ACQ Vol 13 no 3 2011

Moving forward in partnership The partnership’s first step was to develop a joint vision and objectives. The shared vision became: “all children have the right to be healthy and engage in learning environments”. This goal aligns with the Commonwealth’s vision that “by 2020 all children will have the best start in life to create a better future for themselves and the nation” (COAG, 2009). The partnership agreed that their key objective was to empower Undoonoo Day Care centre staff to (a) know about OM, its causes and consequences; (b) identify OM in the children and refer to an appropriate service; and (c) use key strategies to support the language development of the children (i.e., get down and close, engage with interest, talk to the children about what they are doing). An additional objective was to develop community-owned and community-specific resources to promote ear health to the wider community. Strategies, activities, and actions to progress these goals were also identified through a process of consultation within the partnership. The focus was to meet the needs of the childcare director and the training requirements of the staff to support them to complete their childhood services studies. Specific activities included: • Deadly Ears staff delivered a series of video- teleconferences (VTC) to rural and remote support TAFE teachers around the state on OM, the impact of OM, and strategies to facilitate learning with a conductive hearing loss. This was a train-the-trainer model of delivery to support rural and remote support teachers to embed OM into the delivery of their curriculum to their students; • collaboration for the delivery of training in Certificate IV Training and Assessment for the directors of Indigenous day cares across the state to include the development of a module on language stimulation and a module on OM; • collaboration on training of day care staff on health and hygiene curricula, including strategies to reduce cross infections; • imbedding nose blowing and hand washing into transitions with the children have been included into professional conversations, presentations, and assessment for childhood services students. The partnership ensured that all training delivered aligned to the needs of the community and that all follow-up, regardless of the service, contained consistent information and messages. Evaluation of the partnership Six months following initial implementation, preliminary evaluation was done to determine how effective the partnership had been, whether it was useful for all involved, and if it represented a model to move forward with in the future, both in Woorabinda and in other Indigenous communities. This was done through Deadly Ears allied health staff seeking verbal feedback from representatives of Undoonoo Day Care and the CSSP, and Undoonoo’s director seeking feedback from day care centre staff. The information gained from these conversations was recorded and then reviewed to gain a sense of perceived benefits of the partnership to service providers and the community, positive behaviour changes within the childcare setting, and areas where the functioning of the partnership could be improved. In addition to this, the Partnership Analysis Tool (VicHealth, 2004) was used to gain a measure of the

strength of the partnership itself that could subsequently be used to monitor its ongoing effectiveness. The Continuum of Partnerships and The Checklist components of the Partnerships Analysis Tool were completed by each member of the partnership separately and collated to gain this measure. Although limited by the small number of stakeholders in the partnership, the outcomes gained according to the Partnerships Analysis Tool suggested that in the initial six months the partnership had evolved from each of the three groups working in “Isolation” to working in “Cooperation/ Collaboration” on the Partnership Continuum. Undoonoo characterised the partnership more as “Cooperating” on the continuum which likely reflects the fact that CSSP and Deadly Ears are more aligned in their service delivery obligations, and therefore it is perhaps more appropriate for these services to be “Collaborating”. Hence both Deadly Ears and CSSP characterised the partnership as being a long-term collaboration which includes shared planning, joint responsibility, and equal commitment for goal attainment. Undoonoo characterised the partnership as involving more of an exchange of information, altering activities, and sharing resources. However, a high level of trust and power sharing based on knowledge and expertise was also indicated across the three groups. The positive status of the partnership also appeared to be supported by the verbal feedback gained from the three service provider representatives and the day-care centre staff. As mentioned previously, the feedback addressed three areas: perceived benefits of the partnership to service providers and the community; positive behaviour changes within the childcare setting; and areas where the functioning of the partnership could be improved. Perceived benefits of the partnership Intersectoral sharing of knowledge, skills, and resources with regards to children’s services curriculum, policy, training methods, and OM and language strategies was identified as a key benefit of the partnership. This was felt to then enable a collaborative and consistent approach to the delivery of training to early childhood education and care professionals about OM and language stimulation strategies. These benefits were also reported by Undoonoo staff (i.e. “I can see that you are working in partnership and it’s benefiting us”), and in particular reduced overlap and repetition of information to staff and of more positive approaches to staff learning and development. Additional benefits for Deadly Ears and CSSP members of the partnership included cooperation and consultation across both services for policy planning and future service development, and development of a strategy to implement a leadership model across a wide range of Indigenous communities. Benefits to the Woorabinda community were also identified via feedback from the Undoonoo staff. They reported that ear health promotion messages spread not only to children and staff in the childcare but further into the wider community (i.e. “we are able to get the information on ears out into the community”). This was then felt to result in increased health awareness and action in the community: “More awareness in the community of children’s needs, especially their ears and speech. Parents are asking more questions where before they were too shame to ask or didn’t know what to ask”.

142

ACQ Volume 13, Number 3 2011

ACQ uiring Knowledge in Speech, Language and Hearing