It’s noisy in the Burnie Child and Family Centre today. Children run around underfoot, shouting and playing, stealing the textas that were supposed to be used for note-taking.

The parents of the children are there, and they’re joined by family service providers – child health nurses, local librarians, Aboriginal workers and so many more. They share lunch, but they also share ideas.
Free events are organised – like one in a hidden park, featuring a snake catcher, a sausage sizzle and a meditation tent, designed to give both children and their overwhelmed parents a break over the summer school holidays.

Questions are asked, too – local parents need more safe places for their children to play outside, so why are the school gardens closed to the public over school breaks? Could they be opened at certain times if a group of local Dads organise a formal, supervised playgroup?

Nobody knows, and it will take community members working with Government partners to make policy changes at the systems level… but they’ll work together to see if it can be done. After all, that’s what they’re here to do. Make the small changes that can make a big difference for Burnie families.

And they’re linked to a network of groups, all with different areas of focus, but with a common approach – to turn genuine local knowledge and insight, local compassion and local support into real change for the Burnie community… through an approach called ‘Collective Impact’.