Women's Health
Grampians
Annual Report
Women's Health
Grampians
Annual Report
Women's Health
Grampians
Annual Report
WHG Annual Report 2023-24 Chair & CEO Report
This past year has been a particularly challenging one for our region.
In early 2024, three local Ballarat women, Samantha Murphy, Rebecca Young and Hannah McGuire, died in separate gender-based violence incidents. Ballarat residents, shocked and grieving but bolstered by national outrage, rallied in their thousands calling for an end to violence against women.
Since then, Women’s Health Grampians has responded to a significant increase in media inquiries, requests for collaboration, and interest in our programs. With this has come opportunities for us to expand and cement our work, including by working with the Victorian Government on the multi-year Ballarat community ‘saturation model’ project, led by Respect Victoria.
We are determined to honour the lives of Samantha, Rebecca, and Hannah and all women impacted by gender-based violence, by making the most of this opportunity to address the drivers of men’s violence against women over the next four years. The saturation model will take a whole-of-community approach to the prevention of family and gender-based violence. It is hoped that the model will help galvanise the community’s commitment to the deep cultural change needed to prevent violence against women.
We had the great pleasure of launching our first Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan in May 2024. Our launch events were celebratory, heartening and motivating experiences, seeing three years of hard work come to fruition, cementing our commitment to reconciliation and optimism about what the collective future will bring. We also welcomed the opportunity to honour artist and proud Gunditjmara and Wotjobaluk woman, Tanisha Lovett, whose beautiful and meaningful work adorns and informs the RAP, and now, our places of work.
Throughout the RAP development process, we were very fortunate to benefit from the wisdom, knowledge and expertise of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women including Aunty Marjorie Pickford, Tanisha Lovett, Sarah Jane Hall, Lyndel Ward and Sissy Austin. Our planning and activities will continue to be informed by the wisdom and knowledge generously shared by First Nations women and girls who bravely speak up against the oppression and consequences of colonisation.
The lead up to and aftermath of the Voice Referendum has been challenging for all First Nations people. This was also felt deeply across the whole staff group. We have taken the time to reflect as a collective and individuals, and agreed on the need to reaffirm our commitment to actively supporting self-determination, truth telling, listening, and taking action with love, respect and solidarity is more important than ever.
Following the welcome growth funding we received across 2022-24, in collaboration with women’s health services across the state, we focussed efforts on advocacy for this funding to be maintained. We invested in robust evaluation to demonstrate the value and impact of the increased investment in women’s health.
Shani Cain
Chair
Marianne Hendron
Chief Executive Officer
We also undertook considerable advocacy effort to showcase and communicate the value to parliamentarians, as well as formally launch our collective impact report: Small Change Big Impact.
We were heartened to see broad grassroots support from across the Government and opposition for the work we do. It was welcome to receive the announcement in the May Budget that women’s health would receive additional investment for a further two years. We look forward to progressing this work over the next two years and well beyond.
Alongside our business as usual, we have also spent the past year consolidating foundational work on two emerging areas of focus, Women in a Changing Society: Climate Change, Emergency and Disaster; and Mental Health and Wellbeing. This work is heightened by the knowledge our region is vulnerable to multiple environmental threats as the climate crisis rages on, and the research clearly shows that women are, and will continue to be, disproportionately impacted. This is close to our region’s heart as we continue to recover from the 2024 bushfires that devastated the Pomonal community, impacting several of our staff and Board directly. In building partnerships with other women’s health services working across this portfolio, along with local emergency response agencies including Gender and Disaster Australia, we have been able to share learnings and build capacity.
The WHG Board has seen some change over the past twelve months; with gratitude, we farewelled Frances Salenga who completed the maximum 3 term tenure (6 years) with us and shared so much, particularly in our work with migrant and refugee women during Covid. Our brilliant Treasurer, Onella Cooray, also retired from the Board in November 2023 after two busy terms bringing a depth of knowledge about intersectionality and inclusive advocacy. We were delighted to welcome during the past year Dr Ellie O’Connor from Daylesford and Petra Croots from Nhill.
We farewelled valued staff members and welcomed new faces over the past twelve months. Our gratitude goes to Sissy Austin and Lyndel Ward, pioneering members of our First Nations Team who moved on. We were delighted to welcome Dja Dja Wurrung, Gunditjmara and Yorta Yorta woman Alison McRae to the team. Our thanks also to departed members of the CHIFVC Team, Skye Mannix-McCann, Anna Bilbrough, Katherine McCready and Youzhen Huang who contributed so much to this important space.
Our most sincere thanks goes to all who help make WHG the fantastic organisation that it is, especially in times of very real change and challenge. Both Board and staff alike have felt the impacts of this over the past six months in different ways, but we have focussed on mutual support, strong communication, leaning in and lifting each other up – displaying strong feminist and inclusive values throughout. We are proud of that.