Website credits
vcoss.org.au was originally designed and built by the good folk at Melbourne creative studio Gozer.
This site is compliant to the WCAG 2.0 accessibility standard. Thanks also to Natasha from the Disability Advocacy Resource Unit for giving the site a ‘test drive’ prior to launch.
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Particular thanks must go to graphic artists Pixel Buddha, DinosoftLabs, Dimitry Miroliubov and Maxim Basinski.
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- About VCOSS
- Articles and analysis
- Contact Us
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- Legal note
- Media Hub
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- Policy and research
- Privacy
- Projects
- Bushfire Recovery Project
- Climate equity
- Communities of Practice Project
- Community Services Industry Plan
- Consumer Led Good Practice Project
- COVID-19 vaccine information and resources
- Creating a platform for change for people with disability
- Empowered Lives
- Good health in the time of COVID-19
- Human Services and Health Partnership Implementation Committee
- Listening Tour
- Making sense of the Victorian Budget
- Multicultural Emergency Management Partnership
- Partnering with the Department of Education and Training
- Poverty, COVID-19 and the road ahead…
- Renters’ Rights
- Service Agreement for Community Service Organisations
- Strengthening Sector Resilience
- VCOSS Comms Alliance
- VCOSS Comms Alliance
- Wellbeing approaches
- Reconciliation
- Search
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- Victorian election platforms
- Website credits
- 2022 Treasurer’s Breakfast
- Breaking down the 2022 Victorian Budget
- Community service workers… thank you.
- Is this the budget Victoria needed?
- My Corona
Posts by category
- Category: Aboriginal
- VCOSS backs First Nations Voice
- We must get the process of self-determination right
- Closing the Gap: Where to for Victoria?
- It’s time for Treaty
- Improving Aboriginal health and wellbeing
- Improving Melbourne: preventing and addressing disadvantage
- Submission on the Commonwealth Indigenous Advancement Strategy tendering process
- Category: Budget
- We need to get Victoria off gas
- Affordable living
- A healthy climate supporting resilient communities
- Valuing the community sector
- Fair and equal justice
- A Victorian where people can thrive and live free from violence
- Stronger early childhood education, schools and skills
- Victorians in work
- A healthy Victoria
- A wellbeing state – wellbeing approaches
- A safe place to call home
- Lean, lean, lean
- Fair and equal justice
- A wellbeing state
- Inclusive communities
- An equitable response to climate change
- Women living safe and respected
- Victorians in work
- Significant mental health investment key in ‘a budget for the times’
- Back into poverty
- ‘Inequality crushing’ budget sets Victoria on a fairer course
- VCOSS unveils pre-budget blueprint to ‘deliver fairness’
- Media statement on intergenerational disadvantage
- Giant strides towards a better Victoria
- VCOSS applauds extra support to keep kids engaged in education
- Quality and safety for aged care residents
- Introduce new minimum rental standards
- Back-to-school: free education doesn’t come cheap
- VCOSS welcomes ‘budget with a heart’
- Targeted investments needed to combat growing inequality
- Victorians slide further into poverty
- Prevent, identify and respond to family violence
- Laying the foundations: VCOSS submission to Victoria's 30-year infrastructure strategy discussion paper
- Communique – Fairer funding and service agreement for the community sector
- Category: Children Young People and Families
- Foster care kids are struggling to get proof-of-life documents
- Feedback to the School Community Safety Order Ministerial Guidelines Issues Paper
- How it feels when your dad’s in prison
- Early childhood package to deliver “triple whammy of benefits”
- Keeping an eye on the kids
- The cost of a ‘free’ education
- ‘Rattling down the edge of a roller coaster’
- ‘Not just five days’
- Supporting young children and their families early to reach their full potential
- We’re behind YOUth
- The right standards for change
- ‘You have to be your own cheerleader’: staying positive in COVID
- Early Childhood Engagement of CALD Communities
- Lessons from Remote and Flexible Learning
- Safeguard kids from the justice system
- Review on Raising the Age of Criminal Responsibility
- VCOSS Submission to the Public Engagement Framework Consultation Draft
- What kind of parent evicts and cuts off support to their 18 year old kid? We do.
