Community Services

Lockhart River Community Services

Under the umbrella of Community Development, there are a number of services delivered to men, women, youth and children.

The Home and Community Care (HACC) program provides a range of services to support the elderly in the community. The Lockhart River HACC services operate from its building in the centre of the town.

Community Services also manages a sport and recreation program which provides activities at various locations within the community and links in with other stakeholders programs and events.

A significant part of our role is to engage with our community members; it’s really important to work with them, hear what they want, ascertaining their needs and aspirations and working out how best we can incorporate their needs going forward.

We have a number of other permanent external stakeholders in the community in health and education and early childhood, and other partners who come into our community regularly, so it’s important we engage with them and understand what they are delivering within the community so we can work together and enhance each other’s delivery.   We have obligations under our funding agents and Council’s direction that we follow, but open, honest engagement is paramount and provides opportunity for people to put their ideas forward to promote ownership and pride.  Our aim is to work out the best way to take the community’s wants forward to get the optimum end result for the people as well as honour our obligations under the funding agreements.

Local employment is a big part of our policy, so wherever we can, we try to recruit locally in mentoring and developing skills, and give the opportunity not within just our old teams but to locate other roles in other organisations and other positions as they become available.

In our Women’s, Men’s and Youth services we aim to be proactive rather than reactive.  Though they service crisis needs, they are also should be a place where people can go at any time and feel comfortable,  and during those times develop relationships and bonds, and just receive key messages and support as needs are identified, in a casual situation, rather than when there is a crisis.