Chapter One: Understanding place-based approaches and how they evolve over time

Overview

What are place-based approaches?

In this guide, place-based approaches describe community-led initiatives that target the specific circumstances of a place.

Place

The term ‘place’ commonly refers to a specific geographic area where people live, learn, work and recreate. ‘Place’ in the context of place- based approaches has no universal definition. The key is that the definition used by any initiative is meaningful and resonates with the local community.

Place-based approaches

The term ‘place-based approaches’ describes a diverse range of activities that target a place or location, to build on local strengths or respond to a complex social problem.

While there is no agreed definition of a place-based approach, the following definitions outline the main characteristics:

“A collaborative, long-term approach to build thriving communities delivered in a defined geographic location. This approach is ideally characterised by partnering and shared design, shared stewardship, and shared accountability for outcomes and impacts.” (Dart, 2019).

“An approach that targets the specific circumstances of a place and engages local people as active participants in development and implementation, requiring government to share decision-making.” (Victorian Government, 2020).

Why are they important?

Place-based approaches are recognised across the world as an important platform to respond to complex social and economic challenges, including the impact of natural disasters and pandemics.

Beyond immediate crisis and recovery needs, Victorian government departments are increasingly adopting place-based approaches to help achieve their objectives, including:

implementing Recommendation 15 of the Royal Commission into Mental Health to establish place-based collectives in every local government area
the expansion of ‘Our Place’ sites by then Department of Education and Training in partnership with the Colman Foundation
establishing 20-minute Neighbourhoods as part of Plan Melbourne 2017-2050
the Suburban Revitalisation program in 47 locations across Melbourne, where government partners with community, local government and businesses to support communities to thrive economically and socially
continued support and advocacy for local place-based initiatives by Regional and Metropolitan Partnerships.

What do place-based approaches look like?

Place-based approaches are different from traditional, government-initiated programs or policy development processes. They go beyond service delivery to encompass social, economic and environmental governance and practice. Place-based approaches focus on building readiness and identifying shared desired outcomes to enable collaborative implementation (Victorian Government, 2020).

In contrast, ‘place-focused approaches’ (as defined in the Victorian Government’s A framework for place-based approaches) plan and adapt government services, programs and infrastructure to ensure they are meeting local needs. Government listens to community to adapt how business is done, but ultimately, has control over the objectives, scope and implementation.

Place-based approaches may be initiated by the community or by government; or even start out as a government-led, place-focused initiative and evolve to a more community-centred approach over time.

Place-based initiatives take a holistic approach, connecting existing government investment and services and building cross-sector collaborations that tackle the root causes of local challenges and build on opportunities. They can also build community resilience, trust, and cohesion, and empower communities through a sense of belonging, connection, and purpose.

Aboriginal communities have led the way in articulating and demonstrating the strength of community empowerment through self-determination. Place-based approaches share these same principles to provide impact to a broader range of vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.

Place-based approaches drive actions based on what local knowledge shows will make a real difference for the community. Because of this, no place-based initiative looks the same. Their strength lies in harnessing local community leadership, ideas and capacity to develop tailored and long-term solutions. Action might include coordinating and identifying gaps in local services, building grassroots social infrastructure and networks, or embedding policy changes in local institutions. Often a combination of strategies are used to address challenges and leverage opportunities for a local community.

Examples of place-based initiatives that have driven meaningful and outcomes and impact include:

The Geelong Project, which has supported at risk young students from becoming homeless, disengaging in their education and leaving school early through building a ‘community’ of schools and service providers. It coordinates an accessible, integrated suite of services that a single organisation or sector could not achieve alone.
Flemington Works which, as at June 2022, has supported 200 paid employment outcomes for 127 women and 73 young people residing at the Flemington Housing Estate, the establishment of 40 micro-enterprises in social change, hospitality and creative industries, and social procurement clauses being included in five Moonee Valley City Council labour force tenders.