- Managing School Infrastructure
- Early Childhood Engagement of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Communities
- Adequacy of Newstart and related payments
- When it comes to school attendance, the simplest fix is sometimes the best
- Supporting a child safe culture
- Victorian parents desperate as schools impose unfair fees
- VCOSS all smiles at public school dental pledge
- Alliance demands ‘a Whittlesea a year’ to end social housing crisis
- Fast-track to expulsion plan fails students
- Compulsory sport pushes costs onto parents – the answer is sport subsidies
- Successful Child Information Sharing
- Literacy and Numeracy attainment in Vic senior secondary qualifications
- Homelessness Census data a ‘wake up call’
- High expectations and meaningful career advice
- Victoria must stop the abuse, and raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14
- Victorian MPs deny public housing
- Sharing information for timely and effective interventions
- Five things men say to justify violence against women
- Preventing financial crisis and exclusion
- Robodebt debacle must stop (Senate evidence)
- VCOSS backs condemnation of cruel child ‘lockdowns’
- Quality early childhood education and care
- Helping low-income Australians access insurance
- Up, up, prices are up… in 2017
- Creating engaging schools for all children and young people
- Swift action needed to protect the Latrobe Valley
- Infrastructure for diverse communities
- Victoria, please help all kids access sport
- Communities taking power
- Groundhog Day for kinder funding (again)
- VCOSS Submission to the Roadmap for Reform: Strong Families Safe Children
- Vulnerable children and youth need more education support
- Auditor General report supports call for better ‘middle years’ transition planning
- Auditor-General reveals impact of school costs for families
- Category: Climate change / environment
- Feeling the Heat
- Adapting to the scorching summers ahead
- Targeting fairness: Victoria’s emissions reduction target
- Input to Sustainability Victoria’s 2021 – 2030 organisational strategy.
- Victorian renters deserve solar equality
- Melbourne needs a treechange
- An equitable decade of climate change action
- Feeling the Heat
- Breathing easy, living well
- Perspectives from the frontline
- New Activities Consultation
- Submission to the Inquiry into Environmental Infrastructure for Growing Populations
- Submission to the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements
- Submission to the Victorian Energy Upgrades Targets Consultation
- Tackling climate change in Victorian communities
- Equitable transition to a zero net emissions Victoria
- Category: Community Sector
- Victorian Jobs Guarantee
- VCOSS welcomes community sector jobs initiatives
- Funding indexation breakthrough
- Now’s the time to gather momentum
- COVID-19 Digital Forum #5 (August)
- Submission to the inquiry into the Skills for Victoria’s Growing Economy
- COVID-19 Digital Forum #4 (July)
- VCOSS submission to Portable Long Service Scheme draft regulations
- COVID-19 Digital Forum #3
- COVID-19 vaccine information and resources
- Social services fearful of job cuts and service reductions amid funding uncertainty
- We’re not doing enough to help community organisations confront climate change
- Community organisations need relief from ‘stealth’ funding cuts
- Long Service Benefits Portability Interim Regulations 2019
- Community service trainees begin work
- Cash injection to train Victoria’s disability workforce
- Social service jobs to “dodge the automation bullet”, fuelling jobs boom
- Victoria’s Social Economy
- Jobs of the future
- Reliving the 2018 VCOSS Good Life Summit
- Big political announcements at the Good Life Summit
- The little House that could.. meet Morwell’s social heart
- Review of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) legislation
- Government’s Homelessness Action Plan has power to change lives
- Building financial capability
- Ensuring a smooth transition to the NDIS
- A growing industry
- Navigating health and social service reform
- VCOSS AT 70: OUR STORY SO FAR.
