2023 Grant Recipients
Congratulations to our 2023 Primary Grant Recipient
National Centre for Childhood Grief
The National Centre for Childhood Grief (NCCG) cares for bereaved children and their families following the death of a parent, sibling or other close loved one. One in 20 Australian children will experience the death of their parent before the age of 18 and many more another loved one. Close family bereavement is amongst the most traumatic experiences for children, with profound and life-long mental and social impacts. The NCCG’s professional individual and group counselling programs help bereaved children and their families learn to live with their grief, build their coping skills and resilience and empower them to live their best life. The service is ongoing, available 50 weeks a year, 6 days a week, supporting approximately 400 bereaved children and their families at any one time. The demand grows by 10-30% every year.
IMPACT100 Sydney North funding will be used to build the scale and clinical quality of NCCG’s online counselling. 25% of their counselling services are now delivered online at the request of families.
Congratulations to our 2023 $20,000 Impact Grant Recipients
Mary’s House
Mary’s House Services is tackling the issue of domestic violence and abuse and its impact on women and children. On average, one woman is murdered by her current or former partner every week in Australia. 1 in 6 women have experienced physical or sexual violence by a current or previous cohabiting partner. Mary’s House’s mission it to offer hope, compassion and safety to women and children who have experienced domestic violence and abuse through the provision of quality services, advocacy and mobilising change in our community. Mary’s House refuge, a safe house for women and children escaping domestic violence and abuse, can take up to 4 families at a time. The Daisy Centre, a specialised, integrated support service masked within a large shopping hub, provides professional and individually tailored case management for women who have and are experiencing domestic abuse. In the last 12 months the Daisy Centre has provided support and case management to over 125 families.
IMPACT100 Sydney North funding will help support the employment of a specialist Intake and Referral Caseworker to operate between the Daisy Centre and Mary’s House refuge for 12 months to triage calls, and when necessary provide immediate protection, or a well informed referral.
One Meal Northern Beaches
One Meal’s mission is to provide dignified access to healthy nutritious food relief support for vulnerable, marginalised and at risk members of our community, and in doing so also create opportunities for positive connection, conversation and engagement. One Meal Northern Beaches has doubled its food relief in the past 9 months with the biggest increase (40%) being for women and children escaping domestic violence. It provides nutritious fresh or frozen meals and fresh food and pantry hampers delivered to people referred by social service agencies and community groups. Community dinners are held in several Northern Beaches locations, such as Gilbert Park, open to anyone in need. Breakfast packs are provided to 150 primary and high school students. It is a collaborative program – 20 agencies on the Northern Beaches refer clients. They contribute to 12,000 meals a week, benefiting approximately 2000 people.
IMPACT100 Sydney North funding will support increased community meals and targeted food delivery program, including acquiring bulk food at discount rates direct from suppliers. It will help enable the expansion of their food services to meet growing demand.
StreetWork
StreetWork is seeking funding for its Finding Home Project which supports at-risk young people affected by homelessness, through community-based, early-intervention service delivery that adopts a collaboration service model. The Program is young person-centred, place-based and focuses on providing an end-to-end solution. Finding Home combines a community network of specialist youth service partners, to deliver a holistic model of service that reflects the unique social and welfare needs of each young person. Finding Home is delivered in partnership with The Northern Sydney Region Youth Services Collaborative, combining StreetWork Youth Case Workers (mentors), professional psychologists (e.g., KYDS, headspace, North Psych), qualified life coaches/educators and youth homelessness services (e.g. Mission Australia, Taldumande Youth Services, Catholic Care). Finding Home supports medium to high at-risk young people aged 11-18 affected by homelessness, mental health concerns including suicide and self-harm, social isolation, destructive relationships, educational disengagement, crime, alcohol/substances misuse or those with poor employment opportunities.
IMPACT100 Sydney North funding will help Finding Home. This includes funding Youth Case Workers, psychologists, life coach educators/instructors, event/facilities hire, food expenses for young people, graduation expenses, program coordination, and data analysis, evaluation reporting and grant acquittal.
Congratulations to our 2023 Semi-finalists
Be Centre
With 50% of adult mental illness beginning before the age of 14 years old, Be Centre is tackling the problem of early childhood trauma. They support children (3-12 years) who have experienced adversity or trauma such as domestic violence, bullying, medical trauma, grief/loss, abuse, neglect, and other adverse childhood experiences, while also supporting the parents/carers of children impacted by trauma, so they build strong and secure family relationships. Children who have experienced trauma are benefitting from their one-to-one Hear Me Play program which includes weekly sessions over a minimum of 12 weeks. Be Centre’s Teach Me Play (parent/ child attachment) program helps parents and carers. Through play, children can communicate their experiences, emotions and concerns in a non- threatening and comfortable way. Last financial year, Be Centre delivered almost 2000 play therapy sessions to just over 190 children and over 225 one-to-one parent support sessions were held with over 70 parents/carers.
DV West
DV West has been operating an Aboriginal specific Domestic Violence crisis accommodation and support service since 2013, known as Wirrawee Gunya. Each year they are forced to turn away many women and children due to the lack of crisis accommodation services in the Western Sydney Area. Together with Habitat for Humanity, DV West are building a purpose-built crisis accommodation and outreach service for Aboriginal women and children escaping domestic and family violence in Western Sydney. This site will have capacity to house up to 15 women and children in 3 individual units each with separate kitchen, laundry and bathroom facilities. One of the units is fully accessible for women and children with physical disabilities. The average length of stay will be 6 weeks. The building will also have staff offices, and rooms for visiting services and groups to operate an outreach service.
Eat Up Australia
Eat Up’s mission is to feed hungry students so they can grow, learn, and succeed. Since 2014, Eat Up has delivered 2.5M+ free lunches to over 650 schools across Australia. EatUp currently supports approximately 60,000+ school kids. They are the only national provider of free school lunch programs and receive no government funding. Their goal is to continue to provide a critical lunchtime food relief program for disadvantaged students. 1 in 5 Australian children experienced food-insecurity in the past 12 months (Foodbank, 2020). Missing meals has a big impact on a child’s growth, development, and learning-leading to fatigue, illness, challenging behaviour, and poor learning outcomes. Hunger contributes to the disadvantage cycle, with children falling further behind their peers in school. “When kids are hungry, they can’t concentrate, when kids can’t concentrate, they can’t learn!”- Linda Richards, Primary School Principal.
Open Support
Open Support provides accommodation and integrated wrap-around support for women and children seeking short term crisis accommodation (up to 3 months) and transitional accommodation (4 to 24 months). This wrap-around support is key to empowering women to establish a safe, independent and fulfilling future. Insufficient financial resources makes leaving a violent relationship challenging for women, and financial insecurity is also a reason why some women return to violent relationships. They are often overwhelmed by the myriad of challenges that lie ahead on their road to independence and safety, with a lack of financial knowledge and confidence ranking highly.