Symposium 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Power In Numbers: How Wellbeing Measurement Mobilised A Community (#254)

Adam Cooper 1
  1. Maroondah City Council, Ringwood, VIC, Australia

Measurement tracks success, but can also catalyse action. Maroondah City Council (MCC) in Melbourne’s outer suburbs has redesigned its services for 22,000 young people around a simple mission - ‘to raise the wellbeing of Maroondah’s young people’. Founded upon a comprehensive youth consultation and wellbeing measurement project as part of its youth strategy, MCC’s vision for young people is that they are ‘flourishing as part of a healthy and thriving community’. The findings uncovered by the University of Melbourne’s measurement tool - the Wellbeing Profiler, laid the foundation for MCC’s new youth strategy and seeded a cross-sector wellbeing partnership with 27 schools. Maroondah is now embarking on a community-wide implementation of positive education, and MCC has redeveloped its youth programs, policies and services to place wellbeing at the core. The youth strategy has catalysed a shift towards a whole of community approach to wellbeing in young people, and sits alongside an even more ambitious project to build an entire ‘community of wellbeing’ across 117,000 residents. Adam Cooper - the Team Leader of Youth and Children’s Services, will talk about the journey to mobilise a whole community around building wellbeing in children, young people and the whole population of Maroondah.