AT Goolum Goolum, Minster for Aboriginal Affairs Gabrielle Williams announced the roll out of a $40 million workforce fund will start at the Horsham co-operative.
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Goolum Goolum received $150,00 to create culturally appropriate supervision and services for communities in Horsham and surrounding areas.
Across Victoria, 44 Aboriginal community organisations of varying sizes are sharing in a total $11.2 million to boost the workforce and contribute to social recovery following the challenges of 2020.
Ms Williams said the funds is an "urgent boost" to workforce capacities to help the organisations best met the needs of their communities.
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"This funding is important because at its heart is a principle of self-determination and community control," she said.
"It allows for flexible expenditure and allows these organisations to determine what their workforces need to be better able to serve their communities.
"We know we get better outcomes in Aboriginal communities when we let communities lead those outcomes."
Goolum Goolum's corporate services manager John Gorton said he was pleased with the show of support for the Aboriginal community.
"We like to do things our way, our way is the Aboriginal way and that works best for us," he said.
"The money that has been announced will be used to support our staff with supervision, taking staff away from the daily grind of work.
"For the local staff, we have a lot of family members who come through the service, so we don't get a chance to rest after hours. Every Aboriginal staff member will say that Aboriginal people come to us 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there is no downtime."
The funds will go towards cultural days either on country or in house at Goolum Goolum.
"For us to be able to have a culture day where we can go out on country, or do in house cultural supervision whether it's groups or individuals, it's a way for us to be able to take a load off for a day and make sure staff feel motivated," Mr Gorton said.
Mr Gorton said the cultural days will help provide stronger services to the community.
"Connection with people is how we keep our mind fit," he said.
Family service manager Renee Secombe said the funding was needed post-COVID-19 when support was made difficult.
"We found in the family services sector there was an increase in services hours rates of alcohol and drug issues, mental health, family violence particularly," she said.
"We found that was really difficult to support in that time.
"We'll be looking at wellness, particularly with our family services team. You work in this day in and day out. We carry this with us."
Ms Secombe said it is important for mental health and wellbeing to be maintained.
The wellbeing days will include cultural activities that include non-Aboriginal staff to help them become more familiar of cultural practices.
The family service sector serves two hours from Horsham, almost to the border and across to Ararat.
"We really emphasise working together as a team and being able to be open and talk about what's happening so that we can support each other," Ms Secombe said.
"If we don't speak about it then we don't know what's actually happening with each other."
Ms Secombe said more wellness day and training will be developed to support the workers.
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