TACSI - What's happening

One is not born, but rather becomes, a parent

Doris Cholet — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:40:21 +1000

Hi! I’m Doris, from France. I have been an intern at Family by Family for three months. I have found it much more confronting than the two other internships that I have done before in France and in Morocco. I have learnt very much and have changed my mindsets. This blog is about how Family by Family made me realise how someone can try hard to be a good parent but not achieve this because of their circumstances.

I don’t know where this weird idea came into my mind from but before my internship at Family by Family, I thought that parents who behaved inappropriately with their kids were “bad people” who didn’t like their kids, and above all didn’t even try to be “good parents”. When I saw someone slap their kids for nothing, say mean things to them or put a “dog harness” around their kids’ neck, I couldn’t stand it. Although I thought I was empathetic, including having studied social work, I couldn’t help judging those parents. I am now quite ashamed to confess that the only thing I thought was that they were bad parents, they were destroying their kids’ lives and the best thing that I could hope is that they had their children removed.

It is true that parents experiencing tough times don’t provide their kids with the best environment ever. However, after absorbing people’s personal and family stories, I have figured out that there is always an explanation for people’s behaviour with their kids, either past or current. I have learnt that there are usually two elements that can prevent someone from looking after their kids as well as they would like. Either their current stressful situation or the way they were parented, often it is both.

First of all, living in a stressful situation makes it harder to look after your kids. Before this internship, I knew that the environment in which someone lives impacts on their way to parent their kids of course. However, I didn’t realise the extent of it. I was not aware of the amount of deterrents that living in a stressful situation generates. Tough times put parents in a situation of multiple incapacities where daily life things, that can appear as easy for other people, become unreachable because of time, stress, money, energy or patience. Unless you have experienced this first hand, it is hard to guess. I have come across plenty of family situations and have asked myself multiple questions. If I were a single Mum, would I take time to play with my child when I come back exhausted from my third part-time job? If I were depressed, would I be able to think about how my kids can get more positive stuff in their lives? As someone on a tight budget, would I make eating dinner together a priority if I relied on community services to feed my kids? Probably not. I just wouldn’t have the possibility, the energy or the patience to do so. Yet, it’s what is crucial as a family. When families experience tough times, they are actually too busy with matters that stress them out to be able to care for their kids as they would like.

The second thing that I have learnt is that not having been raised with positive routines can prevent someone from setting them up for their own family. In fact, struggling parents usually don’t realise how important settled routines are for making a happy family. Parents experiencing hardship in raising their kids actually often didn’t have settled routines when they were kids themselves. Then, basic little things that I think of as normal, like having dinner together, taking time to show interest in your kid, playing with them, reading them a bedtime story are not something natural for them. Additionally, realising how important routines are is not enough. One thing that has really struck me is how some people are really willing to be good parents but just don’t know how. For instance, one of our seeking family’s goal is to work on kids’ behaviour, notably through finding new ways to communicate within their own family. This single Mum attended heaps of parenting classes and is obviously trying her hardest to set up good routines. At night, she gets her kids to sit around the table for dinner, as what professionals and social workers advised her to do. Yet, she is unable to connect with her kids: her family don’t know what to talk about because they haven’t been taught how to do so.

My experience at Family by Family has allowed me to have a deeper look at the struggling families’ daily life. It has entailed a big change in my mindsets, one that I am really happy to have made. I have met several parents who do love their kids and want to be good carers but just do not know how. Then, being a good parent is not only a love or a will matter. Parenting is not always that natural. One needs to have been shown how to set up good routines and behaviours either by their own parents or by an organisation which can provide them with a bit of support, like Family by Family. Similar to what Simone de Beauvoir said, one is not born, but rather becomes, a parent.

We've moved!

Christian-Paul Stenta — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:00:00 +1000

After months of planning and negotiating, we're pleased to announce that we've packed our bags and moved east! Monday, 12th May 2012 marks a key milestone as we open shop in the new TACSI HQ at:

Level 1,
279 Flinders Street
ADELAIDE SA 5000

Our new telephone number is +61 8 7325 4999.

The new TACSI HQ includes a range of exciting features including offices, a design studio, meeting rooms, a dedicated events space, a co-working facility and more!

The events space will be available for hire from June 2012, and can accommodate up to 80 people. Enquiries can be made by emailing info@tacsi.org.au

Keep an eye on the website for photos and information on the all important office-warming party!

TACSI HQ / Level 1, 279 Flinders Street Adelaide SA 5000

5th Annual SIX Summer School in Adelaide - Save the Date!

