Berry Street Web Docs Berry Street Annual Report 2011 | Page 13

Berry Street has been providing services
in Gippsland since 1994. It is the largest
region in Victoria, with significant social
disadvantage, especially in the Latrobe
Valley.
With the skilled leadership of Regional
Director, Trish McCluskey, our services in
Gippsland continued to grow in number
and diversity.

• Our Bushfire Community Project
with GIPPS TAFE and other partners
acknowledged by the Prime Minister
and a new program to support 100
young people struggling to recover
from the bushfires
• Strengthening connections with
our Aboriginal colleagues and
being asked to deliver a mentoring
education program for Aboriginal
young people

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Highlights included:

• Establishment of the Unaccompanied
Minors Community Detention Program
for 12 Afghani boys, aged 14-18. This
was a first for Berry Street and came
about because of the welcomed
Federal Government decision that it is
not appropriate for children, especially
those without any family, to be held
in detention while their applications
for asylum are processed. The boys
have settled in very well into two sixbed homes and, pleasingly, several
have been advised of a positive Visa
outcome
• Thirty-five staff being supported to
successfully complete a Diploma
of Community Services Work, in
partnership with Holmesglen TAFE

• A doubling in capacity of our foster
care program

• Opening of a leaving care house for
four young people, who are being
supported to make the transition from
residential care to independence

• Two hundred and seven young
parents and their children forming
closer bonds through playgroups
and our family support program

• Adding a Koori boys fishing camp
to our Wilderness program with one
of the boys saying that catching a
shark was “the best thing that ever
happened to me”

• Helping to reconnect 230 young
people to education and employment
and directly providing education to
156 young people, who had either
dropped out or been excluded
from school

• Providing residential care for 77 young
people, all of whom faced a number
of challenges because of the abuse,
violence or neglect they had suffered
• Training and supporting 90 mentors
to act as role models for 200 young
people, 27 of whom were assisted
through the L2P driving program to
get their driver’s licence

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