In community-led systems change, not everyone sees the work happening behind the scenes. But at the heart of Bundaberg’s place-based approach is a group of dedicated people whose job is to connect, coordinate, and catalyse change in the Backbone Team.
The concept of a Backbone Team comes from the Collective Impact framework and has been validated by both national practice and international evidence. The SPSP Early Evidence Report emphasises that Backbone Teams are essential infrastructure. They don’t deliver services. Instead, they create the conditions that allow services and community efforts to align, adapt, and evolve. In Bundaberg, this looks like coordinating cross-sector meetings, ensuring community voices are heard in planning processes, and using local data to drive decision-making.
Backbone Teams also hold relationships across schools, health, housing, early childhood, and local government. They help people who don’t normally work together find common ground. And perhaps most critically, they hold the long-term vision: staying focused on the systemic shifts needed to disrupt disadvantage, even as short-term projects come and go.
This kind of coordination is especially crucial in regional Queensland, where siloed funding, workforce shortages, and geographic spread can make collaboration difficult. CQUniversity research into place-based initiatives has shown that having a local coordinator improves trust, ensures consistency, and prevents duplication.
As The Water of Systems Change reminds us, systems change doesn’t happen through programs alone. It happens when people change how they work together, when power is shared, and when new relationships and practices take hold. Backbone Teams help drive these changes; they are the “glue” that holds the work together.
In Bundaberg, the Backbone role is still evolving, but it’s already making a difference. From helping services align their early childhood work, to supporting local planning around school engagement, to bringing community knowledge into strategic conversations this is invisible work that creates visible impact.