Thank you for joining with Centacare today as we announce the extension of our settlement and humanitarian entrants program to the south east of Melbourne. We enter into this space with some experience having worked as an organisation for over seventy years in the provision of family services. Those services have changed consistently to meet the changing needs of families especially as they have been reflected in successive generations of migration and settlement from Europe, the Baltic States, Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Centacare has had a presence in Dandenong for more than thirty-six years providing family support and counselling to families in the region many of whom come from refugee or immigrant backgrounds.

Our experience of the needs of families across Melbourne led us to develop a specific focus with refugee communities and to introduce a dedicated programme and Manager for refugee and settlement services, Terefe Aborete. In more recent times the focus of most of Centacare’s settlement services has been the Western suburbs of Melbourne. Over recent years though we have heard the call; through our work with families here in Dandenong; through the experience of local Church communities; and through the refugee communities themselves- that there remain extensive needs in the south eastern suburbs as well.

Through a number of very generous donors and through some funding from the Commonwealth Departments of Immigration and Citizenship and Employment and Workplace Relations, Centacare is now able to add some of its resources to those of the very experienced and dedicated community service providers of this region in helping to facilitate settlement for newly arrived humanitarian entrants.

Centacare is under no illusion: the refugee story is inevitably a tough one involving the uprooting of families and often characterised by terrible histories of war and life in refugee camps. Many individual stories are further complicated by experiences of trauma and torture. However this is never the whole story there is also a rich culture, and an indomitable spirit of determination and resilience that accompanies these people and ultimately contributes to their richness and growth and to the richness and growth of the host community.