Mission Australia
Our Vision is to see a fairer Australia by enabling people in need to find pathways to a better life
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Researching and reporting the changing face of charity Mission Australia is one of the nation's leading charities and community service organisations and is the ‘face’ of thousands of personal stories. Click here to view media releases We welcome media inquiries in relation to our work and can help journalists by sourcing client-stories and staff to provide expert comment and advice. Our Research and Social Policy unit can also assist media and students with research and reporting requirements. For queries relating to a specific media item, email the contact person listed at the end of each release listed. |
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News Updates
| Garden therapy for mentally illWednesday, 19 March 2008Mission Australia is trialling the use of gardening as a way to combat the isolation, stigma and poor health experienced by people suffering from mental illness. For the past six months, clients of Mission Australia’s Inner City Housing Project (ICHP) – a service providing accommodation and case management support for people with major mental... + Full Story |
World wheelchair champion to support Mission Australia's Apprentice ProgramWednesday, 19 March 2008David Gould knows all about facing adversity and how to start from scratch – which makes him a great messenger for Mission Australia’s Australian Apprenticeship Centre.
David was a budding sports star as a young boy until he became a paraplegic in a shooting accident at the age of 12.
Since then he’s carved out a career beyond his earlier... + Full Story | More News Articles | ||
Mission Australia on Blogspot
No quick fix for rescuing kids at risk
More than 30,000 Australian ‘at risk’ kids are removed from their parents annually. There were 58,000 proven cases of child abuse or neglect in Australia in 2007 - an increase of 45 per cent over the previous five years. How do we reach out to these children, their parents, families and communities to provide them with support and help reduce such horrific abuse? Helping someone become a good parent takes time, effort and resources. There’s no ‘silver bullet’. Protecting children at risk is not going to be achieved simply by flooding the streets with child protection officers or punitive measures such as quarantining a parent’s welfare payments. One thing we should be doing i...
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Mission Australia takes over Martin Place
Sydney’s Martin Place was awash with Mission Australia volunteers yesterday morning – all braving the freezing conditions to launch HUSH for Homelessness. Dressed in sleeping bags, the team handed out thousands of flyers to Sydney commuters on their way to work. Event organiser Mandy Jones said she hoped HUSH for Homelessness was both about raising funds for Mission Australia’s homeless service as well as awareness about the plight of homeless people. “Many homeless people feel voiceless, which is why Mission Australia is asking people to be silent for an hour on Wednesday July 2, and raise money for their efforts.
“Every dollar raised will go to Mission Australia’s hous...
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Creating brighter futures
Brighter Futures is a Mission Australia early intervention program for struggling families. Caseworker, Michelle, describes what it’s like to be in the front line of community services. As a caseworker for the Brighter Futures program, I help clients in many different ways. The job is never predictable and I have to stay on my toes to handle the many different issues that arise every day. Ultimately, my job is to support and empower my clients to overcome their challenges. Many of my clients are dealing with grief or are trying to overcome a traumatic event. Other clients are dealing with drug or alcohol issues, mental health issues, domestic violence, a lack of social or family support...
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HASI support, on the front line
Being a HASI (Housing and Accommodation Support Initiative) worker with Mission Australia is sometimes challenging, usually fulfilling, and often rewarding. Besides all the regular duties of driving people to appointments, taking them shopping, assisting with budgeting, and linking them into social, vocational or educational activities, working with people with mental health problems calls for us to use all our skills as community services workers. An essential part of our job is building a rapport, while maintaining professional boundaries, with our clients so they welcome our inclusion in their lives and are open to rehabilitation options and suggestions we can offer to improve their qu...
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Welfare to work - a failure.
Figures released today revealing more than 720,000 Australians are on a disability support pension (DSP) show that efforts to both stop the flow of people onto the benefit – and get people off – have failed miserably. Despite the efforts of the previous Federal Government, numbers have increased – 35,000 since 2003. A major part of the problem has been the failure of the Howard Government’s much touted Welfare to Work legislation – partly designed to ‘encourage’ the estimated 20% of DSP recipients capable of taking a job back into the labour market. So what went wrong? The answer is simple - too much stick, not enough carrot. When Welfare to Work was launched, M...
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Coffee for a cause
For the second year in a row, the Baristas on a Mission will see six of Brisbane’s best baristas go head-to-head in a challenge to raise money for Mission Australia’s Café One on Wickham. Hosted by Di Bella Coffee, the challenge brings together baristas, Brisbane City councillors, and radio and TV personalities in a race to make as many coffees as possible in just six minutes. Café One on Wickham provides a range of services for people who are homeless or experiencing financial crisis. The café uses income derived from the sale of meals and drinks to fund programs to assist homeless people and those at risk of homelessness. Customers can not only get a cheap meal and a quiet plac...
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Woman's Day feature - MA Miller Community Preschool
There’s a great story in this week’s Woman’s Day magazine on how one of our Mission Australia services helped a mum and her young son through a tough time in their lives. The Mission Australia Miller Community Pre-School and Early Intervention service in Sydney’s South West provides a range of supports to families and children from all walks of life, but particularly children with disabilities. Julie and her son Jack came to Miller Community Pre-School when Jack, then aged two-and-a-half, started showing symptoms associated with autism – a condition that was subsequently diagnosed. Miller Community Pre-school’s staff were able to work with Jack to improve his communication an...
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Self harm on the rise
New figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare which show a significant growth in the rate of self-harm among young people is cause for serious concern. According to the research, the rate of self-harm among young Australians aged 12 to 24 has risen by 43% in 10 years. And between 1996 and 2006, the number of young women in Australia hospitalised for intentional self-harm grew by 51%. What makes a young person take such a terrible and dramatic toll on themselves? Self-harm is triggered by a range of issues but it’s often daily stresses – feeling isolated, pressure at school, poor body image or low self-esteem – that play the key role, not major changes or events...
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Housing affordability
Housing affordability (or ‘unaffordability’ as Professor Bill Randolph from the University of NSW suggests we should re-name it,) is regularly dominating the headlines of all forms of media as well as being a major preoccupation of governments, and many members and sectors of the community. The key determinants of housing affordability are a complex mix of supply and demand for housing; dwelling prices/rents; interest rates; household incomes; and demographic factors. As median house prices across Australia reach unprecedented highs, over 400,000 lower income households are paying more than 50% of their income for housing. Important recent research by the Australian Housing and Urban...
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HUSH for Homelessness
Have you ever wanted your friend or colleague to zip-it? Have you ever wanted to take time out of your day and not speak to anyone? Well, now’s your chance! Tonight, as temperatures drop and winter takes hold, almost 100,000 Australians have no place to call home. Of these people, almost 50% are yet to have their 25th birthday and 10,000 are children aged under 12! This is the reason Mission Australia is running HUSH for Homelessness; an event to raise money to assist homeless men, women and children across the country. HUSH for Homelessness symbolises the 'invisible' and 'voiceless' lives that homeless Australians lead. Mission Australia challenges you to experience what it’s like to...
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