Sites closed today for AGM and Staff Development Day

A quick post to let you know all our sites will be closed today for our Annual General Meeting and Staff Development Day.

It's all about looking back at the year that was and planning for another busy year ahead.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

We will all be back on deck from tomorrow as normal.

Refugee Youth Camp 2018 delivers great mix of fun, games and learning

Fun and games for all!

Bendigo Community Health Services has hosted more than 40 young people at our annual Refugee Youth Camp.

Camp Curumbene at Corop was the venue for the annual three-day camp with young people from the Karen, Afghan and South Sudanese communities attending.

The camp delivers important learnings around lifestyle and health choices, cybersafety, mental health and wellbeing in a fun environment.

Victoria Police Senior Sergeant Craig Gaffe paid a visit to talk about the role police play in the Bendigo community.

Fun activities included canoeing, rock climbing, giant chess and tackling a rope course.

Our Settlement Services staff and volunteers run the camp as part of the BCHS commitment to making young refugees feel welcome, included and giving them the opportunity to meet new friends.

The great thing about this year's camp is that planning was helped out by young people who attended our very first two-day Refugee Youth Leadership Program run with the help of the Centre for Multicultural Youth earlier in the year.

Well done all!

Learn more about our refugee services at www.bchs.com.au

#standwithcommunityhealth campaign to raise awareness of value to Bendigo

Bendigo Community Health Services is supporting a Victorian Healthcare Association campaign called ‘We Stand With Community Health’ in the lead up to the Victorian election in November.

The #standwithcommunityhealth campaign was launched at Star Health in Melbourne today.

The focus will be raising awareness of the role community health services play in Victoria and getting all political parties to pledge support for a number of ‘asks’ in the lead up to the election, including:

• New community health centres where the public need them.
• $60 million every year to improve outdated facilities.
• Increased funding to enable community health services to keep pace with a growing population.
• Better leveraging community health to reduce pressure on Victoria’s public hospital emergency departments.
• Support for community health services to provide an even stronger health safety net for vulnerable Victorians.
• Increased public dental funding, so people can access care when they need it.

These ‘asks’ were chosen after VHA consulted with community health services to determine the biggest needs across all platforms and for this reason do not just reflect our priorities alone.

We have raised the importance of prevention and the need for a workforce strategy to attract health professionals to regional areas and these will be included in our local discussions with our sitting members and candidates.

We have written to Bendigo MPs, candidates and large organisations seeking campaign support.