Initiatives such as Go Goldfields in Victoria and Logan Together in Queensland are focused on creating a strong foundation for children, to give them the best chance in life. Logan Together has reduced smoking and overweight/obesity rates during pregnancy, improved newborn health, and increased the uptake of antenatal care. Since opening the ‘Village Connect’ maternity hub in Logan City in 2020, engagement has increased with over 85 per cent of mothers also participating in other activities offered, such as playgroups and gestational diabetes education sessions.

Place-based initiatives not only address the immediate and short-term needs of communities, but seek to breakdown structural barriers that trap communities in cycles of poverty and disadvantage.

Scotland’s New Deal for Communities Program and Victoria’s Neighbourhood Renewal Program (2001-2013) have helped address the inequality gap between communities by reducing unemployment, overall crime rates and feelings of social exclusion among residents in intervention locations.

When to use them?

A place-based initiative can be a powerful tool where an issue, problem or opportunity faced by a community:

is multifaceted and complex
cannot be addressed through services or infrastructure alone – existing government interventions have not had the desired impact
does not have a clear solution and needs local people and organisations to be actively involved to find and develop meaningful responses
requires a whole of government or cross-sectoral response
requires a long-term response.

It’s important to remember that place-based approaches are not suitable in all circumstances.

They should complement rather than replace traditional government services and infrastructure and local community action.

Refer to Chapter Two: Working with local communities and government agencies to learn more.

Collective Impact

The Collective Impact (CI) framework is a method of place-based working that takes a structured approach to collaboration to address social challenges. This approach leverages all the resources and assets in a community to achieve change. It puts communities and people with diverse lived experience at the heart of defining local problems, using their strengths, voices and perspectives to co-create local solutions.

CI is a key methodology used internationally to address complex problems at the local level and achieve sustainable change with communities. The Tamarack Institute, based in Canada has identified that the approach is effective where complex disadvantage is experienced by a community and there is high community capacity and readiness to address the disadvantage.

An influential 2011 paper in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, outlined five core elements of the CI framework (Kania and Kramer, 2011):

common agenda – defined by all partners
shared measurement – with a focus on accountability and ongoing learning to support adaptative ways of working
mutually reinforcing activities – leveraging resources across all partners to achieve shared priorities and achieving the best possible impact from available investment
continuous communication and engagement – across partners to enable effective collaborative working, as well as engaging broadly and in an ongoing way, including with those with lived experience
independent backbone structure – to facilitate and mobilise the collective effort. There is more on backbone organisations further in this section.

Since then, there have been further iterations of the CI framework, including the development of principles and phases of work, and a stronger recognition of the central importance of addressing equity. In 2021, the Stanford Social Innovation Review published a series of articles looking at the 10 years of the Collective Impact framework. The series was sponsored by the Collective Impact Forum, a program of FSG and the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions, and documented the thinking as to how local practice has evolved as communities responded to their local context.

A range of articles have been published that reflect on the evolution of the CI framework, including Power and Collective Impact in Australia (Graham, Skelton and Paulson, 2021). It talks to how collective impact work has evolved in Australia, including how initiatives have adjusted the approach to address Australia’s community context, culture, and history.

The Collective Impact 3.0 paper (Cabaj and Weaver, 2016) was a significant evolution of the CI framework. It included a broader focus on measurement, evaluation and learning (MEL) and a more explicit focus on the importance of inclusive community engagement.

Role of government in collective impact efforts to achieve social change

Government can play a supportive and enabling role within each of the elements and phases of the CI framework. This can include the provision of funding and working internally across portfolios to bring a more ‘joined-up’ approach to engagement at the local level.

In Victoria, government funding has been provided to support the backbone functions of local place-based initiatives – for example, Go Goldfields, Beyond the Bell and the Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project, as well as working internally to support local collaborative efforts.

Backbone organisations

Supporting ‘backbone’ organisations help to ensure that place-based initiatives can achieve their objectives.

The functions of a backbone need to be flexible and will evolve over time in response to the context and collaborative effort.

