Announcements - April 17, 2020
Community Links an Intereach success story
The successful Intereach Community Links program continues to expand, as it provides more people with improved access to a vast range of services.
Community Links was established only six months ago and has already doubled in size. Intereach now has at least one ‘Community Linker’ in each of its 16 offices across the Riverina, central/northern Victoria and the Mallee.
Although access to these offices has been restricted due to the coronavirus pandemic, the ‘Linkers’ continue to be available from 9am to 5pm, five days a week.
And even during the pandemic the program continues to expand. In the past fortnight Intereach has welcomed six new Community Linkers to its team.
CEO Keryn Fox said Community Links, established last year by Intereach staff, was designed to ‘link’ customers to the appropriate services and support that are available and followed an expansion in what was being offered by the organisation.
“I am delighted to report that we have provided 4,807 ‘once off’ linkages to community and mainstream supports for local community members. These are the simple requests, but each one is very important.
“We have welcomed 474 new people to Intereach to either be linked to their local community or an internal program, via our intake forms, and we have had a further 2,200 conversations with these people, helping them make further linkages to their local community.
“To achieve these outcomes in such a short time is an outstanding effort by the various members of our Intereach team,” Ms Fox said.
Intereach also continues to make its facilities available for hire by various community groups and organisations, and in the six-month recording period there were 103 different groups which used its rooms more than 780 times.
Intereach has also been proudly represented at more than 450 events and activities in its local communities.
It has supported the financial security of 131 people with approval through the No Interest Loans Scheme (NILS), with applications totalling more than $140,000, and it has contributed 1,100 new additions to the Effort To Outcomes (ETO) Asset Map to better link and support the development of communities and their members.
“We are proud of these achievements and I would like to thank and congratulate all members of our Intereach family who have contributed to these results,” Ms Fox said.
“It’s also worth acknowledging that during the past three months we’ve had to close our office doors to the public for extended periods due to the bushfire smoke in January and the current Coronavirus pandemic, which make these statistics even more significant.
“Due to its outstanding success we will continue to expand the Community Links program across our footprint.”
Intereach offers a wide range of services, support and information for children, families, older people, people living with disability, mental health and carers. For more information on Community Links or any services provided by Intereach, visit www.intereach.com.au or phone 1300 488 226.
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