- VIDEO—Building the care workforce of the future
- In defence of those ‘awareness weeks’ you think are rubbish
- ‘Local solutions’ needed to combat entrenched poverty and disadvantage
- Feedback on the ACNC 2017 Annual Information Statement
- Vic community charities boom, despite crippling red tape burden
- More Than Charity
- Data Availability and Use
- The “jobs of the future” nobody is talking about.
- A more accountable Victoria
- After Hazelwood – a healthier future for the Latrobe Valley
- Building on the value of Victoria's community sector
- Climate of change: Briefing Paper 3 – Client control
- Climate of change: Briefing Paper 2 – Client choice
- Climate of change: Briefing Paper 1 – Purchase of service by government
- Climate of change: Briefing Papers – Introduction
- Strengthening the state
- Response initiatives to heatwave threats
- Category: Cost of Living
- The real frontline against the ‘cost of living’
- “I’m over it” – Victorians share their 2022 feelings
- Care factor
- Out-of-work Victorians brace for the end of COVID Disaster Payments
- Broke, stressed, worried, defeated, anxious, and physically sick
- Victoria braces for a brutal few months as COVID supports are wound back
- ‘Name has been changed’: on JobSeeker, personal stories and structural change
- Power companies resume heartless pre-pandemic disconnections
- Energy package to save money, boost health and cut emissions
- Did we just end poverty, and then let it return?
- “It feels really sort of paralysing”: young in the time of COVID
- Locked down and locked out: the struggle to survive with no support
- ‘I’m going to have to make some tough choices’: Struggling for the basics
- ‘Pretty crap at the moment to be honest’: life on disability pension
- Submission to the ESC’s Victorian Default Offer 2021 consultation paper
- Supporting energy customers through the coronavirus pandemic
- Submission to the Australian Energy Regulator on the EDPR
- Getting through COVID-19 with the lights and heater on
- A little relief will go a long way for thousands struggling due to COVID-19
- Proposed framework for setting maximum prices in embedded networks
- Energy upgrade targets – putting low-income households first
- A ‘perfect storm’ is driving financial counsellors to burnout
- Ensuring energy contracts are clear and fair
- Victorians urged to brace for Jan 1 price changes
- Every Victorian deserves to live in a ‘healthy home’
- Five charts on what being a Newstart recipient really looks like
- Fairer energy contracts and discounts for all Victorians
- The greatest burden of climate change will fall on those in poverty.
- VCOSS hails default energy deal as a win for Victorians
- Power bosses should get out of the way and back fairer pricing.
- A simple, efficient and accessible energy deal
- Energy retailer family violence support
- Fair energy outcomes for Victorians
- Navigating bill stress
- Better energy deal information
- Melbourne at eight million
- Trimming the fat from electricity prices
- Getting solar tariffs right
- A fair, well-functioning electricity market
- Victorian Energy Upgrades
- Reduce emissions and bills with clean energy
- Battling On: Persistent Energy Hardship
- Consumers in the box seat as power pledges rain
- A state-owned energy retailer?
- Victorians held to ransom in energy quagmire
- A fair energy market for people on low incomes
- Getting non-licensed electricity provider registration right
- Minimum Electricity Feed-In Tariffs
- Victorians brace for New Year’s Day price hikes
- VCOSS unveils comprehensive plan to fight inequality and boost wellbeing
- Fixed benefit periods notification obligations
- Retail electricity pricing
- Protecting people with payment difficulties
- New rules will help fight energy disconnections: VCOSS
- Melbourne congestion tax ‘risks hitting people on low-incomes’
- Independent energy report provides an ‘action blueprint’ for Victoria
- Power Struggles — Everyday battles to stay connected
- Australians suffering under ‘horror’ power prices are being shut out
- Ballooning rents leave Victorians out of pocket
- Staying connected
- Helping people to stay connected
- Power bill reform on the right track
- Making energy markets work
- Unfair Centrelink clawback must stop
- Energy issues for low-income households – September 2015
- Submission to Inquiry into the Financial Hardship Programs of Energy Retailers
- Category: COVID-19 Issues Alerts
- COVID mantra of ‘personal responsibility’ is fine – in theory
- A short guide to protecting everybody from COVID this winter
- Doing ‘hard lockdowns’ better
- Caring for Victoria’s carers in the COVID crisis
- Loneliness in the time of COVID
- Emergency relief in the Coronavirus crisis
- Smartphone tracing is happening. So let’s do it right.
