Our Work
The work of Pathways in Place-Victoria University seeks to improve population health outcomes through the development of theory, methods, and evidence to support place-based, systems change approaches. You can read more about our approach here.
What we’re up to
Our work in Brimbank
Since 2020, we’ve been working with the Brimbank community to improve pathways through education and employment for young people in the region. We developed a graphic system map representing the complex education and employment pathways Brimbank’s young people are navigating. We then used the map in a series of community workshops with young people, practitioners and other community members to identify problems and their root causes. You can see the system map here.
Drawing on what we learned in these workshops, we created a ‘causal loop diagram’ which mapped out some of these issues and highlighted a big problem with the lack of safe and meaningful experiences of work for young people in Brimbank. This causal loop diagram helped us to understand how certain factors like recruitment and information flows were contributing to the problem.
To address this local problem, we established the multi-sectoral Pathways in Place Action Network (PiPAN), which is made up of a number of organisations that support Brimbank’s young people, meaning they have a stake in the problem, and leverage to action it.
PiPAN has collaboratively designed a series of coordinated actions and strategies that aim to create safe and meaningful experiences of work for young people in Brimbank. Collectively, PiPAN are now starting to implement these actions and will continue meeting to learn about and adapt their implementation journey.
Our work in Hume
We work closely with the Economic Development department within Hume City Council to build a shared understanding about the availability of employment and education resources across the region. Building on our community resource mapping project completed in 2022, we recently conducted an in-depth situation analysis focused on the employment and education supports available to marginalised communities within the region’s most disadvantaged areas. The report detailing our findings from this work will be available soon.
Our work with young people
In addition to our core team, Pathways in Place-Victoria University employ young people from Brimbank who draw on their valuable lived experience perspectives and expertise to support our work. This means they are involved in opportunities for sensemaking and decision-making, research processes and outputs, and broader team planning and idea generation activities. Working together in this way ensures that we are working with diverse perspectives around the table and aligning our work with the reality of young people’s experiences and needs.
The young people have contributed to a range of different areas of the program, from blog posts and drafting peer-reviewed publication manuscripts, to planning and facilitating a visit from Paul Ramsay Foundation. They are currently working on a series of exciting projects which include co-designing and facilitating workshops to gather insights from other young people about employment experiences and navigating challenges. We will continue to update the website with some of the incredible work young people are doing with Pathways in Place-Victoria University, so keep an eye out!
Our work in public policy and practice
We view public policy as an integral component in the success of place-based approaches. In recognition of this, we’ve worked to tackle some of the key questions and challenges related to the role and function of public policy in place-based approaches that have come out of our conversations with communities, practitioners, researchers, and policy makers. To further this work, we've collaborated with local, state, and federal government departments. Through these collaborations, we have shared knowledge, exchanged valuable insights and ideas, and worked on joint projects.
Our review of public policy on place-based approaches shed light the government’s role in place-based approaches as well as conceptualisation of place-based approaches in public. The summary of our key findings is available in our policy brief. We’ve also explored how Australian public policy frames practices necessary for well-functioning systems. You can read the report here. Additionally, we’ve recently conducted an in-depth review of flexible funding models to better understand the challenges and benefits of increased flexibility in funding schemes.