Christian-Paul Stenta — Wed, 02 May 2012 20:40:00 +1000

The field of social innovation is rapidly expanding - and the Social Innovation Exchange (SIX) is keeping pace and becoming ever more global. This year, TACSI is very excited to be partnering with SIX to host the 5th annual global gathering in Adelaide.

This year’s Summer School will shine a light on growing pains. How are we growing and sustaining our innovations...our organisations...and the social innovation field?

We’re interested in exploring the SIX community's collective wisdom around issues of finance, talent, methods and partnerships to name a few, so pack your ideas, stories and practical examples!

As with other SIX events, the Summer School will bring together a unique mix of inspiring people from all over the world and from a wide range of sectors. Policy makers will join with leading thinkers, practitioners, academics and funders of social innovation.

We look forward to seeing many of you again, and meeting many of you for the first time in Adelaide.

SAVE THE DATE

5th Annual SIX Summer School

26-28th November 2012

Adelaide, Australia

Social innovation and event planning?

Sarah — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:52:00 +1000

Some weeks, you put the intellectual part of your brain to use. Other weeks, you put the practical part of your brain to use. This week was all about the practical: organising a free family festival this Sunday from 12-3pm in the Rajah Street Reserve, Marion.

I scoured the yellow pages to find experts who could teach cupcake decorating, kite making, cartoon drawing, and coffee making. I taped posters to trees and handed out flyers at schools, cafes, gyms, libraries, laundry mats, corner stores, supermarkets, and health clinics. Carolyn visited nearly every Salvos for spoons and forks to bash together wind chimes, bought tents and blackboard paint at the hardware store, and found a masseuse. Chris hunched over the computer designing festival programmes, brochures, activities, and materials. Had we written our team job spec this week, it would have said 'marketing' 'outreach' 'mobilisation' 'event planning' and 'logistics management.' I worried Carolyn, coming from a high-pressured social work position, would feel this was all a bit beneath her: so banal compared to the everyday urgency of keeping families intact.

So where's the social innovation?

The family festival isn't the innovation. But learning what attracts and how to engage families is critical for finding the innovation. Our ethnographic work has showed us how challenging it is for families to create the time and space for learning, discovering, and trying out new things together. By putting on a festival, we hope to open up that time and space and start a conversation about how we might enable this on a more day-to-day basis.

At the festival, we'll have an ideas tent where families can bid for $100 to 'boost' their family. It's grant-making at a family level. We hope to get a sense of what families want to do, and what they see as being good for their family. Past projects have taught has how valuable it is to identify the upper bounds of people's thinking and experience: what do families think is possible? How can we then broaden their sense of possibility? All of us can only aspire to the things that we know exist.

This is also true of professionals and academics. For an hour on Monday, I tried to switch on the intellectual part of my brain. We met with folks from the University of South Australia for a chat about how to build the capacity of social work, psychology, design, public policy, and anthropology students and faculty to work in a ground-up, experimental, and interdisciplinary way. First step: introducing students and faculty to moving beyond the labels, categories and silos that define disciplines. We're wanting to find those people in academic institutions who are willing to blur boundaries and redefine what they do by the problems they jointly help to solve.

We're finding solving problems is all about going back to basics: to person-to-person interaction. Not person to researcher or person to professional. Sometimes that leads us to pin posters to a tree and cold call businesses from the yellow pages just to create an opportunity for that interaction and a chance to change how we think about the solutions to big social challenges.

NEW REPORT: Family by Family Playford Scoping & Start Up Report April 2012

Christian-Paul Stenta — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:00:00 +1000

Two years of work with over 100 families in the City of Marion, South Australia, tells us that Family by Family is a promising practice. A practice that fills a real need. A practice that engages families who don't typically sign up to anything. A practice that enables families to lead change.

Too many promising practices never spread. Those that do spread are too often ineffective. Practice is picked up with the best of intentions and imposed on a new area, without first understanding what it would take to work in that particular area.

We believe that simply transferring the Family by Family model from the south of Adelaide to the north would not have worked.

Funding from Playford's Communities for Children Plus and Playford Alive not only gives us a chance to adapt the Family by Family model to Playford, but it has also enabled us to develop a methodology to spread Family by Family to communities across Australia.

That methodology starts with what we call scoping. Scoping doesn't aim to re-invent the model in each new area, but to reshape it so that Family by Family is a truly local network of families helping families move towards thriving.

Understanding local families is the first stage of scoping. Over the past 3 months we've run 5 pop up stalls, met over 100 families in Playford, and hung out with 15 of those families in their homes and in the community.

This report is the story of the families we've met, what we've learned from them and how we're adapting the Family by Family model to fit Playford.

