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Logan Together: collective impact in action

Halfway through its first ten years, Logan Together continues to showcase the value of community-driven, place-based work.

This genuine collaboration between community, industry, government and philanthropy is on track to deliver tangible child development improvements for the Logan community.

In 2017, VFFF approved a three year core operations grant to provide early foundational support to the Logan Together backbone team. With the Queensland Government now matching the Federal Government’s commitment to a five-year funding term, this work is now funded through to 2024.

Few initiatives have the population level aspiration of Logan Together and the early signs are promising for population level impact from the child development activities started two to three years ago. Rates of vulnerability are moving in a positive direction, with more Logan suburbs showing improvement across the five Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) domains. These improvements represent a narrowing of the gap between the wellbeing of Logan kids and the Queensland and Australian averages. Logan is also significantly outperforming comparison Queensland communities where the gap is widening, in some cases by up to 8%.

Plenty of great ideas and clear goals keep emerging. With community maternity and child health hubs now able to deliver services at population scale, the team has shifted its sights to four and five year olds.

A clear goal to see an additional 1077 Logan children attend kindergarten each year will close the gap in kindergarten attendance by 2025.

The whole of community perspective inherent in Logan Together’s approach provided them with unique community level insights on the potential impact of COVID-19 for the Logan community of 300,000+. It was apparent that there were urgent needs in the community and the Logan Together team convened an Action Group that maintained contact with over 50 local service providers. Assistance opportunities were quickly prioritised, including emergency direct assistance for families with extreme needs and addressing the immediate digital divide for kids learning from home.

With these initiatives in place, Logan Together is now shifting its focus to supporting local community organisations, neighbourhood centres and cultural groups to hire a group of part-time ‘Community Connectors’ and through them a cohort of volunteers to support local families. This will progress local employment and build community connection through the next phase. VFFF was pleased to provide additional funding towards this initiative as part of our recent ‘COVID-19 granting’.

Further information on the work of Logan Together can be found in this case study.