Voices of Victoria

One important element of VCOSS’s wellbeing agenda is listening what Victorian communities want and need.

It’s particularly vital that we hear from lesser-heard voices: people who don’t often have a say in the policy-making process, whose needs are therefore less likely to be met.

VCOSS’s listening tours are central to this mission.

The tours have a simple agenda: to engage people in a setting where they feel comfortable and empowered to talk about issues that affect them, and then to listen.

In the 2022 Listening Tour we wanted to learn about people’s lived experiences coming out of the “COVID years”, and their aspirations for the future. We were conscious not to be prescriptive, not to steer people to the issues we thought they should care about.

What emerged from this community-led approach is a textured understanding of Victorians’ fears and hopes as they emerged from the worst of the COVID pandemic.

The process also provided valuable insights into the kinds of assistance people most want and need, to help them lead a good life now and into the future.

The Voices of Victoria report details the feedback we received from 12 diverse communities across the state.

We analysed the contributions of the more than 200 people consulted face-to-face and online and grouped their views thematically according to geographic location, cohort and age.

What did we hear?

Participants expressed feelings of disconnection, loneliness and isolation.

People were frustrated with the difficulties and barriers in accessing government services.

Concerns about the ‘digital divide’, about access to decent food and about the rising costs of living also featured heavily.

These challenges were compounded, people told us, by an overwhelming sense of exhaustion after the hard years of 2020 and 2021. A phrase volunteered more than once was, “I’m over it”.

But this report doesn’t just enumerate challenges; it also proposes solutions.

We have combined the insights of community members with the expertise of VCOSS policy analysts to develop four recommendations for change.

The Voices of Victoria Listening Tour is the subject of a case study in Australia’s leading health policy journal, Public Health Research & Practice. Read the article here.

What are we doing next?

A 2023 Listening Tour recently concluded, building on what we learned in 2022 and finding out how communities are faring as we move into the ‘social recovery’ stage of the pandemic.

We visited more communities across the state, and we’ll be taking what we heard directly to government and business leaders and building up the research base for a Victorian wellbeing agenda.