2
A. SUMMARY OF THE YEAR
Without wanting to overstate it, it feels like 2010 was a ‘breakthrough’ year for Berry
Street.
The core of our work remains as strong and vital as ever. We worked with over 13,000
children, young people, women and families, each with their unique needs and stories –
but linked by their experience of violence, abuse, neglect, poverty and marginalisation.
We are now the largest ‘specialised’ child and family welfare organisation in Victoria (and
one of the largest in Australia), with the highest proportion of services at the tertiary end
(approximately 70%).
Working with these people is emotionally and professionally demanding and means that
our staff need to be able to:
Manage complex issues and systems
Understand the impact of abuse
Form constructive relationships with people whose life experience means they are
slow to trust
Advocate for our clients for access to appropriate resources
Maintain their sense of hope, despite working within a ‘system’ which is overloaded,
crisis driven and regularly exposed to damaging criticism in the media
Use organisational processes (eg supervision) and their colleagues, and pay attention
to self-care, to manage the inevitable ‘vicarious trauma’, which is inherent in our
work.
While these challenges are ongoing, I do feel that the work we’ve done this year has
provided a new platform for the future.
1.
The joint work with the Board on reviewing the impact of continual growth and
then investing in greater organisational capability has been very significant.
Although we are not there yet, we have made good progress in understanding what
our organisational information needs are and how we can develop better systems
for different stakeholders.
2.
Our new Strategic Directions also provides, for the first time, a clear and
‘visionary’ statement about our aspirations towards 2027 and our areas of focus for
the next three years.
3.
The Board’s commitment to investing in advocacy and evaluation satisfies a long
held wish of staff and Board, to make a more strategic impact on key policy issues.
It also gives us more opportunities to enhance our leadership role.
4.
It’s impossible to reflect on 2010 without thinking about the Bruce Perry national
tour. This was complemented by a number of other training and leadership
activities (see Appendix 2). Each of these has helped consolidate our leadership
role, in Victoria and nationally.
In summary, things we should be most proud of:1.
Maintaining a strong, resilient and cohesive organisation, that is generally
recognised as being a leader in providing high quality services to a client group
with very complex needs. This includes having such a capable and committed
Board, Executive Management Team and Senior Manager group leading our staff.