Study shows importance of early literacy to later performance

As debate grows over how to fund the Federal Government's Gonski education reforms, early childhood specialists are warning that some children will suffer lifelong illiteracy without adequate early intervention.

Read more: Study shows importance of early literacy to later performance

Who are the Citizen Champions for Health?

"In a still small but growing section of the health world we are increasingly familiar with the idea of ‘community health champions’....

‘Community Health champions are people who, with training and support, voluntarily bring their ability to relate to people and their own life experience to transform health and well-being in their communities. Within their families, communities and workplaces they empower and motivate people to get involved in healthy social activities, create groups to meet local needs and sign post people to relevant support and services."

Read more on Mark Gamsu's blog: Local Democracy and Health

Who is hard to reach and why?

"....... ‘hard to reach’ is a term sometimes used to describe those sections of the community that are difficult to involve in public participation. It is useful to take a step back and look at the usage of the term in the literature more generally....... 

....... The problem with using the term ‘hard to reach’ is that implies a homogeneity within distinct groups, which does not necessarily exist. Thereby ‘it defines the problem as one within the group itself, not within your approach to them’ (Smith 2006) ....... 

....... Hard to reach is often used in the context of social marketing (Beder 1980). The aim of many social marketing initiatives, especially in the field of health, is to affect change in behaviour using marketing tools and techniques adopted from the private sector (Walsh et al. 1993). Social marketing is a consumer focused approach that believes nobody is impossible to reach; it just depends on the approach taken. Paul Vittles commented that ‘no-one is hard to reach, just more expensive to reach. It is important to put more effort and creativity in reaching these groups’ (Wilson 2001: 1)....... 

....... it is not surprising that hard to reach is a  potentially stigmatising terminology. Freimuth and Mettger (1990: 323) offer an illustrative summary of prejudices: ‘Hard-to-reach audiences have been called obstinate, recalcitrant, chronically uninformed, disadvantaged, have-not, illiterate, malfunctional, and information poor’....... "

Read this article here: Who is hard to reach and why?

Mercury Article - Liberal dose of humanity vital

"It is troubling that in a liberal democratic society like Tasmania politicians and some in the broader community think that so-called social policy should be relegated behind economic issues...."

Read this article by Greg Barns in today's Mercury at Liberal dose of humanity vital

SDoHAN has a blog

SDoHAN has a blog! I’m aware that many people want to ‘network’ and discuss issues. To try and facilitate this I have set up a blog and I’m hoping this will help, at least a little. I toyed with the idea of Facebook but realise that not everyone is keen on FB. So I hope the blog is a good idea. I think you can ‘follow’ it so that you get updates when people post. I welcome your feedback. I welcome the input of more social media savvy people than me too! I realise that there is always more that could and should be done but please bear with me while I sort through some ‘organisation’ issues and please know that this work is largely voluntary on my part.

Did you attend a workshop on the Government’s Framework for Community Engagement 

http://www.dpac.tas.gov.au/divisions/cdd/grants_and_community_engagement/a_tasmanian_government_framework_for_community_engagement

What did you think? Care to share your thoughts on the blog?

There appeared to be some notable deficiencies in the document discussed. I would urge Tasmanians to make comment on the proposed Framework.