Key functions include:

guiding vision and strategy
facilitating collaboration across partners
coordinating key actions and priorities
managing shared measurement and learning practices to track progress and impacts
enabling broad, inclusive engagement across the community, including those with lived experience
mobilising resources to support the sustainability of the initiative.

Backbone functions can be held by a stand-alone organisation or distributed across local partners (with dedicated roles identified) depending on the size, scope and context of the Collective Impact effort. The Tamarak Institute has a great resource about different approaches to backbone structures.

You can find a further range of resources to better understand how to establish and support effective backbones by visiting the Collective Impact Forum and the Tamarack Institute.

How they work

The importance of government and community partnership

An innovative approach

Government is traditionally the largest service provider in communities, such as through schools, health, police and human services, and the largest funder of other service providers. This policy and funding dominance creates power imbalances. In addition, all levels of government often engage with local communities in ways that are disconnected and fragmented.

Place-based approaches provide a crucial platform for a more equal power relationship between governments and communities. Government must take the role of partner and enabler and genuinely share decision-making to define the outcomes that matter locally and the best ways to achieve them.

In placed-based approaches, governments go further than listening to or consulting with communities – they must actively support and enable local people and organisations to be involved in the decision making for their communities (Graham, Skelton, and Paulson, 2021).

This approach can challenge government systems, culture and staff. Traditional programmatic ways of working generally have more rigid accountability structures and contracts that can unintentionally undermine collaborative relationships and lead stakeholders to compete.

Effective place-based approaches challenge prescriptive and centralised processes by facilitating a more enabling and flexible operating environment where government agencies and staff work collaboratively with communities and across programs and portfolios.

A new type of role for government

Government needs to work differently to realise the full potential of place-based approaches.

While each place-based initiative is unique in terms of place, design and objectives, they often require similar capabilities from governments.

Government agencies will not always be the ‘drivers’; but instead, will enable and support local community action, which includes removing barriers that are sometimes created by government itself. Government agencies and staff need to relinquish some control and accept a level of uncertainty around priorities and implementation. They must work with community partners to provide:

flexibility, so local partners can tailor their actions to what has the most impact on their community
commitment, so community partners and government agencies have stability as they work over the long term (often 10 years or more) to tackle complex, multi-faceted issues
trust, to support innovation and an environment where it’s safe to fail and learn.

The specific role (or roles) of government in a place-based initiative may evolve over time as the needs and preferences of the local community change, and at different stages of development and implementation.

Building the case for place-based work in the VPS

As place-based approaches can challenge traditional government ways of working, at times your role might be about building a coalition of support within government or securing authorisation to work in a non-traditional, more collaborative way to support a place-based initiative. It is important to:

engage with leaders across government who will champion the work at the executive level
design governance structures that enable the work
build and maintain networks with staff across government who can advise, support, and authorise work
utilise effective mechanisms to track impacts being achieved.

Building the case for place-based approaches within government often needs an assurance that a place-based initiative is robust and effective in its approach, and capable of achieving real change for community. Pointing to the evidence underpinning an initiative’s approach and supporting and promoting approaches that align with the evidence and best practice – as set out in this guide – is an important part of this process.

Key stages of development and implementation

There are some common stages typically involved in developing and implementing place-based initiatives. It is important to remember that many place-based initiatives are initiated by community players at the grass roots and government may not be involved at all in the early stages, but asked to provide support over time. Equally, the role of government will vary at any given stage according to the changing needs and priorities of the place-based initiative.

An overview of the common stages of a place-based approach is provided below. These stages are interlinked, rarely linear and there will often be a need or desire to loop back through one or two of the stages before moving to the next. It also provides an overview of the potential role of government at each stage. Government’s role is always to work in partnership as supporter and enabler with the community, rather than to take the lead.

A place-based initiative is a long-term undertaking and the steps that take place before on-the-ground action are critical to success. Some practice leading place-based initiatives spend up to 18 months in the first two stages.

Common stages of a place-based approach

1. Identify if a place-based approach is beneficial

Approach:

Work with local community stakeholders and use in-depth local knowledge to assess if a place-based approach is an appropriate response to local opportunities or challenges.