Today’s Budget announcement was not what we were hoping for and impacts on both our direct work with communities, and the ability of the peak body to support the foundations of our Neighbourhood Houses.
Whilst some funding has been committed for the Community Connector roles in each House, it falls short of the investment requested to ensure sustainable place based delivery of this critical role. In practical terms, next year these vital roles will increase from 12 funded hours per week, per house, to 14 funded hours per week, per house. This level of increase across 34 Houses is not adequate as Houses are already completely stretched to their limits supporting their communities.
This is well below the place-based expansion detailed in our budget priority submission, which outlined an investment of an additional $6.6 million over four years. This $6.6 million would have taken us to three days of a Community Connector’s time per week per House for 2025/26, and four days per week per House by 2026/27.
There was also not support for the continuation of Neighbourhood Houses Tasmania to support the Governance Project: Unlocking Local Leadership. This will continue to put pressure on our leaders both in management and on our community-led boards to have what they need to effectively lead our communities. Part of this work was to continue to innovate and provide models of group buying and shared services in new collaborative ways. We are hopeful to find a way to progress with this work, but without support of the Government we are facing doing even more with even less.
We appreciate TasCOSS advocacy and are also disappointed that most or our partner organisations have not received anywhere near the investment needed to make sure our industry is sustainable and can keep changing lives and supporting communities well into the future.