An awareness and action framework for transformative community engagement

Social inclusion and equity are ever present challenges for community organisations, whether they be universities, schools, welfare organisations or health services. Important questions for these institutions are how can they best engage with people and communities who experience disadvantage and so provide ease of access and a genuine welcome to them? What factors facilitate or constrain how these institutions engage with and provide appropriate support for the people? University-community engagement which includes schools, welfare organisations or health services has contributed significantly to addressing such questions of equity and social inclusion.

This paper presents a new research-based awareness-action framework for universities, communities and organisations to use when examining how they could engage as well as to what extent they are engaging with individual people, families and communities. The paper presents the educational research from which the framework was developed, together with examples of uni-dimensional low awareness - low action approaches and multidimensional high awareness - high action approaches to engaging with communities.