BCH celebrates 50 years of community service

THE Bellarine’s leading health network has celebrated its 50th year of commitment to the region, with residents, former staff and CEOs coming together to honour a half-century of operations.

Bellarine Community Health (BCH) workers gathered at BCH Point Lonsdale last week to mark five decades since the opening of the Queenscliff and District Community Health Centre (QDCHC), Victoria’s first Community Health Centre.

“Queenscliff led the way in the setting up of a type of health care delivery service which has proved successful for 50 years,” BCH CEO Garry Ellis said.

The QDCHC grew over the decades to eventually become BCH with the original Queenscliff centre the result of planning and fundraising by the local community beginning in 1948, founding the Queenscliff and District Memorial Hospital Society in the process.

Despite the community’s efforts to establish a new local hospital, government policy changed over the years and no small new hospitals have been built since.

In 1969, the Hospitals and Charities Commission recommended to the committee the concept of a Community Health Centre, providing a range of health services designed to meet the social and environmental needs of the community it was to serve.

“Queenscliff was selected to be the community in which to establish a Community Health Centre,” Mr Ellis added.

“That model was to become the first of a series of similar centres which were established across the Bellarine and in other areas of Victoria.”

The Queenscliff and District Community Health Centre was officially opened by then Governor of Victoria, Sir Rohan Delacombe in September 1972.

By 2002, the Queenscliff centre had amalgamated with three other Community Health Centres (Drysdale, Portarlington, and Ocean Grove) that existed on the Bellarine to become known as the Bellarine Peninsula Community Health Service.

In 2009, the service was officially renamed Bellarine Community Health.