Developing a plan for families: listening to the community

The consultation paper asked a series of open-ended questions about

• what strengthened families,
• what strengthened families’ links with communities, and
• what government and business could do to be more family friendly.

The consultation paper was distributed widely to families, as well as to government and community organisations and can be viewed from the FamilyOne website.

Western Australia – a Profile

Nearly three quarters of WA’s 1.8 million population live in Perth. There are 628,000 WA households and 446 000 families, 284 000 of which include children. Three per cent of WA’s population identify themselves as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Most ATSI families comprise a couple with children under 15, and nearly a third of WA’s children have at least one parent born overseas. Only nine Statistical Local Areas outside Perth have populations greater than 10 000 and their distances from Perth range from 74 km (Mandurah) to 2 200 km (Broome).

An accessible consultation process would clearly involve much travel!

The Consultation Process

It was expected that many government and peak organisations would want to make submissions to the consultation. However, the consultation was essentially a process to hear directly from family members, rather than hear their voices filtered through the agencies and organisations with which they have contact. By listening directly, the FCPO also expected to hear from families from a somewhat wider range of backgrounds.

The first challenge was to engage as many families as possible, both by informing them about the consultation process and at the same time sending a message about the importance of families.

People could hear about the consultation in a range of ways:

• A pamphlet outlining the purpose and processes of the consultation was delivered to almost every household in Western Australia.
• Hundreds of government, local government and community organisations received information packages, and many of these were followed up by telephone.
• Posters were displayed in community venues.
• Media releases targeted community newspapers and sometimes led to feature stories.
• Radio advertisements and unpaid publicity interviews were broadcast over local and regional radio stations.

To ensure as inclusive a process as possible many alternative ways of participating were offered.