The Greater Shepparton Healthy Child Co-Design project is well and truly underway, and we are thrilled with its progress to date that is exceeding our expectations.
The Greater Shepparton Healthy Child Co-Design project was established earlier this year to explore ways we can better connect our multi-cultural communities to our maternal and child health system. Specifically, we are engaging with local parents and caregivers from both the Afghan and Congolese communities via our co-design advisory committee.
Maternal Child Health (MCH) appointments are the first point of contact our community has with the health care system following the birth of a child and after leaving the hospital. The ten age and stage visits present a wonderful opportunity to build connection with families, support mothers and their babies meet critical milestones and provide support for families.
The fourth and final advisory committee sessions have been held, with women from both our local Congolese and Afghan communities. These sessions have provided a safe and inclusive environment for the women to come together and discuss some of the barriers and challenges they experience when accessing our local Maternal and Child Health services. The sessions have all been held at African House and have been a beautiful mix of women, their children, delicious food and rich storytelling.
In our most recent session, we were grateful to have three local Greater Shepparton City Council MCH nurses attend the session and provide their in-depth knowledge and answers to the women's questions. Each of the nurses commented how much they had learnt from the women. Understanding a person’s intricate culture and hearing their perspectives is such a powerful tool. These conversations will go a long way in assisting their work moving forward. This is one of the main strengths of a co-design project, it brings professional and lived experience together and learning together produces stronger solutions, that consider different needs and perspectives.
We now turn our focus to the fourth and final community session, later in November, again at African House. This will be our final co-design session and we will go deeply into what the outcomes and solutions may look like. Our Afghan and Congolese women will again, come together with our local MCH nurses and as a group, will discuss what possible changes could occur to ensure that our richly diverse community of women, can easily access local MCH services. Together, we will put forward strong suggestions to help shape the system for the better.
We are grateful and very appreciative of our local co-design partners who have been on this journey with us and have supported every step of the way - Greater Shepparton City Council, GV Health and the GV Public Health Unit.
Additionally, we are thankful for the financial support for this project from the Pratt Foundation, Besen Foundation and Impact Philanthropy.
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