Volunteers vow to keep relief centre alive

AN emergency relief centre in Grovedale that was due to close today (Friday 6 March) has been granted a last-minute lifeline, allowing the service to remain open until the end of June.

The Grovedale Emergency Relief Centre has been fighting for survival since September, when Uniting Vic.Tas first announced its plans to close the site in Torquay Road and merge it with another relief centre in Norlane.

The reprieve, Uniting said, follows a one-off federal funding “surge” linked to the January bushfires in the Otway Ranges and flash flooding near Lorne.

“Given the multiple disasters in the Otway region and the accessibility of the Grovedale site for these communities, we will maintain services at this site until 30 June 2026, to continue to support those affected,” Uniting north and west Victoria executive director, Genevieve Schreiber, said.

The charity has blamed a “challenging funding landscape” for its intention to consolidate its services.

But the Grovedale centre’s dedicated volunteers are determined to keep the centre running beyond June, even after Uniting withdraws its operations from the site.

Helen Gaynard, who has been a volunteer at the Grovedale centre for eight years, said the looming closure had come as a shock to the team, who have raised serious concerns about how vulnerable residents would access support if the service disappeared.

The centre’s clients, she said, are also devastated.

“It’s our clients that we’re incredibly worried about,” Gaynard said. “We have people coming in from along the Surf Coast, Armstrong Creek, Newcomb.

“They’ve probably got $5 in their pockets to pay for petrol to get them home again. We are really the last place people do want to come, but we’re the first place, because they know what they’re going to get with us.”

The centre supports about 3,000 people a year, with demand continuing to grow. In the past six months alone, an addition 40 people per month have begun seeking help, Gaynard said.

Some clients are sleeping rough, others have escaped domestic violence. Many are battling illness, living with disability or navigating neurodivergence.

“We see so many and with so many terrible stories and they don’t have anywhere to go,” she said.

The centre’s volunteers are now seeking to partner with an organisation able to keep the emergency relief service operating beyond June.

Gaynard concedes the task ahead is “bigger than Ben-Hur”, but Corangamite federal member Libby Coker has thrown her support behind the cause.

“The volunteers at the Grovedale Emergency Relief Centre are so passionate about the work they do, and I hope we can find a community-driven solution to ensure their work can continue beyond 30 June,” she said. “We need an independent, community-based model that’s driven by volunteers while being financially sustainable – that’s a tough ask and the group and I know there’s much work to do.”

Committed to helping the volunteers through this process, Coker encouraged everyone who wanted to join the effort to get in touch with her office or the Uniting Church in Grovedale.

“The bottom line is that this service supports our most-vulnerable community members,” she said. “It’s so important that we continue to work towards solutions that will see these people supported.”