- Six things to consider in confronting family violence during lockdown
- What household lockdown might mean for different kinds of households
- Six things to think about as we (rightly) ban evictions
- Eight things to consider as we shut schools
- Category: Culturally and linguistically diverse
- Category: Disability Ageing and Carers
- Building a stronger foundation
- “We are all the experts in our own lives.”
- A fairer, equal and more inclusive Victoria
- Dear Minister Reynolds…
- NDIS access, eligibility and independent assessments
- Independent Assessments: Look what you’ve created
- Aged Care Royal Commission – a summary of recommendations
- Planning policy for personalised budgets and plan flexibility
- NDIS access, eligibility and independent assessments
- A State of Inclusion
- Regulatory Impact Statement for Worker Screening Regulations 2020
- VCOSS response to the Second Review of the Premises Standards 2020
- Locked down for the long haul
- TAFE: Accessible for all
- Advancing an accessible and inclusive Australia
- Forced to embrace technology
- Staying close to nature, staying well
- Building choice, control and confidence
- Changing attitudes and realising rights
- Keep Going for Gold
- Equitable and inclusive emergency planning and responses
- Growing a skilled, valued and supported disability workforce
- Seven ways not to sideline people with disability in our pandemic response
- Safety, dignity and choice
- Supporting a strong, safe and sustainable sector
- In-home aged care should be a support, not a burden
- Don’t disregard my pain
- Carly Findlay delivers a masterclass on social media and disability advocacy
- Urgent need for authorities to be more ‘hands on’ with NDIS market stewardship
- Active market stewardship for the National Disability Insurance Scheme
- Make public transport accessible to all
- Gold Standard Accessible Housing
- Let’s get Victoria’s mental health system back on track
- Framing the big picture for Australians with disability
- Towards an inclusive DHHS
- Choice, control and certainty in SDA
- Strengthening the NDIS
- Vulnerable people in emergencies
- Quality and safety for aged care residents
- New employment target for people with disability is a positive ‘first step’
- A high quality disability workforce
- Feedback on inclusive education policy
- Integrated care at home for older Australians
- Skilling our future workforce
- Safeguarding quality services for people with disability
- Measuring and managing NDIS scheme costs
- Deliver high quality, safe services
- Funding the NDIS in full
- Getting NDIS pricing right
- Delivering high quality services for all mental health consumers
- STATEMENT—Zero tolerance approach to abuse of people with a disability
- STATEMENT—Ridesharing in Victoria
- Fairer Futures
- Delivering an NDIS that meet the needs of all
- Housing for people with disability
- The economic value of informal care in Australia
- Category: Education and Training
- Strengthening coordination and collaboration
- Senior Secondary Reform
- Don’t take it as read
- An aspirational Vocational and Applied Learning System
- Soaring back-to-school costs highlight education funding shortfalls
- Don’t confuse a public education with a free education.
- Pathway to a positive future
- Sustainable employment for disadvantaged jobseekers
- Better job pathways
- A strong future for adult learning
- Strong, inclusive schools front-and-centre in Victorian election
- New ‘10 Point Plan’ to make schools more engaging
- The right evidence for improving education
- Building a high quality and equitable education system for all Victorians
- Submission: VET Funding Review
- Joint submission to the DHHS and the DET in response to Draft Service Agreement 2015-2018
- Category: Election
- Category: Emergency Management
- Value strength, build resilience
- COVID-19 and the Victorian Community Sector
- Commonwealth must not wind-down support as the pandemic escalates
- 10 years of emergency management reform
- Stay safe during extreme weather
- Building resilient communities
- Managing power station closures
- Making the most of ‘spontaneous volunteers’
- Reducing risks for people experiencing homelessness in disasters and emergency events
- The social impact of natural disasters – at what cost?
