What is Stretch2Engage
The Stretch2Engage Framework guides organisations to more effectively engage with people with lived-living experience. It’s used by public, non-government, and private mental health and alcohol and other drug services.
The framework recognises that meaningful engagement is a human right and fundamental to citizenship. This includes people with lived-living experience, their families, friends and supporters. Meaningful engagement requires organisations to think and act differently.
This approach changes how engagement is understood, resourced and implemented. It emphasises the need for organisations to build their engagement capability.
The framework builds on thinking developed through other approaches, including consumer participation and experience-based co-design. It takes this thinking further by:
- making organisations responsible for engagement
- moving towards direct engagement with service users and carers
- highlighting the need for organisations to build their effective engagement, often requiring cultural change
- seeing service engagement as part of everyday practice, undertaken by all staff rather than as a periodic event or specialist activity.
The Stretch2Engage house model presents the framework in a simplified format to aid understanding. View the:
Stretch2Engage principles
The framework is organised around 7 value domains. These are:
- Stretch2Be Curious: Eager to know or learn
- Stretch2Be Clear: Initiatives are transparent in their reason and are easily understood
- Stretch2Be Champion: Vigorously lead, promote and support the organisation in their engagement initiatives
- Stretch2Be Creative: Use of imaginative methods to evoke new ideas
- Stretch2Be Collective: Intentionally seek out and engage people from diverse backgrounds and experiences
- Stretch2Be Comprehensive: Willing to explore all aspects and embrace divergent views
- Stretch2Be Committed: Pledge to ongoing service engagement initiatives.
The Stretch2Engage hero cards provide question prompts across each of these value domains. View the:
Stretch2Engage partnership
Stretch2Engage was developed through a partnership between:
- Queensland Alliance for Mental Health (QAMH)
- Queensland Network of Alcohol and Other Drug Agencies (QNADA)
- Enlightened Consultants.
Pilot project
A pilot project tested the Stretch2Engage Framework from 2018 to 2019. It involved 7 organisations across public, private and government mental health and alcohol and other drug services. The pilot sites were in metropolitan Brisbane and Toowoomba.
More than 100 stakeholders were consulted, including:
- management and staff of pilot organisations
- people using their services
- Stretch2Engage coaches
- our staff
- members of the Stretch2Engage partnership.
Watch our Stretch2Engage: Pilot Site Experiences and Implementation Tips videos. This is a series of short videos showing:
- the experiences of the pilot sites
- practical insights
- tips to support the successful adoption of Stretch2Engage.
Evaluation results
The pilot project showed that organisations:
- improved engagement with people using their services
- increased engagement activities
- strengthened their engagement capability
- adopted new ways of thinking about engagement.
Pilot organisations’ staff views showed that:
- 95% agreed that the views of people accessing services are as important as the views of staff when deciding how services should be designed and delivered
- 90% believed that project participation had increased their organisation’s engagement capacity
- 75% agreed that the Stretch2Engage pilot project changed the way their organisation thinks about engaging people
- around 70% believed that sustaining changes made during the pilot will be ‘somewhat’ or ‘very easy’ at project completion.
It was concluded that Stretch2Engage is:
- an improvement on previous approaches to engagement and participation
- a useful tool to improve experience and outcomes for people using services.
Lirata Consulting’s Evaluation of the Stretch2Engage Framework Pilot: Final Report outlines the challenges and successes of the Stretch2Engage pilot project. A snapshot of these findings is also shown in the:
- Evaluation of the Stretch2Engage Framework Pilot: Summary Report
- Evaluation of the Stretch2Engage Framework Pilot: infographic.
Evaluation toolkit
The Stretch2Engage evaluation toolkit helps organisations to monitor and evaluate their service engagement initiatives. It includes:
- Stretch2Engage: Theory of Change
- Stretch2Engage: Theory of Change Summary
- Brief guide to monitoring and evaluating service engagement initiatives
- Organisational survey template
- Brief staff survey template
- Service engagement capacity wheel template
- Significant change story template.
Stretch2Engage in practice
Stretch2Engage continues to inform our approach to embedding lived-living experience in system reform. Read more about how we’re shaping reform through lived-living experience.
Tenant engagement
Meaningful engagement of people with lived-living experience in housing and homelessness services is vital for system reform. It can:
- increase tenant satisfaction
- improve service efficiency
- enhance quality of life for tenants.
Stretch2Engage also informed the research we commissioned on tenant engagement. This research was done by The University of Queensland in partnership with Common Ground Queensland. It looked at the importance of engagement for tenants living in supportive housing at Brisbane Common Ground.
Based on the research findings, the Tenant Engagement with Common Ground Queensland report outlines 7 principles of tenant engagement.
- Belief: A belief that tenants have a right to engage on the basis that housing is their home.
- Willingness: A willingness to change policies and procedures based on tenants’ needs and preferences.
- Resources: The provision of resources and plans dedicated to enabling tenant engagement.
- Diversity: Appreciating and valuing the diversity of forms that tenant engagement can assume.
- Accessibility: Ensuring accessibility to enable tenant engagement.
- Communication: Providing systematic and transparent communication with tenants.
- Balance: Ensuring a balance of tenant engagement with other operational requirements.
These principles can inform changes across social and supportive housing systems to support meaningful tenant engagement. They show that meaningful tenant engagement leads to better outcomes for both tenants and housing providers.