About Us
Social Inclusion Unit
Social Inclusion is more than doing our business in a collaborative way with our clients, their families and our partners. It offers a new way of defining and measuring poverty and disadvantage.
Although it is difficult to observe from our present space, we are in fact right now witnessing a paradigm shift in the way Australia’s social democracy operates.
SI is a concept that has existed for sometime in Victoria, particularly through the Fairer Victoria agenda.
This concept has now been taken up by the Federal Government which has established the Social Inclusion Board as a vehicle to advise the Government on how Social Inclusion might look and to engage the NGO sector in this policy shift.
Following these initiatives announced early in the Rudd Government’s term, St Laurence Community Services has established a Social Inclusion Unit. This Unit is about facilitating positive change in the way we deliver our services and serve the community.
What does the Social Inclusion Unit do?
- Facilitate change within the organisation to embrace the new social policy paradigm shift.
- Create change within the local community including creation of partnerships which embrace the concepts of social inclusion
- Provide research capacity to SLCS through evidence based and best practice
- Advocacy
- Inspire you to adopt SI practices in your everyday work
Social Inclusion is the framework we use to harness innovative services designed: to minimise loss of capability in citizens due to ageing; to support those with a disability who are isolated in their local community; and, to increase the capacity of those who experience disadvantage to fully participate in the life of their community.
We work at St Laurence because we believe in helping people help themselves.