Planning and engagement

Identifying goals and aspirations and how to reach them requires good information, effective planning, clear communication, skills, knowledge and the development of useful networks. CAT works with communities of Indigenous people in a range of areas including community planning processes, infrastructure assessment and maintenance, skill development and risk management.

This work demands effective engagement processes that build mutual trust, improved knowledge and understanding and honest appraisals of opportunity and constraints. It also requires innovative approaches to developing shared understandings about the issues and challenges experienced across remote Australia. Much of CAT's planning and engagement work is focused on fostering demand responsive approaches to service delivery. Currently the established mode of service delivery in remote areas is determinedly supply-side. In other words, service users are passive recipients of a service that is centrally designed largely without their participation and fixed in its characteristics.

Decisions about water supply infrastructure are often driven by technology and compliance to national standards rather than the capacity of those receiving the infrastructure to afford and maintain it into the future, leading to an ongoing reliance on accessing more funding and technology experts to keep the water flowing. Housing designs that mimic the features and lifestyle characteristics of urban Australia often prove to be both unaffordable and unsuitable for life and lifestyles in the bush.

 CAT's work in the area of planning and engagement includes:

• Planning for living on country
• Community energy planning
• Risk assessment for small water supplies
• Development of graphic design tools to support effective communication

Information about CAT's work in this area can be accessed by following the links to the research, resources and services pages.