Anglicare North Coast has received national recognition for Excellence in the Anglicare Australia National Awards. This award recognises outstanding services, projects and programs provided by Anglicare organisations all over Australia. The recent development and creation of Empowering Practices received first place in the prestigious award.
Empowering Practices has been developed for organisations wanting to improve their practice when it comes to inclusion and diversity. Empowering Practices is an online toolkit for front line workers, members of the community, managers and tertiary students to learn and improve how we work together to develop empowering and social inclusive communities.
The resource was developed from the learnings and partnership with Louise Whitaker, Mandy Hughes and Barbara Rugendyke, Southern Cross University, following four years of academic research investigating empowerment and inclusion of women from migrant and refugee backgrounds who have settled in regional New South Wales.
We wanted to share our learnings beyond our local network, so Empowering Practices was designed as an online resource. Being a regional service provider, we know how difficult it can be to access affordable and relevant training. Having it packaged as an online learning tool makes it widely available to any worker in any context, said Leon Ankersmit CEO Anglicare North Coast. We are probably one of the smallest Anglicare organisations in Australia, so we are thrilled to receive this recognition.
The Empowering Practices material is evidence based and supported by relevant literature and grounded in the reflective practices of our teams of staff who examined their practices with researchers from Southern Cross University. The Empowering Practices content comes to life through the web-based delivery mode, making it accessible, interactive, audio-visual, and easily navigable.
The Empowering Practices online resource promotes the inclusion, safety and hence, well-being of vulnerable communities in rural and regional Australia. This national award demonstrates impact and success of the ANC and SCU partnership, said Louise Whitaker, PHD Senior Lecturer, Social Work Course Coordinator – Bachelor of Social Welfare, Bachelor of Community Welfare & Bachelor of Social Work.
Anglicare North Coast would like to extend their thanks to clients, program participants, staff and SCU researchers who contributed and brought this resource to life. Anglicare North Coast’s CEO reflected, it really has been a truly collaborative project with incredible results.
The Empowering Practices toolkit is a web-based toolkit that teaches practice principles to promote empowerment when working with diversity. The kit is available via www.anglicarenorthcoast.org.au