Cairns South Together: Movement launches to fix disadvantage from Earlville to Gordonvale
A decade-long mission has been launched to tackle a tragic medley of disadvantage that has crippled children, families and communities in the city’s south from reaching their full potential.
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A DECADE-LONG mission has been launched to tackle a tragic medley of disadvantage that has crippled children, families and communities in the city’s south from reaching their full potential.
Leaders behind the Cairns South Together movement are only too aware of how ambitious their assignment is – to root out, diagnose and treat the social vulnerabilities that have been passed on for generations.
They have set bold targets, spent a year establishing the organisational machinery required for a job this big, and secured Mission Australia as a “backbone” to provide the resources required over 10 years.
The movement is led by Mulgrave MP Curtis Pitt as chairman and Division 3 councillor Cathy Zeiger in the deputy role but includes a dedicated group of 12 committee members with skin in the game, ranging from a high-ranking police officer to business identities and long-term local identities.
Retired Supreme Court Justice Stanley Jones is one of those driving forces – and he knows the task ahead will be difficult to achieve.
“It takes a village to raise a child, and we’re trying to recreate a village in the city,” he said.
“When I was a boy, raised in a medium-sized country town, everyone knew each other and you didn’t have to lock your doors at night.
“If there was any trouble, you knew who the troublemakers were and someone went and belted them.
“It was a very comfortable existence that doesn’t exist today, I don’t think.
“We’re trying to get back to that village where people who have lived experience of disadvantage can now help those who are experiencing disadvantage.”
Minus the belting, of course.
The Cairns South Together movement had some of its best public exposure yet with hundreds of residents turning up to the South Side Celebration on Thursday at Hambledon House in Edmonton.
A petting zoo, live music, free food and coffee and a wealth of activities were on offer to children, including painting a new mural.
It was about having fun and fostering a sense of community – but there was another underlying goal.
Justice Jones said the group had worked hard to identify “clusters” of need, and now required community members with authentic experience of the very same hardships to step forward.
“One example of a cluster is dealing with businesses that are having trouble, that need to defer rent or to go to the bank for an extension of a loan,” he said.
“We’ve got a group there to help those businesses.
“Another one is for teenagers, and adults too, who are looking for work and are unable to find it.
“My cluster is to look for the preschoolers and early schoolchildren in homes that might need a bit more help.
“However, getting people to identify those who will accept the help is very difficult.”
Therein lies the dilemma.
Very few people rocked by poverty, abuse, addiction and other symptoms of societal collapse would be receptive to a doorknock from a former Supreme Court judge, albeit a thoroughly affable one.
Cairns South Together needs genuine “neighbourhood navigators” to join the movement, find out what families need, and send that message up the line so solutions can be deliberated.
“That’s what the (South Side Celebration) day is about, collecting people to talk about things and let us know what we have to do,” Justice Jones said.
“We’re not a mob of vigilantes going into these suburbs. We want the suburbs to tell us what they would like done.”
Justice Jones was part of a steering committee tasked with responding to the horrific findings of the Smallbone Report into abuse in Aurukun and West Cairns, which was handed to the Newman Government in 2013.
Both communities fall outside the geographic purview of Cairns South Together, but plenty of parallels can be drawn.
Justice Jones said the first 1000 days of a human life were the most important – and the clock started while babies were still in utero.
Adverse childhood experiences during those first formative years set in motion a cycle of disadvantage that is nigh on impossible to break.
“They’re the kids that end up in trouble, that don’t do well at school, that are always well behind the starting line,” Justice Jones said.
“That leads to poor education, poor literacy, kids having impulsive and uncontrollable behaviour – then they have problems at school, drop out early and end up coming to the notice of the law.”
Justice Jones believed schools needed to transform and play a bigger role in families with parents coming in to discuss any family problems, preschool-age kids interacting in the playground before their formal education begins, and specific courses teaching the life skills required to become contributing, respectful members of society.
He made similar recommendations in his Smallbone review but so far they have been ignored.
“The education department is a bit like a ghetto – it’s all about the limited scope of their operations,” he said.
“They’re not going to be childminders, they’re not interested in preschool and they are certainly not going to be parental educators.”
For now, the distinguished jurist is focusing his attention on the southside of Cairns.
“We’re not here to proselytise or tell people what to do with their lives, we want to find ways of helping,” he said.
“If this works, we would like to spread it to the north.
“We thought it was too big a task to take on the whole of Cairns, but there is no doubt these same problems exist in the north.”
OPINION: Collective impact: Nothing about us, without us
Mulgrave MP Curtis Pitt
THE almost half billion dollar four-lane highway being constructed between Edmonton and Gordonvale is not the only big change happening in the southern corridor of Cairns.
The saying that “it takes a village to raise a child” has been tossed around for years but it’s particularly fitting when it comes to the Cairns South Together collective impact movement.
Collective impact is exactly what it sounds like – a collaborative approach by local people, organisations and agencies seeking to bring about long-lasting social change in a particular community.
But it’s much more than simple co-operation.
It involves a structured process that leads to a common agenda, shared measurement, continuous communication, and mutually reinforcing activities to build trust among the partners involved.
Evidenced-based decision making is central to the success of collective impact.
Obtaining, sharing and analysing data helps determine the baseline.
But being accountable for “what works” and also what doesn’t is just as important.
In the case of Cairns South, the 2016 and 2019 State of the Children reports have provided the foundation on which to build.
In early 2020, I was asked to take on the role as chair of the steering committee charged with progressing the vision of having “happy, healthy young people contributing to a brighter future in Cairns South”.
The steering committee consists of recognised community leaders with experience in advocacy, governance and strategy, and who have an ability to bring people and organisations together to achieve a common goal.
Committee members include representatives and experts from fields such as business, health, policing, education, the law, skills and training, sport, traditional owners, early years, multicultural and community.
In November 2020, working groups driven by these steering committee members were established.
The increased collaboration and information sharing we’ve seen is already shifting the dial.
Cairns South Together lives by the phrase “nothing about us, without us”.
Authentic community engagement through surveys, information stalls, focus groups, youth consultation is already under way involving locals from Earlville to Gordonvale.
One of the other conditions required for collective impact to work is backbone support from an organisation with staff with a specific skill set to bring the players together.
Last year Mission Australia announced that Cairns South Together would be the first collective impact program in Australia to be funded under its Communities of Focus initiative.
This guarantees 10 years of backbone support – almost unheard of – in recognition that community-led change takes time.
Data on Cairns South is being collected from a range of sources and being shared across partners and stakeholders to identify change-making projects.
Our challenge will include proving to government that more money is not always the answer. Improved sharing of data, a little autonomy and place-based decision making can go a long way.
Cairns South Together is committed to bring positive change to the Southside and I’m genuinely excited by what we can achieve.
Think you’ve heard it all before? This is different.
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Originally published as Cairns South Together: Movement launches to fix disadvantage from Earlville to Gordonvale
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