Connecting the Dots – a VicHealth Local Government Partnership

Community and system thinking workshop process impacts

There were adaptations made to the systems thinking workshop process to better suit the needs and contexts of the councils and their participating communities. Of the 47 systems thinking workshops delivered by CtD councils, 41 were adapted prior to delivery. These adaptations included workshop format changes, total number of workshops in the series, engagement methods and workshop process changes. In 17 instances, councils modified one or more of the constituent activities that made up the systems thinking workshop session (i.e., modifying a given activities verbal instructions to cater for children and young people participating in a session). There were 4 instances where systems thinking workshops were adapted to include content related to another VLGP foundation module i.e., Kids Codesigning Healthy Places, to maximise and strengthen session outcomes during the limited time they had to engage with participants.

Councils provided the CtD team with reflections on the events and circumstances that prompted the observed process adaptations. The most commonly referenced stimuli for adaptation across all systems thinking workshop sessions were the COVID-19 pandemic and meeting specific requirements of the participant groups engaged in these systems thinking workshops (including where changes were made to ensure age appropriateness and workshop activities accessibility).

Deakin were able to develop a converged systems map of the most important drivers of children and young people’s health and wellbeing among the 13 communities. On completion of the systems thinking workshops, all CtD councils had developed their own systems map describing the locally relevant drivers of healthy eating, physical activity, and mental wellbeing for children and young people in their community. To summarise the systems maps across the CtD councils, a network analysis approach was used to aggregate and synthesise the communities’ individual maps content. The analysis created a converged systems map (see below) of 23 variables that were of particular importance as the highest-ranked causes or receivers of influence, based on how the communities had incorporated them into their systems map structure.

Converged systems map representing the 23 most important drivers of children and young people’s health and wellbeing among the 13 CtD communities.

The variables with the highest overall importance (i.e., variables that had a strong combined cause and receive score) were ‘mental health’ and ‘social connection and support’. The highest causes of influencers of the children and young people’s health and wellbeing system were ‘access to transport’ and ‘financial security’. The variables that appeared most commonly across all 13 systems maps were ‘social connection and support’ and ‘sport and recreation’, with both appearing on 12 out of the 13 maps.

The following councils participated in CtD (shown also in the figure below): 

• Buloke Shire Council 
• Central Goldfields Shire Council 
• Colac Otway Shire Council 
• Southern Grampians Shire Council 
• Glenelg Shire Council 
• Northern Grampians Shire Council 
• Mildura Rural City Council 
• Melton City Council 
• East Gippsland Shire Council 
• City of Greater Dandenong 
• City of Greater Bendigo 
• Hume City Council 
• Greater Shepparton City Council