Dubbo’s Neighbourhood Works
MICHELLE Redden is CEO at Connecting Community Services (Dubbo Neighbourhood Centre) and says she lives for her job.
Her background was in education and business development and while she said she loved that sector, she wanted to work more within and for the community.
“The wonderful opportunity came up and it was this current role. Our service delivers support, information and referrals to many individuals and families within our local and wider communities,” Ms Redden told Dubbo Photo
The services offered by Connecting Community Services (CCS) include aging services, migration settlements, children services – educational care and school re-engagement, Aboriginal wellbeing and violence prevention, Domestic Violence counselling and information referral services.
“The support we have from other businesses, including corporate and local, and that of our board of directors allows the team I work with to openly support people in need, and that is one of the most motivating factors to wake up to every morning.”
Ms Redden said working within Social Services is very rewarding but that in recent months it has been incredibly challenging to plan, operate and abide by the enforced closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Being an essential service we continued to deliver services in a way we had not considered before,” she said.
“Our community and our team worked face-to-face with families and individuals and had to switch to no physical contact at all outside of our child care services and aging services and this was the challenge for us.
“When you work with people you use all of your senses to gauge people’s emotions and physical well-being, and working for some months without that contact was different and it was a struggle.”
Despite all that she believes the COVID-19 disruption hasn’t affected the operation in any meaningful way.
“It has actually broadened our way of how we operate and provided opportunities for us to explore other ways of service delivery,” she said.
“Developing protocols for working without your team and clients presented some real challenges mentally. I am really proud of our team who continued to support our community when it was at times a struggle for them too.
“Not unlike all other essential service workers who I have even more appreciation and respect for due to COVID. In some ways this period has highlighted the resilience and capacity of individuals and our community to come together and do what is best for all.”
Whilst in lockdown Connecting Community Services were coincidentally in the middle of a largescale relocation to a more central office space closer to other services they work with.
Ms Redden said the relocation has been a “massive project” as it involves a complete refurbishment of one of Dubbo’s historical buildings, the Masonic Centre.
“The motivation for our relocation was strategically based on financial sustainability but also reducing physical barriers of access for our clients,” Ms Redden said.
“As we come into reduced restrictions, we will be offering on
Michelle Redden says the move and refurbishment of a heritage building was a massive job all by itself, and further complicated with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic., “but we’ve worked through it all,” she said. PHOTO: DUBBO
Wednesdays and Fridays food via the Coles Secondbite program, more wellbeing programs for men, women, youth and families, and a free shared local library.”
She said there are also plans for further emergency support and CCS is gearing up for the time when the stimulus package funding and Jobkeeper funding subsidies finish, preparing to help those who will be in need.
“I love the space we work in with our community and love our organisation and team,” she said.
“We will continue to work on collaborative partnerships to strengthen the support our community needs and cannot wait to be back at full capacity to have our clients back getting what they need from us.”