Providers need their funds back

FEDERAL funding cuts for refugee support services in Toowoomba need to be reversed soon before another influx of resettled families.

That’s according to one of the remaining providers in the Garden City, which said it could potentially have less than two case workers helping more than 600 refugees.

CatholicCare TRAMS, who worked with The Chronicle to deliver the “New Home, New Beginning” series, will see its money reduced by the Federal Government on January 1 from $390,000 to about $240,000.

Other service providers like Mercy Community Services lost all funding, with TRAMS expected to take on at least some of its clients.

Director Kate Venables said TRAMS would also have to pay its interpreters, worth about $80,000 a year.

“We had two full-time case workers plus a coordinator and a volunteer coordinator,” she said.

“Four people were doing case work support and now it’s really one and a half.”

Under the current funding agreement, newly re-settled families work with Multicultural Development Australia for the first 12 months before moving to TRAMS.

While some Syrian and Iraqi refugee families were already settled in the region, Ms Venables said she was concerned about the sheer volume of clients to spread among fewer case workers.

“(The Yazidi) have been here for just more than 12 months, but we’ve only taken about a dozen families, and that’s about to get a lot higher,” she said.

Ms Venables said Groom MP John McVeigh was making a case to the social services minister Paul Fletcher for Toowoomba to have its funding reinstated.