Flourish Australia’s Social Citizenship Framework is a strategic framework for supporting people with lived experience of mental health challenges on their journey of recovery, while helping them to cultivate and claim their Social Citizenship.
It will serve as a practical guide and public commitment to helping us achieve our organisational vision: “Creating communities where everyone's mental health and wellbeing flourishes”.
The document, which was developed through a co-design process involving multiple stakeholders and community representatives, will guide our work, and spell out the accountabilities and vital behaviours for our workforce to use. Enacting it will break down barriers and build bridges to the community with and for people with lived experience.
Once implemented, the Social Citizenship Framework will support people to:
- live the lives they want to lead full of hope, choices, meaning and contribution
- feel valued, connected, and experience a sense of belonging
- be supported to meet peoples own needs and their responsibilities to their families, friends, neighbours and communities.
What is social citizenship?
Social citizenship builds on human rights. It is realised when a person participates in, contributes to and feels included in their chosen communities. It cultivates equitable opportunity, social, emotional, cultural and spiritual wellbeing and celebrates difference and diversity. It recognises, promotes and upholds the rights and responsibilities that come with being a full member of their society.
At Flourish, we understand social citizenship as the responsibility of all stakeholders to work together to open up equitable opportunities for people to live contributing lives in their community, as part of family, friendships, with kin and in workplaces, learning environments, social clubs and neighbourhoods at all stages of their recovery journey.
What needs to change, and for whom
The Social Citizenship Framework provides strategies for Flourish Australia to successfully incorporate social citizenship within the organisation and effectively influence communities and other services.
To achieve what is required a commitment to change is required from everyone at Flourish Australia, people accessing services, families and carers and community partners. This will include:
- extending our recovery approach to include additional domains of support in rights and responsibilities
- Learning, demonstrating and reporting on the Three Social Citizenship Vital Behaviours: holding Social Citizenship conversations, exploring limiting beliefs, and supporting people to belong in their chosen communities.
- Implementing new Organisational Accountabilities that will operate across the organisation and be reflected in position descriptions and performance management
- Developing a new performance matrix measuring our results against our Results Statement - for people accessing our services, for our workforce and for leaders implementing this Framework.
Implementing the Social Citizenship Framework
Flourish has developed an Implementation Plan to put the Social Citizenship Framework into effect across the organisation. The plan outlines the leadership, organisational and staff commitment, infrastructure and support required to effectively embed the framework into our work.
Over a three-year staged implementation period, we will measure our effort and track progress against our Social Citizenship Results Statements. While different parts of the organisation will move at different paces, it is expected that all Flourish Australia services will be working explicitly in the Social Citizenship ethos by year three of the implementation plan.
More information
To find out more, read our full Social Citizenship Framework document here. This document includes:
- A comprehensive definition of Social Citizenship, and why it is important to Flourish.
- Background on the co-design of the framework and the stakeholders involved.
- Information about our Seven Organisation Accountabilities.
- Information about the Social Citizenship Vital Behaviours.
- The full implementation framework and plan.
- Internal performance measures we will use to track progress.
About Flourish
Flourish Australia is community mental health service and registered NDIS provider that specialises in providing tailored peer-led support. This includes assistance with day-to-day living, employment, housing and more. To find out more about how we can help, contact us on 1300 779 270 or here.
Talk to us today
For more information, contact us on 1300 779 270 or make an enquiry now.