Service launched to support community need

A NEW site aimed at supporting the people of Ballarat and surrounds with amenities and essential items is now up and running.

After three years of work, the region’s six Rotary clubs, with support from the City of Ballarat, launched the Community Care Centre Ballarat early last week.

Committee chair Gary Morgan said the site, located to Ballarat’s east, is meant to be a one-stop place to support the region’s disadvantaged.

“The project is to provide household goods for those people in need through the welfare agencies operating here in Ballarat,” he said.

“This goes back to Shannon’s Bridge in Creswick. They’re an end-of-life care service and they were running out of storage space so we went looking for a space around here.

“From there, we were in talks with City of Ballarat and looked at the Western Emergency Relief Network or WERN which provides for all agencies.

“We’ll be doing a similar thing for Ballarat so we’ll be able to service all agencies as a one-stop shop.”

The idea behind the site is to offer a centrally-located place for local welfare organisations to source goods, which Mr Morgan said is often an issue for agencies.

The majority of items are currently being sourced by word-of-mouth through the region’s Rotary branches, and include items like toiletries, bedding materials, mattresses, appliances, and cutlery.

“If you lost everything in your house, what would you need?” Mr Morgan said. “Whether it’s domestic violence, fires or floods, all those things, we’re providing it.

“Another big thing is this is second-hand stuff which normally would have gone to waste. The whole idea is not to have this as a storage facility but to get it back out into the community.”

The project has been supported over three years with $120,000 through the municipality’s Community Partnerships program.

Deputy-mayor Cr Ben Taylor said the initiative has been an important one for the City to help get off the ground, with cost-of-living pressures adding to the project’s initial aim.

“The need’s there and we can see now as the cost-of-living crisis hits, that’s another area,” he said.

“For here, it’s more around emergencies straight away and sadly it is an issue in our communities, that there is that need for that emergency accommodation and support.

“When the idea was floated initially, it hit the top of the pile pretty quickly for our grants because it ticked a lot of the boxes around supporting people in high need.

“We have a lot of concerns from people in the community around how can we get goods and the stuff that’s needed in an emergency.”