their community.

Q: How long will the project run?

A: The project as a whole runs until 2026, with several milestones along the way including development and release of the Wellbeing Monitoring Hub, and release of three local wellbeing frameworks for our three case study communities.

Q: I can’t apply to be one of the three case studies – can I still be involved in the project?

A: Yes, you can. The project is developing resources that will be available publicly and designed to be used by any community interested in developing and using wellbeing frameworks. You can become part of our community of practice which will be invited to come together to share experiences, and test and review the resources being developed and suggest ideas for what needs to be included in them.

Q: What can the three case study communities expect to get from the project?

A: The project team will guide each of the three case study communities through a co-design process to identify what is important to each community’s wellbeing, how to measure those things through robust indicators, and how to collect and report data. Community leaders will also be able to apply to take part in a wellbeing leadership program run during the project, to build the capacity of local people to implement a wellbeing-focused approach to decision making and action

Participating communities will gain insight into how to better support local quality of life and long-term sustainability of your community. They will also have early access to the national Regional Wellbeing Monitoring Hub which is being developed as part of the project.

By participating, communities will not only better understand wellbeing strengths and challenges, but also contribute to helping make it possible for other communities across Australia to monitor their wellbeing. Those who take part will be at the forefront of the development of community-led wellbeing approaches, which are unique to their local place. Localising wellbeing measurement, reporting and action is a critical step: current wellbeing frameworks often focus on national or state-level measurements and do not provide the local insights needed by communities to invest in their future.

The project can contribute to enrichment (especially with measuring and monitoring) of Municipal Public Health and Wellbeing Plans. The project’s community-led process for developing the wellbeing framework and indicators aligns with the Victorian Government’s requirements for the Community Visions developed and maintained by Councils. Following the 2024 Council elections a reviewed Community Vision must be adopted by 31 October 2025, and this project can be used to support this requirement.

Q: Who’s funding the project?

A: The Gardiner Foundation  is funding this project. The Gardiner Foundation is a philanthropic organisation in Victoria which invests funds to maximise the benefits to all sectors of the Victorian dairy industry and Victorian dairy communities.

Q: Who is supporting the project?

A: The project was developed and is being supported by the Australian Rural Leadership Program graduates from Cohort 26, the University of Canberra and the University of Southern Queensland.

 

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