- VCOSS Supplementary submission to the Hazelwood Mine Fire Inquiry
- 2015 VCOSS Submission to the Hazelwood Mine Fire Inquiry
- Rising waters: Disadvantage and flood management strategies
- 2015 VCOSS-MAV Emergency Management Forum videos now online
- Human rights in emergency management
- One year on: Morwell and the 2014 Hazelwood Mine fire
- Disaster Preparedness and Generalisable Community Resilience
- Category: Employment
- Category: Environment and climate change
- Statement: Reviving the SEC
- Fair and fast action for a safer climate
- Victorian Gas Substitution Roadmap consultation
- Adapting the community sector
- Every risk needs addressing
- Urgent action required to protect most vulnerable from polluted air
- Response to the Issues Paper Embedded Networks Review
- We can’t let the tech revolution turbocharge inequality.
- Survey Report: Resilience
- What does climate change really mean for Victorians?
- Category: Essential Services
- Power bill hike will hurt struggling Victorians
- Protecting consumers of distributed energy resources consultation paper
- Comfortable, safe and saving money
- Victorian Default Offer Determination 2022-23 – our feedback
- ESC’s draft decision on Victorian Default Offer price for 2022
- Supporting energy customers experiencing family violence
- Knowing the best energy offer
- Power companies have a ‘moral responsibility’ to increase assistance
- Setting Victorian Energy Efficiency Targets
- Category: Family Violence
- An Australia free from all forms of violence
- Delivering a Victoria free from violence
- VCOSS applauds social housing ‘downpayment’ but urges more
- Recovering from intimate violence and relearning to accept life’s “roses”
- Sharing information to protect against family violence
- Analyzing the ESC’s proposed Family Violence Clause
- Ground-breaking plan to end family violence in Victoria
- Tackling family violence and gender inequality
- Tackling family violence and gender inequality
- VCOSS submission to Royal Commission into Family Violence
- Category: Gender and Sexuality
- Category: Health and Wellbeing
- Listening to what matters
- Voices of Victoria
- Vax facts. What we’re learning from diverse Victorian communities.
- Keeping Victorians Active
- A quick overview of Victoria’s Mental Health Royal Commission final report
- Bold mental health report sets roadmap for real change
- Loneliness and loss to cast a long shadow this Christmas
- My ‘Deaf family’ during COVID-19
- Iso Drift
- Statement on public housing lockdowns
- Beyond the economy: why social progress should be measured
- Don’t abandon the poor and the sick in a rush to combat climate change
- Rethinking mental health
- Surviving the heat
- Every Suburb, Every Town: mapping poverty in Victoria.
- Accessibility and quality of mental health services in rural and remote Australia
- Recognising the true costs of realtime prescription monitoring
- The Coroner’s case for safe injecting
- Reducing trauma and delay for witnesses and victims
- Response to the Medical Treatment Planning and Decisions Bill 2016
- Pokie revenue is “dirty money”
- VCOSS Submission to 10-year Mental Health Strategy
- Category: Housing and Homelessness
- Going the distance on Victorian rooming houses standards
- Updated minimum standards for rooming houses in Victoria
- Why Victoria should put Housing First
- Leaving a Games legacy for good
- We need to talk about the rent affordability crisis
- Victoria’s new rental rules, one year on
- A contemporary social housing regulatory framework for Victoria
- Changing the game on homelessness
- Build on the Big Housing Build
- What you need to know about Victoria’s new rental rules
- VCOSS analysis – Final Report of the Inquiry into Homelessness in Victoria
- Draft 30-Year Infrastructure Strategy
- Colossal social housing investment to change countless lives
- VCOSS response to the Review of Real Estate Education Regulations
- Is COVID causing a housing crisis?