It's also the story of what we've learned about scoping, and how we'll be refining our approach to scoping next time around.

A copy of this report is available to download from our Publications page.

Invitation: Blue Sky Session with Alastair Wilson of the School for Social Entrepreneurs (UK)

Sarah Stokely — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 11:00:00 +1100

From little things, big things grow - but HOW?

In TACSI's second Blue Sky Session for 2011, we invite you to join us for a discussion with Alastair Wilson, Chief Executive of the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) in the UK. The topic for discussion is: How can we support great ideas or fledgling social entrepreneurs? How do we GROW, FUND and SCALE small ideas into successful social innovations and enterprise?
Alastair will talk about stewarding SSE as a social enterprise, its experience with social franchising as a business model, and kick off a wider discussion about building successful social innovations and enterprise here in Adelaide and across Australia. He is keen to share lessons learned and start a useful discussion which will hopefully give participants some new ideas for their own projects.

Weather permitting, we will adjourn to our lovely Torrens Building Courtyard for the discussion and networking afterwards.

Please note that this event is wheelchair accessible via elevator.

About Alastair Wilson

Alastair Wilson is Chief Executive of the School of Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) in the United Kingdom. Over the past 12 years, Alastair has been a leader in the development of the UK social entrepreneurship and social innovation sector including the establishment of the UK Office of the Third Sector. He has also been the driving force together with organisations such as UnLtd and Ashoka to launch the Social Entrepreneurs Manifesto to advocate on behalf of those that start, lead and populate new organisations for social change.

About TACSI
The Australian Centre for Social Innovation exists to identify and support the innovative ideas, methods and people that will contribute to and accelerate positive social change.

About Blue Sky Sessions
The Blue Sky Sessions provide a forum for people to come together in a spirit of collaborative inquiry to discuss some of the pressing challenges of our day and how we might go about tackling them.

The format is informal and interactive. Speakers provide some introductory remarks around a given question before some Q&A, followed by general discussion and networking. This will not be a case of talking heads. We encourage people to participate, to be creative and to think big.

To book your (free) spot for this event, please register at the Alastair Wilson Blue Sky event page.

Solutions that work

Christian Stenta — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:55:00 +1100

On 4th November 2011, South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill launched Solved, our latest effort in scouting for and sharing social solutions working to address social issues across Australia.

Spotters took to the streets and over the next 6 weeks, put forward a total of 80 solutions. Each entry went into the draw for $5000 cash and 10 hours of expert mentoring from Christian Stenta, TACSI’s Venture Support Leader.

After hours of careful analysis and deliberation, the judges’ votes are in... it’s a tie!

Our congratulations go to Welcome to Australia and Produce to the People Tasmania, both of whom have been selected as the winning solutions. Each project will receive $2,500 in cash from TACSI as well as 10 hours of expert consultancy.

Produce to the People Tasmania is a locally driven initiative aimed at addressing the issues organic waste and food security in north western Tasmania. PTTP have successfully replicated a model initially developed in San Francisco, USA within a new context to meet a locally identified need.

Welcome to Australia is a powerful, community driven social media campaign sharing a positive voice around asylum seeking, refugees and multiculturalism that is not politically aligned or focused on policy.

For more information contact Christian Stenta on (08) 8110 9957.

A sneak preview of Solved - our nationwide campaign to find social solutions that work

Sarah Stokely — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:25:29 +1100

Next month, TACSI will launch an online campaign called Solved. Solved aims to unearth the many, many solutions which people have already come up with to social problems across Australia. If we do it right, Solved will become a rich online resource of solutions which worked. Solutions worth celebrating. Solutions worth spreading!

But Solved won't work without help - so this is also a call for volunteers.

When we launch Solved next month, the real work begins. Solved will only be useful if we can convince people to take a little time from their day to share a solution which worked in their neighbourhood. We're going to use the power of social media and our social networks to tell people about it, but we need to ask for your help in spreading the world.

In the leadup to the Solved launch, we are looking for people who would like to help us reach people across Australia, who have a solution worth sharing. If you are connected into networks (of teachers, of community development organisations, of churches, men's sheds, rotary clubs, mum's groups) and would like us to help reach those networks to tell people about Solved and get them to submit their local solutions that work, we'd like to invite you to join the Solved team. We've set up a brief online survey for Solved volunteers, so if you'd like to help out or have some ideas to contribute, please fill it out.

Thanks in advance, and we look forward to reading about solutions from your neighbourhood on the Solved website!

Country music trumps merino socks - How can we create the experiences that people really care for?

