UnitingCare Community Community Development is about empowering individuals and groups to strengthen their relationships with each other and within the community.

Community Development provides opportunities for people to create and own a project and develop the skills to work together to see the project to completion. Throughout the state, UnitingCare Community establishes Community Development projects to work specifically with youth, older people, indigenous communities and refugees.

Our Communities for Children program is quite unique. Based in the Northern Gold Coast area, the Communities for Children program aims to improve the future and outcomes for young children, their families and the broader community by empowering community members, strengthening relationships and building social infrastructure.

UnitingCare Community Community Development workers are based in Toowoomba, St. George, Gold Coast and Brisbane. Youth programs are also run in Miram Vale, St. George, Townsville and the Sunshine Coast region.

Communities for Children

The Communities for Children program is located in the Gold Coast/Brisbane growth corridor and is Australia’s fastest population growth area, comprising of six widely dispersed and largely unconnected community areas – Oxenford, Pimpama, Coomera, Upper Coomera, Cedar Creek and Ormeau.

The ‘needs analysis’ compiled by the Community Researchers and project staff highlighted that there was virtually no existing service providers in the area to support families, limited public transport, no premises specifically designed for service provision activities and schools have reached capacity with no planning intended for additional facilities within the next few years. A survey recently revealed the Northern Gold Coast region has a 12 per cent population of 0 – 5 year olds compared to 7 per cent which is the average for the rest of the Gold Coast.

The Northern Gold Coast Communities for Children vision is to create a connected child-friendly community, where young children and their families have greater self-reliance and self-determination and are provided with opportunities to maximise health and wellbeing, learning capacity, emotional support and community cohesion.

For information on Communities for Children activities, please see the Communities for Children brochure.

Attachments

2008 Communities for Children.pdf - 431.3 KB