For 20 years, we have worked closely with the community to better understand their needs so we can improve health outcomes in Western Sydney. We recently ran the first of two Community Panels to find out what matters to Western Sydney people.
From Friday 25 to Sunday 27 August, 20 Western Sydney residents participated in the Western Sydney Culturally Diverse Community Panel. Over the course of the weekend, Panel Members enjoyed getting to know each other, heard from health experts about current issues in the community and worked together to come up with recommendations for how money for health should be spent.
What is a Community Panel?
A Community Panel is a way to directly involve community members in the decision-making process when addressing solutions to complex community challenges. A Community Panel is about local truth-telling, building connections, sharing knowledge, shifting and building power, and collaborating in a culturally safe way.
What did the Community Panel Achieve?
Western Sydney is a diverse and vibrant pocket of people who have a range of points of view. We acknowledge that decisions are better made when they are made by the people that they affect the most, which is why hearing directly from the community is so important.
On Tuesday 5 September, some of the initial learnings from the first community panel were shared at WEXPO panel event, ‘Community Leader’s Forum – Rise of Community Juries’. Ray Messom, CEO of WentWest, Dr Coralie Wales, Community Panel Facilitator, Les Fenech, Community Advisory, Maree Jennings, First Nations Community Panel Facilitator spoke about the success of the panels so far.
“When I think about the community that we all hold so dear, the 1.1 million people living and working in Western Sydney, more than 50% of those don’t speak English at home, and we’ve grappled with ‘how do we engage with that community?’. It’s impossible. But this is how we can do that. It gives us a tangible step – it starts with 20 people on a community panel, it moves to 100 people involved, and then in a few years’ time, we could be at tens of thousands of community health experts”, shared Ray Messom, CEO of WentWest.
Dr Coralie Wales, organiser of the community panels and facilitator for the first community panel expressed her thoughts, “In my experience, when you have a collective, it’s always more intelligent than more than one person. And I had never seen the elevation of ordinary people into the role of citizens as it truly means. To see people have the opportunity to rise to the occasion of being a citizen and to think about important health and social care issues for the social good is quite unusual.”
Facilitator for the First Nations panel, Maree Jennings, described the impact of providing community members with the information needed to inform their own health outcomes, “Seeing how people, given the opportunity to have information that consultants or government would have, and then making decisions about them and their community that was so powerful. I really hope that other decision makers take this on board because when you think about consultation it doesn’t always get to citizens, and in this model it does.” Les Fenech echoed similar thoughts, Consumers want to learn more and their interested in prevention. In many of our systems, we’re geared up to fix you up when you’re bad but the best thing is to lead a healthy life and not get so ill. Once people have an understanding of the system, their willingness to come out to engage, to share their ideas, and to debate ideas increases. And that’s the translation and the top of empowerment. You become your own destiny”.
Later this year, we will be sharing a final report of the findings from our culturally diverse and First Nations community panels. However, some of the key areas identified by community so far were the need to focus on community education and inter-generational connections, grow and support the health workforce development, increase team-based care, invest in prevention, and expand urgent care services.
Are You Keen to be Part of the Next Community Panel?
There is a second Community Panel for First Nations community members running from Friday 15 to Sunday 17 September. For more information and to register your interest in being a part of the Panel, view the Community Panels webpage.
This Panel will be facilitated by a local First Nations person. Registrations for the Western Sydney First Nations Community Panel close on Friday 8 September at 5pm.
7 September 2023