Dan Mohr — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 10:32:05 +1100

Christmas has been approaching so fast this year, hasn’t it? It seemed like December has been under a time lapse rushing to become history. At the radical redesign studio our thinking & doing caps have been focused on creating the Insights & Opportunities report of the caring project (to be released in January).

Evenings and weekends we’ve spent in look & listen mode in the “ethnography zone” with people in Salisbury and Unley. Those many impressions and thoughts during the intense days of December helped me frame a first hunch to a question that I’ve been schlepping with me: If during the look & listen phase we get to deeply understand people’s life as it play out every day, how can these insights then facilitate experiences that work for people in the creating phases?

It seems an answer to this question might be just under the Christmas tree.

My Christmas shopping of gifts and experiences for the family suffered badly this year. A case of too little too late. While I speak regularly with my family and long-time friends, based in Europe, I haven’t spent much time hanging out with them. We speak about our lives, rather than live them together. So I found it hard to put myself in their shoes, what could help them with their plans for 2012? What experience could give them joy in the new year? Weren’t it for a few tip offs from people around them the stockings would have looked awfully vanilla – timeless pairs of socks that would be little more than trade ins come Boxing Day.

In contrast, it was so easy to think of small but meaningful surprises for the people that have been very happy to share a sliver of their life with me during the last few weeks. People like Leon who is an expert in repairing trailers and find precious metals in old appliances to be sold on to the recycling yard. Or Barbara, a proud Scottish lady who likes to teach her parrots how to speak, and is an expert in preparing tasty short bread, haggis and other delicatessen. Or Daphne who loves decorating cakes but hasn’t done so for many years and firmly believes that cupcakes aren’t sold at up and coming purveyors of specialist patisseries.

I’ve started to understand where people are coming from and where they want to go. Leon likes for instance spending more time line dancing at the country music or to enjoy a nice bottle of Shiraz with friends. Barbara loves a voucher for delicatessen and for trips to meet people again who share her wicked sense of humor. Daphne likes an assortment of cupcakes with fancy frosting and her husband Dudley likes that ticket for a day of respite at the car races to soak in the action and the hypnotising noise.

During the times spent together a little magic happened. Tuning a classic V8 with layers of dust on its bonnet with Dudley in a fully kitted out work shop with cob webs, or spending time with Leon at the country music were the stepping stones to grasp their ideas of what a good day in their life looks like. With this experience in mind it is then possible to work out not only what they’d like more of in their lives but also what would make a good gift for them - a gift that gets them closer to their idea of a good life.

So next time I want to fill the stocking of someone that I care about I’ll better make sure I first understand through experiencing where they come from and where they’re going to avoid that vanilla pair of socks experience.

The Perfection Trap

Sebastian Geers — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:34:47 +1000

Hi I am Seb, I haven’t written a blog yet because I have been waiting for the perfect one to pop into my head.

I am going to write about what I think of as the perfection trap, which is summed up by saying “don’t let perfection get in the way of progress”. I am constantly figuring out whether I should be putting things in front of families when they are not perfect. The thing I have learnt is that in a start up nothing is ever perfect. At family by family nothing is perfect yet, it is like we are spinning plates and we can’t ever stop to fix them because if we do that all the others will fall down.

It is a constant struggle for me because I like to create systems that work, not only for today and tomorrow but forever. The problem is that at Family by Family we create systems that are based on the user and not what is the easiest solution for me. It is hard, but necessary, to create systems that are short term fixes when I know that they will have to be changed in 2, 6, 12 months.

A good example of this is the problem we have with phones at the moment. Currently all of the sharing families are on a prepaid phone plan. This is great they get loads of credit and cannot surprise us with any bills. This was a great system when we thought of it with 10 phones to buy credit for. Now we have a problem, we need to buy phone credit for 24 phones. All of a sudden this is a time consuming job, and we have to think of a new system.

Do I wish that we could have done this differently? yes, Do I wish that there was an other way to set all of these phones up? Yes. Do I think this was the best system and right decision at the time? Absolutely. The problem is that there is no perfect answer, no magic bullet when you are setting things up. We just have to do the best thing at the time. What we come up with is almost never going to be perfect.

It sometimes feels like we are not thinking ahead, or even setting ourselves up to fail. When I feel like this I look at the alternative, if I do not create this system that I know is not perfect what will happen? The answer is simple, NOTHING. So everyday I have to remind my self that it is important to create things that lead to progress even if they do not fix the problem forever. Otherwise we will not be able to grow and try new things as an organisation. If we do not try new things we will not see out the year because Family by Family is not perfect, and because we create systems that are made to fit the families, they will keep changing as do our families.