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This week: Help for the disadvantaged
The three speakers at Rotary Club of Balwyn this week surprised many with their detailed description of the serious amount of social support required within both the leafy confines of Camberwell and the Boroondara council and areas of more obvious need.
Two speakers from the Ardoch Youth Foundation talked of disadvantage and lack of role models for children around some of the inner city’s high-rise developments and a speaker from Boroondara’s Camcare told the meeting of the surprising incidence of family violence behind the picturesque gardens of Boroondara and the results felt by the families there.
The CEO of Camcare, Jane Broadhead, told the meeting that 14 per cent of Camcare’s $1.4m budget had to be raised by Camcare itself.``Government funds do not supply sufficient money for some of the work we do,’’ she said.
One woman recipient of help had three children, the youngest with Asberger’s Syndrome, and her mother helped with care for the children. Then her mother died initiating a downward spiral of depression requiring relationship counselling.
``It is not always those who are isolated who need help,’’ she said. ``We are helping to develop services for families within which there is violence. There is a high incidence of violence Boroondara,’’ she added, ``and there is a need for counselling for mothers where there has been violence.’’
Carla Barbieri (left) and Alan Curtain from the Ardoch Foundation told the meeting of hardship in inner Melbourne
The Ardoch Youth Foundation based originally on a school in St. Kilda provided role models for disadvantaged children of school age living in the vicinity of the high rise inner suburban areas of Prahran, South Yarra and Sunshine.
One girl the centre helped was living in a cardboard packing case but going to school every day showing she knew the value of education, the meeting was told by Carla Barbieri. She is the Ardoch Foundations’ community education co-ordinator and western LinCS co-oordinator – links to community and schools in Melbourne’s west.
She and the corporate community relationships manager Alan Curtain spoke about the privations not expected to be found and the way connections they had formed to the community were providing help for students.
The partnership Ardoch had formed with a number of different businesses and the RCB to achieve its aims were vital to the projects it was undertaking, he said.
Disadvantaged youth problems that were being addressed by Ardoch were not confined to the poor and disadvantaged areas.
``Schools such as MacRobertson High School for girls admitted girls from the top eight per cent of the state – a selective school – and one whose students from lack of role models,’’ he said. ``That did not mean they did not need help with role models and help with things for normal living like toiletries.''
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