If it weren’t for Goulburn Valley Pregnancy and Family Support Service, Mary doesn’t believe she’d have her six-month-old daughter in her care today.
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Now, the Shepparton area is set to lose the service that helped Mary (not her real name), and multiple other women in recent years, keep a family together.
Mary reached out to GV Pregnancy and Family Support Service during her pregnancy, worried that her baby would be taken at birth by the child protection service.
“I was really concerned that they were going to come in due to the past and remove her from me,” she said.
Mary is no stranger to the child protection system.
She said she’d experienced family violence and had also struggled with drug use and mental health challenges in the past.
“They’ve dealt with all my other children; I’ve had children removed in the past,” she said.
This time, when Mary became pregnant with her seventh child, she wanted to make sure things went differently and she reached out for support.
“I was trying to prevent her from being removed from me when she was born,” she said.
“I was very scared because I didn’t know if she’d be placed with my family, or with strangers, and not knowing where your child is, it breaks a mother’s heart.”
Mary said it was only because of the help she received from the staff at GV Pregnancy and Family Support Service, operated by the Caroline Chisholm Society, that she was able to keep her baby.
Mary has received support from the Shepparton-based organisation on and off for about a decade.
“I first found them 10 years ago when I fled from family violence,” she said.
“Back then they were only doing material aid but helped me out a lot.”
The service has been providing material aid such as clothing, prams and formula for families with young children in the area for nearly five decades.
During this pregnancy, that part of the service took a lot of stress off her, Mary said.
Staff helped her get a cot, a car seat, a nappy bag and a pram.
“That helped a lot,” Mary said.
“Because I was homeless when I was pregnant, I didn’t know what to do.”
But for the past three years, the organisation has also been providing additional help to mothers such as Mary.
The team has been providing expanded maternal wrap-around support, aiming to improve parenting outcomes for mothers and the wellbeing of young children, and reduce the risk of child protection involvement.
The expanded service — which includes things such as a parenting program focused on the critical first 1000 days of a child’s upbringing, connection to support services and home visitation — was supported by funding from the Westpac Safe Children, Safer Communities funding initiative.
But the money has now run out, and it appears the lifeline that helped Mary keep her family together will no longer be available for other parents in Greater Shepparton.
“It’s disappointing, it really is because I feel like there’s a lot of women who are going to fall through the cracks out there,” the organisation’s pregnancy and early parenting practitioner, Natalie Connally, said.
Ms Connally isn’t giving up hope for a miracle just yet.
After raising the alarm that GV Pregnancy and Family Support Service may close its doors entirely, the organisation saw the community rally.
By the end of November, about $20,000 had been raised.
That’s enough to keep a portion of the organisation running, but it fell short of the $100,000 goal that would keep wrap-around family services going, too.
“The society will continue to remain open for material aid operations after January 2025,” the Caroline Chisholm Society said in a statement.
“This ensures that the Goulburn Valley community continues to receive the necessary material aid support that has been provided for the last five decades.”
But without more funds coming in, the integrated family services in Shepparton will be closed at the end of the month.
The Caroline Chisholm Society has been funding wrap-around family services in Shepparton since the Westpac grant funding ran out in July.
According to the society, several grants — including government and private — have been applied for, but none have come through to prevent the closure.
“The society is still keen to continue integrated family services support in Shepparton and will continue to seek state and private funding,” the society’s acting chief executive Lolou Kini said.
For now, Ms Connally said no more referrals were being taken, as the wrap-around service program prepared to close at the end of the year.
“I didn’t think we were going to raise enough money to keep my job,” Ms Connally said.
“But I was hoping that maybe the community would just help out just that little bit more.”
Ms Connally said she was grateful for the support the community had shown already, and was holding out hope that the service would be saved.
“I’m really hoping that a miracle comes around, and they say, ‘look, you can have another year to help more women’,” she said.
“There is nothing like this in Shepparton.”
Ms Connally said the service she helped to run had no waitlists, could provide help to people the same day they walked in, could take complex cases and provided collaboration with, and a door to, other services in the region.
According to an evaluation by Impact Initiative, more than 1500 clients — including pregnant people, partners and children — in the Goulburn Valley were supported by the family services between January 2021 and April 2024.
Data shows over a third of primary clients were referred to other services such as housing, health, Indigenous services and financial assistance.
“These referrals highlight the society’s vital role in the Goulburn Valley, showcasing its ability to leverage partnerships and maintain strong relationships with other service providers,” the evaluation states.
“This collaborative approach ensures a robust support system for vulnerable families.”
The evaluation found that the wrap-around services provided crucial, culturally sensitive support to a diverse range of clients, and helped divert multiple families from the child protection system.
Expert Chris Goddard said when it came to child abuse, “prevention is better than care”.
Mr Goddard has worked extensively in social services and child protection in the UK and Australia.
He’s an adjunct research professor at the University of South Australia, a member of the advisory board for the International Journal of Children’s Rights and a member of the editorial board for Children Australia.
“Children are better off at home if they can be safe,” he said.
“Early intervention with comprehensive services is in the best interests of the child and saves the country money.”
Mr Goddard said too often, intervention came after children had experienced maltreatment — including being exposed to family violence.
“Prevention strategies should be there,” he said.
“Parental support is so important and is crucial to preventing child abuse.
“We should be offering support from the very beginning.”
According to Mr Goddard, Australia’s child protection system is disjointed and opaque.
There’s no national strategy, instead leaving the approach up to states and territories.
“The lack of a national approach is extraordinary given it costs the country tens of billions of dollars a year,” he said.
Mr Goddard said the lack of a cohesive system was also astonishing given the size of the problem.
One in seven Australians have experienced child abuse, according to a report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
More than 180,000 children across Australia came into contact with the child protection system in 2022-23, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
Mr Goddard said it was inexcusable that the country did not have a national approach to preventing child abuse and providing comprehensive supports.
The kind of work that GV Pregnancy and Family Support Service has been doing is key, he said.
“It’s so important because they’re actually showing that someone cares,” Mr Goddard said.
“That’s the sort of thing that can help break the cycle,” he said of the integrated family services.
For Mary, that has held true.
She witnessed family violence as a kid.
She was a ward of the state, bounced around to various family members and then went through several foster care placements.
“I vowed my kids would never go down that track, but yet my children have gone down that same track,” she said.
“Now, since I’ve had [my youngest daughter], I’ve broken the cycle.
“And she’s the first one that is so calm and placid out of all my kids because she’s the only one who hasn’t experienced any violence, any trauma through pregnancy or anything.”
As Mary’s time as a client with GV Pregnancy and Family Support Service comes to a close, she said she felt like she was in a good place.
She said she was mentally stronger and felt optimistic about her baby’s future.
Mary said having Ms Connally as an advocate helped her to speak up, navigate the system and ensure she could keep her youngest daughter with her.
Child services still check in on her and the baby every two weeks, but Mary is hopeful that her case will be closed soon.
She said it was a shame that the service that had helped her so much would be gone at the end of the year.
“It makes me feel sad, knowing that Natalie and the other workers can’t help anybody else,” she said.
“Natalie didn’t judge me for my past or anything. She just jumped straight in and was willing to take me on.
“All I can say is that I’m so grateful and thankful for everything that Caroline Chisholm and Natalie has done for me. Because if it wasn’t for them, I know I wouldn’t have [my baby] in my care.”
Senior Journalist