As the peak body representing the Peel Region’s not for profit community service organisations, Peel Community Development Group (PCDG) has, over the past two years, invested heavily in partnership with other key stakeholders from the Peel region in identifying the current and future needs of the sector to meet a growing demand for services addressing increasingly complex issues.
In October 2022 PCDG launched the Peel Away the Mask III report. This report, building on the Peel Away the Mask (PATM) reports published in 2001 and 2012, sought to understand how the challenges and opportunities facing the Region’s communities have evolved as well as the context in which health and community service providers are operating.
PATM’s data and research provides the health and community sector and stakeholders with a valuable resource to advocate for services and infrastructure that will have the strongest impact for the residents of the Region.
Accompanying the main PATM III Report is the PATM III Action Plan and the People of Peel Dashboard – two important new elements of the PATM III project. The Action Plan draws on consultation with health and community service providers across the Region and consolidates the key recommendations of PATM III into priority initiatives and projects that PCDG and partners can advocate for.
The People of Peel Dashboard provides a valuable online resource that is available online, providing access to interactive and up to date social and economic data about the Region and its people, including Local Government Area specific data (where available).
The PATM III Action Plan was developed in consultation with health and community service providers and stakeholders across the entire Region. It identifies Local Government Area (LGA) specific action areas and projects that align with the greatest areas of need and opportunity, to make lives better for the communities who live there.
The Peel Away the Mask III Priority Projects Report utilised insights from the Peel Away the Mask III Action Planning Forum to prioritise actions identified in the Peel Away the Mask III Action Plan. The following priority projects were identified, profiled and costed:
1. Expanding volunteer services
2. Supporting new parents to navigate childhood development
3. Delivering men’s behaviour change program
4. Life skills for primary schoolers
5. Expanded temporary accommodation
In April 2024 PCDG published the Peel Community and Community Health Services Industry Mapping Project Report.
The objectives of this project were to identify current and emerging gaps in community and community health service delivery across the region and to support the community and community health sectors advocate more effectively for the funding they need to provide effective services to their clients.
The key findings of this report focused on 5 areas of the Social Services sector operating across the Peel region and showed significant underfunding across all areas of the social services sector but particularly in the areas of:
· Family, Domestic Violence and Sexual Services
· Housing and Homelessness
· Mental Health
· Families and parenting
· Youth services
This shortfall if funding has led to, inter alia:
· Increased difficulty for organisations to retain suitably qualified and experienced staff;
· A reduction in the range of services able to be offered to clients;
· A reduced geographic scope of services being offered across the region.
Due to non-availability of publicly available data, detailed analysis on current and future funding requirements could not be fully completed for other areas of the sector.
PCDG will focus on advocating to Governments the need to provide indexed and realistic funding to social services and to improve the transparency of current processes to ensure the region’s stakeholders and communities have ready access to the detail and performance of their investments in Social Services delivery.