‘When you’re not given the same opportunities as everyone else and you’re told from an early age that because of where you’re from that you’re less of a person and you’re never going to amount to anything, then you don’t feel worthy of people’s attention.’
In her deeply personal contributions to the panel discussion at the launch of Jesuit Social Services report on place-based disadvantage, Dropping off the Edge 2021, my colleague Chandelle Wilson shared her reflections of being born and raised in pockets of entrenched disadvantage.
Some parts of Western Sydney, where Jesuit Social Services has worked alongside communities for more than a decade, remain deeply entrenched in disadvantage. The Statistical Area grouping of suburbs Bidwell, Hebersham and Emerton is one of the 10 most disadvantaged locations in New South Wales, and also ranked as highly disadvantaged in the 2007 and 2015 Dropping off the Edge reports. Mount Druitt and Whalan also ranked as highly disadvantaged in the last three reports.
In developing an understanding of place-based disadvantage, Chandelle explains that shame and stigma are transmitted between generations within the small number of communities we collectively fail. And yet no matter the number of indicators of place-based disadvantage, each community possesses some unique strengths.
She describes this as a ‘tale of two webs’.
The first is the ‘web of disadvantage’, which includes environmental and lifetime disadvantage indicators, including heat stress, poor air quality, access to nature reserves, teenage pregnancies and children in homes where no parent is in paid work. These indicators demonstrate that the web of disadvantage is becoming ever more complex and gnarly, while the communities experiencing the most severe and entrenched disadvantage remain the same.
And yet despite the tangling threads of this web of disadvantage, Chandelle continues to live, give, work, and raise her family in her local community in Western Sydney. ‘It is a bright tapestry of amazing people from different backgrounds who get in and help each other when times are tough,’ Chandelle says. She describes this system of mutual support as the ‘web of strength’.
'Early successes allow us to imagine new ways of working towards a more socially just society for people in places like Willmot where place-based disadvantage can be addressed and overcome.'
Any new approaches to place-based work led by communities in partnership with government would do well to recognise these inherent strengths and resilience within the community and use them as a starting point.
For the first time, the 2021 DOTE report included focus groups and interviews in eight communities, including Willmot in Western Sydney which has a high number of indicators on which it is disadvantaged.
Willmot has a high proportion of children aged 0 to 14 and a low proportion of people aged 65+, a high proportion of residents who do not speak English well or in some cases at all. Rates of public housing are seven times higher than the NSW average. Prison admissions, juvenile convictions and family violence were more than 2.5 times the New South Wales average.
For the report, focus groups were asked a number of questions, including whether they feel safe walking at night. One focus group indicated they did not feel safe. ‘You just don’t know who’s going to come out of the trees at night,’ a respondent said. ‘You don’t know who’s shooting up around the corner and becoming aggressive ... You don’t know if it’s safe to cross that road with your children, or if there’s a hoon coming up on a motorbike without a helmet.’
However, highlighting how webs of strength can be mapped on to webs of disadvantage, one respondent who had lived in Willmot for several decades reported feeling safe in her local surrounds: ‘I do feel safe when I walk. We talk to each other. I have good neighbours and good surroundings. Not only my street but the surrounding [streets], they are all good neighbours.’
In Willmot, local community members identified the strengths of their areas and ways they wanted their communities to flourish. All wanted to be engaged in the process of change, to fortify their local communities in areas like building local leadership, improving social cohesion and creating an empowering, responsive and holistic service model.
A focus group participant from Willmot suggested: ‘Take responsibility for your own community. Start with the youth for a better community, something has to be done for the youth. The cycle needs to be broken.’
And that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. The Jesuit Social Services Centre for Just Places began life early this year and provides DOTE with a ‘home’ in the years between each edition. The Centre will lead research and advocacy on addressing the root causes of place-based inequities and injustice, collaborating with communities and partners across all sectors to create new place-based models of policy and practice.
It is a strange experience starting a new job during a COVID lockdown. As I slowly connect with and learn about our communities and their priorities, I am grateful to have Dropping off the Edge 2021 on hand. It provides the data to make the case for significant, long-term investment in building community capacity, preventative approaches and new place-based ways of working.
The work of building community is time-intensive. But early successes allow us to imagine new ways of working towards a more socially just society for people in places like Willmot where place-based disadvantage can be addressed and overcome.
Sally Cowling is the General Manager, Centre for Just Places, for Jesuit Social Services, NSW.
Main image: Young man and woman standing on top of white maze. (Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images)