Feeling healthy and happy and having great wellbeing will mean different things to different people. Capturing all these aspects of a person’s lived experience can be hard. To create a Wellbeing Framework for Canberra, we spoke with and heard from thousands of Canberrans about what they felt was most important to their own, their family's, and their community’s quality of life.
What we heard from the community...
"Knowing about services, supports and opportunities & being able to access them as equally as everyone else."
"I feel safe as a diverse person in public spaces."
"Feeling included in the community especially if you do not fit a cookie cutter shape."
An individual's overall wellbeing is connected to the communities they identify with, and the interaction and weight given to certain wellbeing domains by those communities, as a result of their lived experience. To gain a realistic picture of the wellbeing of all Canberrans, we need to look beyond the averages to understand the diversity of wellbeing across the community.
"All groups have their own individual perspectives and every effort should be made for them to be understood in the wellbeing indicators project."
- Roundtable participant
Our complex identities and lived experience can enhance - or lower - our wellbeing. Measuring the wellbeing outcomes of specific population groups will help government and members of the Canberra community to better understand how the wellbeing of some groups may differ from what we see for the whole ACT population.
Download the ACT Wellbeing Framework
ACT Wellbeing Framework [PDF 8.2MB]
The framework was developed through an extensive process of community consultation in 2019-20. We heard from nearly 3,000 Canberrans about what was most important to their quality of life. From Gungahlin to Lanyon, from food pantries to Floriade, to evening gatherings over pizza with young people and people of multicultural background, morning teas with seniors, and through the YourSay Community Panel, we heard the stories and experiences of people from across the ACT.
A Consultation Summary Report provides further details of the consultation journey for the Wellbeing Framework, including the many groups we engaged with, and how feedback from the community shaped the Framework at every step.
