Beyond Gatehouse

• Impacts on policy and practice
• Dissemination through education systems
• Collaborations with other organisations

Impacts on policy and practice

The Centre for Adolescent Health's Gatehouse Project documented the impact of the school environment on the health and well-being of young people, and the scope of schools to provide a setting that meets the emotional needs of young people. The Project contributed to a repositioning of health promotion from a welfare concern to a whole school concern. The links between student perceptions of school and health outcomes demonstrated the interconnectedness of welfare, curriculum and school organisational structures. The public health significance of this work has been widely recognised, and was continued through the Adolescent Health and Social Environments Program.

Funding from VicHealth in 2001 enabled us to develop a comprehensive program to disseminate both research findings and the intervention strategy more broadly. This important task of getting the message out to schools and policy-makers was a major focus of the work of the Project in its later stages.

The aims of this dissemination process were to provide:

• an understanding of the influence of social environments on the health and well-being of young people
• a description of the full range of strategies that were successfully implemented in schools
• an explanation of the processes by which school teams brought about these changes.

Model of dissemination

The Gatehouse Project used a two-way exchange between intervention and evaluation elements. We drew on information from the various strands of the evaluation strategy, particularly on feedback from school-based staff, to identify and disseminate the elements of the intervention necessary to promote change, and the resources needed to support their implementation. At the same time, we acknowledged that teachers as professionals exercised critical judgement about how best to integrate the Gatehouse Project approach into their teaching programs. Hence, the intervention materials and the dissemination process were designed to be adaptable to diverse school contexts to suit the needs of different classrooms, school communities and education systems.

A range of strategies for a broad audience

The challenge for dissemination, beyond publishing results in academic journals, or the one-way process of transfer from researcher to practitioner, was to develop ways of reaching the broadest possible audience for which the Project may be relevant. For the Gatehouse Project, this audience included:

• academics in health, health promotion and education
• teachers and other school-based staff
• health promotion workers in mental health and adolescent health
• workers in community organisations who work with young people in schools
• staff from education systems
• parents and students
• policy makers in health and education

The strategies we developed to address these audiences were:

1. Production of papers and publications for academic and professional audiences through national and international conferences and journals, other publications and appropriate forums for policy development at government and non-government levels.
2. Documentation of processes and practices of the intervention schools through:
   • print resources for curriculum and whole school change
   • case studies
   • a website.
3. Seminars for practitioners in a range of settings.
4. Dissemination through contributions to existing and developing programs, in collaboration with education systems and other organisations. This work is discussed in the following section.

Dissemination through education systems

The Catholic Education Office, Melbourne (CEO)

The Catholic Education Office developed a two year program based on the Gatehouse Project for Catholic secondary schools: A Whole School Approach to Pastoral Care: A Road Beyond the Gatehouse. This program was implemented in the majority of the 65 secondary schools in the Melbourne Diocese between 2000 and 2005.

The Department of Education, Employment and Training, Victoria (DEET)

The Healthy Environments for Learning Project (HELP), as a trial dissemination of the Gatehouse Project, was conducted in the Western Metropolitan Region and the Northern Metropolitan Region of DEET. Eight schools participated in HELP in the Western Metropolitan Region. Nine schools were involved in the Northern Metropolitan Region.

Work with individual schools

Through our collaboration with the CEO and DEET we undertook dissemination through education systems. In addition to this, there  numerous requests for professional development from individual schools and in response we delivered training  comprising:

• an introduction to the conceptual framework and key elements
• the student survey and feedback of data
• other negotiated professional development activities. 

This professional learning program was further developed through the Adolescent Health and Social Environments Program.

Collaborations with other organisations

The work of the Gatehouse Project contributed to the development of many projects involving collaborations between the Centre for Adolescent and other organisations.

These included:

• beyondblue schools research initiative, 2003-2005 - a national research partnership funded by beyondblue, the National Depression Initiative, involving fifty schools across three states; Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. Staff from the Gatehouse Project team and the work of the Gatehouse Project were important in informing the development of this national initiative aimed at reducing the prevalence and impact of depression in young people.
   
• Festival for Healthy Living, 1998 -ongoing - a mental health promotion program using the performing arts. Auspiced by the Royal Children's Hospital Mental Health Service, in partnership with the Department of Education, Employment and Training (Northern and Western Region), Austin and Repatriation Medical Centre, Child and Adolescent Health Service and other health, education and community organisations.
  
• Middle Years Research and Development Project (MYRAD), 1999-2001 - in partnership with DEET and the Centre for Applied Educational Research in the student engagement and well-being focus group of schools. Gatehouse Project staff and two Gatehouse Project intervention schools participated integrally in this research.