C2 is not a model or a service but a way of thinking and working underpinned by core principles crafted with communities over many years. C2 has an evidenced-based implementation framework, based on these core principles, which addresses entrenched inequalities and creates the conditions for health and wellbeing.

COMMUNITY CENTRED
Puts residents at the heart of decision making to:

  • Co-create conditions to lead transformative change for themselves
  • Generate and listen to whole community voice
  • Locate new community energy for lasting change
  • Identify and address community priority issues

STRENGTHS BASED
Views every community as having existing latent skills that:

  • Recognises residents as the ‘experts’ holding solutions to problems, never the problem itself.
  • Creates conditions to release ‘hidden’ strengths & capacity
  • Builds strong & diverse new relations with service providers based on trust, respect & reciprocity
  • Invests in developing emergent skills and capacity of local leaders.

COLLABORATIVE
Takes ‘whole community’ approach that:

  • Brings community who live in an area, together with parallel community of those who work there, recognising needs of both
  • Recognises commonality of issues faced by both to create interdependence
  • Is non hierarchical but community-led with all partners working as equals
  • Creates self-renewing problem-solving, long-term community-led partnerships

HEALTH CREATING (SALUTOGENIC):
C2 Partnerships reduce chaos by creating a social & physical environment that:

  • Increases community & individual sense of influence, control and ability to cope
  • Provides local governance that is understandable, manageable & meaningful
  • Creates conditions for community self-organisation
  • Removes barriers to wellness as identified by communities themselves
  • Residents become proactive co-producers of the change they want to see

COMPLEX SYSTEMS THEORY BASED:

  • Views communities as complex adaptive systems with potential to transform
  • Creates context for transformational change by connecting, listening & enabling
  • Works to achieve lasting systemic community change, not short-term projects
  • Uses exchange visits to transformed communities to instil hope and belief by showing what can and has been achieved
  • Creates new community order