Break O’Day Municipality is the third most disadvantaged Local Government area in the state of Tasmania, Australia, with a population of 6469. Our community unfortunately has three times the national suicide rate and is one of Australia’s Suicide Prevention Trial sites. Much work has been done in suicide prevention, however actively promoting wellbeing is a new initiative.
Local government provides a direct link between state governments and local communities. They are an often overlooked resource to support wellbeing initiatives and are well positioned to pivot towards promoting and enabling wellbeing within local communities. Wellbeing literacy has been identified as the first step in enabling wellbeing at the local level and multiple strategies have been explored, developed and implemented in the Break O’Day community and come together in a community wellbeing pilot project.
In this presentation I introduce this project that aims to improve wellbeing literacy and promote and enable wellbeing in our community. We anticipate creating strong connections, building resilience and developing capacity to enhance personal and collective wellbeing.
Multiple initiatives have been undertaken including energy mapping, focus groups, collaborations, and the wellbeing certificate to create wellbeing champions. This project hopes to build a collaborative and positive approach to integrate wellbeing information and initiatives through local government into existing community channels.