A message from the
1
President and CEO
In our 133rd year, Berry Street continued to grow, to
respond to new challenges and to make a significant
contribution to the lives of thousands of Victorian
children, young people and families.
The core of our work will always be to do what we
can and need to do, to ensure all children have a good
childhood, growing up feeling safe, nurtured and with
hope for the future (our Vision).
Building on the work of Take Two, our therapeutic
service, we are developing much greater understanding
of the traumatic impact of violence, abuse and neglect
and how we can help children and young people to heal.
But we want to do more. We intend to strengthen our
public policy advocacy to help create better systems
and policies to both prevent abuse and neglect, and
ensure better responses.
3. A strong public policy agenda based on five themes:-
childhood belongs to children; safety is not enough;
no place for violence; fairness and equity for families;
and two ways together – supporting Aboriginal
families.
4. Developing a platform to build and share knowledge
about child trauma – to help prevent child abuse and
neglect and ensure that children get the right help
to recover.
We are proud of everything we have been able to achieve
together so far and thank everyone – our Board, staff,
carers, volunteers and supporters – for their contribution
and willingness to work with us.
We are also excited about this next chapter of the ‘Berry
Street Story’. No doubt it will be an interesting ride, and
we look forward to sharing it with you.
Our new Strategic Directions has four key priorities:
1. Growing our independent income – to enable us to
pilot new programs, evaluate what we’re doing and
develop the evidence and tools for effective advocacy.
2. A focus on service innovation – piloting new programs
where there are gaps and building on our existing work.
Laurinda Gardner
President
Sandie de Wolf, AM
Chief Executive Officer