MultiLink Community Services is a not-for-profit organisation in Logan City, Queensland, Australia which provides a range of settlement services to people arriving in the city as migrants or refugees.

There was a need for the project as Logan City was growing rapidly and overseas migration, coupled with the relatively young age of migrants, led to a low level of trust between Police and young people from emerging communities.

After some public conflict, parents and ethnic community elders asked MultiLink to facilitate a meeting between police, young people and parents/elders. This started a partnership between MultiLink, Logan Police District and people from more than 30 ethnic communities. In total, more than 700 people were involved. On average there were 20 community members and 10-15 police in attendance.

In some cases communities that had been in conflict in their country of origin were involved in the same workshop. However, at no time was that conflict brought into a workshop and an intercultural opportunity was created for people from those different ethnic groups to meet and form meaningful, long term relationships. Generally, running the meetings in a cross-community way would leave little time for each community to tell their story and bring diverse perspectives within the community.

The participation of high-ranking police was important to reinforce the Police hierarchy’s commitment to fairness and non-discriminatory community policing and to get approval to pay police officers to attend as part of their usual working hours.

The project’s results were a greater focus on community policing via relationships, stronger interaction between young people and police, stronger reliance on police and elders for knowledge and community intelligence. The same methodology and results occurred in the areas of child protection, education, health and family services.

How did they do it?

Sessions were held between 6pm and 9pm during which:

• the community provided information about their country of origin and migration history;
• a dinner took place so community members and police could build networks, exchange phone numbers etc. so that an ongoing relationship could be developed;
• The Police provided information about laws, domestic violence, driving, emergency services;
• Final Q&A are raised, announcements of initial plans of specific projects are made such as Police-Polynesian rugby games, police attendance at multicultural festivals, community members involvement in police activities like sports and remembrance days etc;
• Some sessions took place in mosques, football clubs, churches, which was a critical tool for reducing barriers and offering opportunities to Police who usually would not have that experience;
• Cost – approx 3 000€ x 2 years for casual staff to promote the workshops and to pay for the food prepared by community members.