Taelah Redma, Specialist Men’s Family Violence Practitioner and Rachel Morgan, Team Leader Specialist Men’s Service
Meli is a Victorian not-for-profit committed to strengthening communities through supporting people. It offers a unique combination of services to support members of our community throughout their lifetime, from early childhood through to adolescence and adulthood.
The Men’s Family Violence Intervention Centre, work with men who have chosen to use family violence. The team complete assessments, offer case management support and run the Men’s Behaviour Change Program. They also have a team of family safety contact workers who work with the women affected by the men’s use of violence.
Helping men to unpack their use of violent, controlling and harmful behaviours is challenging and complex work so a one-size-fits-all approach wasn’t an option to truly support the wellbeing of the team.
Taelah and Rachel wanted to build opportunities for more connection and engagement that would allow staff to get to know each other better.
‘It's easy to get bogged down when you're at work, with everything being about work, but we all have individual lives that are important to acknowledge and appreciate,’ they explained.
The team set out to create a resource that would be easy for staff to use, that was inclusive and not reliant on everybody participating, and that had a broad range of wellbeing benefits. They decided to experiment with an ‘Appreciation wall’ by:
- getting support from management to use a wall in their open-plan office in a high-traffic area
- providing blank profile templates and inviting staff to add photographs of people and/or things that were special and personally meaningful to them
- leaving it open to anyone who wanted to join in with no deadlines for participation
- offering a suggestion box for staff to put theme ideas with a new category randomly selected every three months. Potential themes have included: pets, weekend hobbies, favourite meals.
‘To start, we’ve prioritised moments of positivity and celebrating our accomplishments both at work and at home,’ said Rachel. ‘And it’s been a great way to build connections with each other, people visiting the office and getting to know each other better. It’s also provided a lot of joy and a sense of meaningful connection to our work.’
‘We’ve created a visual representation in the space that we work of the things that bring us joy, the things that we love, and reminds us of why we do the work in the midst of the challenges that we face working with men using violence,’ said Taelah.
To find out more about setting up and using an Appreciation Wall please watch this short video:
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