- REIV must retract callous and dangerous landlord COVID directive
- If not now, then when? Victoria’s ‘magic moment’ to end homelessness.
- Victorians back significant social housing push
- Submission to the Inquiry into Homelessness in Australia
- Social housing, not home buyers grants, is the best stimulus
- More social housing would avoid a COVID homelessness spike and rebuild the economy.
- Make Social Housing Work
- Social housing must be a priority for Victorian COVID building taskforce
- Home: the foundation for a good life
- VCOSS applauds new measures to avoid renters’ corona catastrophe.
- Make Social Housing Work
- Deliver Rental Fairness
- House-dreaming
- Bold action is required to end homelessness and fix our housing crisis
- Ending homelessness. It can be done.
- “A good start”: VCOSS reviews Victoria’s new rental rules.
- Australia needs strong community housing regulation
- No corner of Victoria untouched by poverty, new ‘atlas’ reveals
- Statement on fair rental laws victory
- Build social housing for the future
- Belligerent Feds holding the homeless to ransom
- Victoria delivers for renters
- Protecting tenancy rights in specialist housing
- STATEMENT—Longer leases are welcome, but renters’ rights must not be reduced
- VCOSS applauds ‘game changing’ $2.1b social housing package
- Strengthening Rental Laws
- Moving the homeless on does not make them disappear
- Regulation of property conditions in the rental market
- Rent, bonds and other charges
- Category: Justice and Human Rights
- Final Report: Inquiry into Victoria’s Criminal Justice System
- Strong communities are safe communities
- The day they locked down my home
- What do we really mean when we talk about ‘justice’?
- VCOSS welcomes bipartisan shift on justice
- Towards effective legal assistance
- Why Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights needs a shakeup
- Mandatory sentencing is not the answer
- Stop the Stigma: Letter to the Editor
- Helping victims of crime recover
- Fair and equitable access to legal aid
- Youth Justice Reform
- Government changes will undermine Victoria’s youth justice system
- Restoring Youth Justice
- Sending more Victorians to prison is not making us safer
- Community safety undermined by youth justice realignment
- Fair and equitable access to legal aid
- Narrowing the Justice Gap
- VCOSS Submission to 2015 Review of Charter of Human Rights
- Category: Mental Health
- Category: Regional Victoria
- Category: Transport
- Category: Uncategorized
- Feeling the Heat
- Vale Kim Sykes
- Supporting the community services sector post COVID-19
- Draft Recommendations of the Embedded Networks Review
- VCOSS launches open-access vaccination ad
- Quality Initial Teacher Education Review
- Social Housing Regulation Review – Background and Scoping Paper
- Victorian Government inflicts post-COVID funding cut on charities
- Victorian Early Childhood Workforce Strategy
- The wheels are not going round and round
- Stories into Evidence
- ‘Getting to Fair’ draft consumer vulnerability strategy
- More support needed for storm residents without power
- ESC’s Victorian Default Offer 2022 approach consultation paper
- Stronger early childhood education and schools
- More than a band-aid
- SkillsIQ Draft Community Services Training Package
- Affordable living
- National Children’s Education and Care Workforce Strategy (2021-30)
- Value the community sector
- A safe place to call home
- Women and children thriving, free from violence
- ABC Melbourne crosses the language barrier to connect communities through COVID
- Category: VCOSS Organisation
- Category: Workforce
- The government is clamping down on charities — and it could have a chilling effect
- Holding the fabric together
- Victorian On-Demand Workforce Inquiry recommendations
- Community Traineeship Pilot Program
- On what level does ‘drip funding’ social service bodies make sense?
- Making the ‘gig economy’ work for everybody
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VCOSS acknowledges the Traditional Owners of Country. We pay respect to Elders past and present, and to emerging leaders. Our business is conducted our business on sovereign, unceded Aboriginal land.
We support a First Nations Voice to Federal Parliament. This year, you have the opportunity to vote YES for change.
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