The background
Wellways Australia, a leading not-for-profit organisation dedicated to ensuring all Australians lead active and fulfilling lives in their community, engaged TACSI in 2025 to support the next stage of implementation for Toowoomba’s new mental health and wellbeing hub. This included naming the Hub through a co-design process to ensure that the name was aligned with the key characteristics of the Hub, and reflective of its place in Toowoomba.
As the lead organisation of the Toowoomba Hub’s consortium, which also includes Goondir, Each and QPASTT, Wellways is committed to continuing to shape the implementation and delivery of the Hub alongside a group of co-designers, including people with lived and/or living experiences of mental health, suicidality, alcohol and other drugs, and of caring for people with these challenges; service providers / practitioners; and consortium members.
In 2024, TACSI led the co-planning and co-design process to develop the service model for the new Integrated MHSPAOD Hub alongside the Darling Downs West Moreton PHN. This work meant that TACSI was well placed to support Wellways in the process to name the Hub, as we could build upon our existing relationships with the co-design group and deep knowledge of the service model to support an inclusive and impactful process.
Our approach
The purpose of this workshop was to invest in relationships and imagination in order to shape name recommendations for the Hub, and identify key characteristics and reputation of the hub in 2030.
Together, this enabled the Wellways team and the broader Hub consortium to move forward with confidence alongside the co-design group, to implement the Integrated Hub in alignment with community need and ambition.
The process was structured with a clear aim, participant experience and expected outputs in mind. These were:
Aim: Create conditions and space for participants to imagine the hub in the future and through collaboration and painting, name what they are seeing within certain service scenarios, what the connection points are between these scenarios and what these things tell us about the hub’s identity, reputation and name recommendations.
Participant experience: People will experience a creative and deeply participatory session (through collaboration and painting). They’ll imagine bold futures, share stories, co-create with others and begin to see what it takes to move from vision to action. Participants should leave feeling hopeful, connected and clear on how they’ve contributed.
Expected outputs: An artistic expression of future hub scenarios; characteristics that tell us about the identity and reputation of the hub in the future; and name recommendations.
Following the workshop, and two loops of feedback from the group, TACSI provided Wellways with four ranked (by co-designers) name recommendations, of which the top preference was selected, and a list of key characteristics and reputation points of the integrated service that will continue to inform the implementation and delivery of Toowoomba’s Integrated mental health and wellbeing Hub.
The insights
The co-designers clearly articulated the future impact and work of the Hub through a series of reputation points that speak to the collective ambition of the Toowoomba Integrated Hub consortium, the DDWMPHN, and community members. They reflected that in 2030, the Hub would be known for…
Supporting reconnection to culture and country;
Working effectively and collaboratively together to create great outcomes for people and their supportive networks (i.e. family, carers, kin, supporters);
Embedded, community-led care that evolves with the diverse needs of community over time;
Being an accessible, one-stop-shop for integrated care that prioritises human connection, hope and storytelling;
Supporting people to find the pathway to healing and hope that works for them;
Being a place that says no as little as possible, and always works to connect people to support when they have to; and
Being a place where people find, and leave with hope for the future.
What’s next?
The Toowoomba Integrated mental health and wellbeing Hub has been named Wattle House Toowoomba and continues on its implementation journey through the leadership of the consortium, alongside a group of co-designers. Follow along on the Hub’s journey with Wellways Australia.