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Engaging your community and Elders: a co-design starting point

How to bring your community and Elders into the design of virtual care.

What this is: a practical starting point for engaging your community and Elders in how virtual care is designed and run.

Who it's for: ACCHO leaders, clinic and nurse managers, and anyone introducing virtual care in a community.

Why co-design, not roll-out

A service designed with the community works. A service imposed on it often does not. In community-controlled and remote settings, the community is not just the audience for virtual care. It is the author of how virtual care should work locally. Co-design is how you get there, and it is the foundation of culturally safe care and community trust.

Start by listening

Before any technical decisions, have open conversations:

  • Talk with the community, and where relevant the Elders and the board, about what virtual care is and what it could do here.
  • Listen for what matters locally: who people trust, how consent should work, what would make care feel safe, and what has not worked before.
  • Be honest about what virtual care can and cannot do, so expectations are realistic.

Bring Elders in early

Elders carry authority, knowledge and trust. Involving them early, and genuinely, shapes a service that fits the community and carries weight locally. Ask how they want to be involved, and make it real, not a token consultation after the decisions are made.

Co-design the way it works

Work through the practical questions together:

  • Which patients and conditions virtual care should start with.
  • How scheduling and consent will work in a way that suits the community.
  • Who the trusted local people are who will support consults.
  • How the service will communicate with patients and families.
  • How the community stays involved as the service runs, not just at the start.

Governance and data

  • Agree how virtual care will be governed locally, and who has a say.
  • Talk about data early. In a community-controlled service, the community has an interest in who owns and controls the data the service creates, in line with Indigenous data sovereignty principles. The Privacy, security and data sovereignty article covers this in detail.

Keep the relationship going

Co-design is not a meeting you hold once. Build in regular check-ins so the community can see how virtual care is going, raise concerns, and shape what comes next. A service that keeps listening is one the community keeps trusting.

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Visionflex acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging.