A report of recent national research commissioned by The Salvation Army and undertaken by Dr Nicola Brackertz of Swinburne Institute at Swinburne University, Melbourne. The research is part of The Salvation Army's Doorways Project, (an initiative supported by Westpac). Doorways provides a holistic, integrated and capacity building approach to delivery of emergency relief services.

Social innovation is an overarching term for a variety of practices that aim to address social problems, and provides a new lens to understand the role of the social in innovation. Social innovation takes the form of products, processes, services and models that meet social needs.

This report is intended as a practical resource for local councils wishing to engage their communities in decision making and planning. The focus is on how to broaden the range of people represented in council processes, especially those who are reluctant to participate in traditional consultation methods. This is the final report of a project...

The Community Consultation and the ‘Hard to Reach’ project is investigating how community consultation is currently practised by Victorian councils, especially in relation to multiple publics and groups that councils can find hard to reach. This case study looks at the City of Maribyrnong.

In local government, 'hard to reach' is a term sometimes used to describe those sections of the community that are difficult to involve in public participation. In this working paper Nicola Brackertz look at the usage of the term in the literature more generally, as many of the issues raised are also applicable to local...