This is a guide on how to create or improve your social inclusion work. In other words - how can you ensure that your social inclusion work with communities is more meaningful? It provides a compass to useful documents, resources, frameworks and tools to improve your practice, whether that is externally with individuals and communities or internally within your organisation.

This document emerged from work of the Western Region Primary Prevention Taskforce (HealthWest Partnership and the Inner North West Primary Care Partnership’s (INWPCP’s) Prevention Alliance. Preliminary mapping of prevention priorities in Melbourne’s western and inner northern suburbs revealed that social inclusion (as a determinant of mental health3 ) was an area of common interest for partners and their communities for the 2017-21 planning cycle. This guide is a collection of knowledge and expertise of those in Melbourne’s western region, who work in social inclusion. It aims to tackle challenges that were repeatedly raised during joint forums and surveys on the topic of social inclusion.