Programme planning priorities

Participants identified three priorities when planning mental health communication programmes, with differences reflecting roles and work experiences: seven participants, including the Director, prioritised the target audience and audience analysis; two participants thought budgets were an operational point of first concern; and another participant identified the programme’s purpose and communication strategies to reach programme’s goals.

Overall, understanding the audience was a major planning priority for Centre 12. Participants discussed three methods of audience analysis: one informal method (observing people’s way of life, religious dress and lifestyles); and two more formal techniques (using information from a summative survey and meeting with opinion leaders in the communities). Centre 12 also conducted a formal survey to understand the needs of the affected people, although this was not mentioned in the interviews.

The Director argued that a target-based approach is the most important concern for programme planners: “it has to come from what the targets want, not what we think they should do or should know” and “audience segmentation was also important because different audiences need different content”. She also referred to informal observation and general knowledge:

we need to notice people’s way of life, religions, lifestyles. For instance, most

of the people here like watching television than reading, men like talking at tea houses, women like to meet and talk at the religious ceremony or marriage ceremony.

A participant who took responsibility for collecting and analysing programme outcomes said their first priority was using information from the previous summative survey to design the new programmes:

When we ran any workshops, at the end we surveyed their needs for further activities. Then, we identified the most important topic they requested and set up new programmes based on their desires. (Staff no. 6)

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Two staff members with experience in launching community-based programmes said they organise meetings in communities and make a plan together with opinion leaders. One of them, who had launched programmes for women and children, said they started by identifying community opinion leaders and seeking their views:

I took responsibility for the programme supporting children affected by the crisis which was funded by UNICEF. Before we presented our project to UNICEF, we identified the area’s needs by organising meetings with community representatives and asked them how they wanted to be supported.

Then, we summarized all of their desires and planned programmes…. This is

the main factor of our success. (Staff no. 10)

Programme planning with community leaders was confirmed as an effective strategy by another staff member who also worked on community-based programmes. She said it could build up a sense of ownership:

Before we started every programme, we invited the community leaders, parents, religious leaders, community health staff and other relevant sectors to attend the meeting and told them what we were going to do. Then we asked for their suggestions about how the programme suited the area. They would make some suggestions. For instance, on timing, in Ramadan month people feel unhappy joining the activities because they have to cook in the afternoon and pray in the day time. (Staff no. 7)

A different priority for programme planning came from two social worker staff members who said the source of budgets was their first planning concern because the Centre received budgets from several sources and each provided for a specific purpose:

Firstly, we will separate programmes through sources of budget. Our main source comes from the Department of Mental Health which aims to run the same activities as the other centres such as the four development age groups programme. The second source also come from the Department of Mental Health but it is specific for the southern border provinces which focuses only on the rehabilitation programmes for the three southern border provinces and four districts in Songkhla province. The last budget comes from outside organizations. If using the budget from the Department of Mental Health, in

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the end of August or September we will plan the programmes broadly and design the activities in each programme. For instance, the Department provided budget on the four age groups programme but what activities we did depending on us, such as the activities for children in school or for adults to educate about mental health or potential supporting activities. Activities will vary depending on problems in the area at that time. (Staff no. 3)

This participant confirms the earlier discussion (see section 4.5.3) about the impact of policy and the resultant government budgeting structures on Centre 12’s activities. However, the Centre had some flexibility because of access to funding from UNICEF, the National Health Security Office of Thailand, and the Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre (Staff No. 2).

Budgeting was also noted as a priority by one of the longest serving staff members, who focused on cost-effectiveness:

Media production for instance, we need to think that people will use our media in practice. So we have to ask users whether our programmes suit their needs. It was about the desired outcome we received from the amount of money we paid. (Staff no. 1)

This participant, whose responsibility was researching and exploring new knowledge about mental health, said he thought of a programme’s overall direction first when planning. For instance, with programmes aiming to disseminate new interventions, he first set up models that guided the participants to see the overall picture of interventions and then presented them to the target audiences for feedback:

As programmes’ facilitators, sometimes we created models which we wanted to

disseminate in the [geographic] area which was mostly high risk or had some severe cases. At first those models might not meet with people’s needs. Then, we organised workshops for criticising the models by people and organisations which were relevant to the models’ applications. We told them to add or edit those models as much as they wanted. It was an area-based consideration. We gave people freedom to share ideas. (Staff no. 1)

Participants’ reflections in this section show priorities included audience analysis and audience segmentation; source of budgets; and programme objectives and

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communication strategies to reach the goals. Audience analysis was provided by informal observation, summative surveys, and community meetings with opinion leaders. Additionally, there is other evidence of survey and audience analysis research conducted by Centre 12 and its use of information from other organisations. Interestingly, most (seven) of the participants said they put the target audiences as the first priority, which ideally should bring about programme success and sustainability. However, as a government agency, Centre 12 had to overcome limitations such as budgets and changing government policy.