This page will act as a newsfeed for the Cairns and Hinterland Suicide Prevention Community Action Plan Project. It will be regularly updated with upcoming activities, insights, resources and ongoing outcomes as we undertake project activities. We have designed this page to inform people who are interested in this project and its relevant subject matter.

As part of the Cairns and Hinterland Suicide Prevention Community Action Plan (SP-CAP), the Beacon Strategies team are engaging local stakeholders throughout its development. To begin the local engagements, Elliot and Sarah made a trip to Cairns at the end of 2020 to meet with key stakeholders to develop this locally specific SP-CAP.

Given the serious nature of the pandemic itself and also due to the project requiring extensive stakeholder and community engagement, the decision was made to put a hold on this project for 6 months in April 2020. The recommencement of the project was then reviewed in September of 2020 where the decision was made that it was appropriate to re-engage the project and its relevant stakeholders.

Over here at Beacon Strategies we have been been through lots of internal changes during the pandemic that we haven't had a chance to keep you updated. Not only that, we have been extremely busy on the project front and are always thinking of ways we can deliver more value to our partner organisations.

The aim of Changemakers Spotlight is to develop and share insight that showcases ‘how’ great things happen and profile some of the people leading change across the health and social services sector. In this edition we’d like to introduce Paul Martin - Executive Manager (Mental Health, Alcohol and Other Drugs) at Brisbane North PHN.

Community action plans are akin to road maps for implementing community-led change. They identify what will be done, who will do it and how it will be done. They describe exactly what a community wants to accomplish, how it will do so and the resources needed to be successful. They become a framework for implementing topic specific activities within a community, all of which are community-owned.

The Beacon Strategies team (Rebecca Patterson and Mitchell Stalker) took a brief three day site visit to Cairns (Tuesday 22nd of January - Thursday 24th of January) to formally commence the the development of a suicide prevention community action plan for the region (on behalf of Northern Queensland PHN).

Primary Health Networks (PHN) and Local Health Districts (LHD)/Hospitals and Health Services (HHS) play a key role in identifying mothers and children who need specialised support and referring them onward to evidence based support programs. Strong and’ a timely impetus to buddy up and flesh out what a ‘good’ maternal and child health system could look like.

The Buurtzorg Model has transformed community-based aged nursing in the Netherlands, at scale, to keep older adults healthy and out of hospital. But can the Buurtzorg Model be translated to the Australian context? Is it possible to reverse or better leverage the trend of an increasingly non-clinical in-home aged care workforce? How do we shift from delivering aged care services transactionally to relationally?