Real and lasting change begins with listening, and with a willingness to do things differently. This belief led us to work alongside community members, Aboriginal leaders, service providers, and government to better understand the complex challenges across Mildura LGA and to build a shared response grounded in local priorities backed by community insights, data, evidence, and research.
The voices and experiences of over 1600 community members have shaped our vision for change: a connected community where children and young people thrive, and families matter. This vision continues to guide the next four years of our journey.
The 2026-2029 strategy builds on years of collective, place-based work that began with the Primary Care Partnership and Community Engagement Framework and reflects our gradual shift from being led by a group of local organisational leaders toward a community-led model that focuses on strengthening relationships, trust, and collaboration and embedding community leadership and expertise in decision-making.
In 2020, Hands Up Mallee joined the Department of Social Services’ Stronger Places, Stronger People initiative, reinforcing our commitment to disrupting disadvantage in the region. Along with nine other funded communities, Hands Up Mallee has continued to contribute insights that influence strategic decisions on funding distribution, financial investments, and decision-making power and structures.
During its early phases, Hands Up Mallee focused on creating the conditions for collective, place-based work to take hold by building relationships and trust, creating spaces for community members, government and partners to collaborate, and by testing and modelling new approaches for working together. The next phase is centred on strengthening the systems that support children, young people, and families. It focuses on embedding what has been learned, scaling effective practices through sharing our learnings, and continuing to ensure the community voice is embedded in decision-making.
Children and young people have always been at the heart of this work. Initiatives such as HomeBase Hoops and the Voices of Children consultation created genuine opportunities for them to share their perspectives and actively shape community-led responses and continue to influence the service delivery of local providers. In 2019, Hands Up Mallee partnered with Mildura Rural City Council and early years educators to hear directly from children aged 3–8. Their insights informed the systems mapping and the Municipal Early Years Plan. The co-design practices developed through Hands Up Mallee’s work with young people in 2018–2019 led to extended program hours for HomeBase Hoops to support flexible, youth-centred service delivery with a strong equity lens.
Equally central has been the strength of our partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This commitment is reflected not only in the meaningful involvement of Aboriginal community members in the various co-design processes, but also in our distinctive fit-for-purpose governance model, which embeds Aboriginal leadership and cultural guidance at its core. Through the Collaborative Governance Group and the Yarning Group, community voice, advocacy, cultural leadership, and lived experience guide how priorities are aligned to the community aspirations and how decisions are shaped.
These two groups are supported by the Backbone Team that plays an enabling role in supporting long-term community-led systems change through modelling and championing new ways of working, with a focus on shifting mindsets, power dynamics, relationships, resource flows, practices, and policies.
When the 2018 Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) data highlighted the need for stronger support for young children and families in the Red Cliffs community, Hands Up Mallee brought together families, early years practitioners, community organisations and Mildura Rural City Council to explore what was needed to improve this data and what a stronger local response could look like. Through an ongoing co-design process, the vision for an integrated hub emerged that would serve as more than just a service site — a welcoming community space where families could connect and belong, and influence how the hub is shaped. This work helped build momentum for joint advocacy, which ultimately secured investment to redevelop the Red Cliffs Kindergarten into the Red Cliffs Early Years Hub.
Importantly, the work has extended beyond the building itself. Initiatives such as the Hub Leadership Group, the hub welcomer role, outreach activities, and learning partnerships aim to support a more integrated and accessible hub. The Welcomer role has been created to ensure families experience the hub as a welcoming, supportive, and inclusive space, while community-led outreach activities, delivered with service partners, extend the reach of the hub and improve equity. The learning partnerships bring community and services to engage together in learning to improve practice at the hub, whereas the Hub Leadership Group provides shared leadership, advocacy, ensuring hubs are working in ways aligned with community vision and values.
This approach has also influenced how partners are strengthening support for families through initiatives such as the Family and Child Hub established by Sunraysia Community Health Services. Through its place-based work, Hands Up Mallee has helped bring community voice, local data, and practitioner insights into conversations about how services can work more effectively together around families. In 2023, HUM facilitated the co-design process to prototype innovations with families to improve access and participation. The recent relocation and expansion of the hub represent another important step in strengthening coordinated early years support across the region.
The Community-led Youth Justice Table is bringing together Victoria Police, community members, Justice, Housing, local families, and Aboriginal Elders to explore ways to address the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in youth justice. This work aims to reduce young people’s contact with the justice system by strengthening pathways for support, by working on the preventive factors and meeting the needs of young people. The work to develop a community-led model for piloting was endorsed and supported by the Local Aboriginal Justice Advisory Committee (LAJAC) and the Hands Up Mallee Yarning Group.
The Early Legal Help initiative is focused on improving earlier access to support the families at risk of entering the child protection system. The community members involved in the co-design group have experience and knowledge of the child protection system and are interested in bringing what they know to help design a new way of supporting families with early legal help. Local community legal services are committed to supporting the work of community in designing a new model of early legal support for families.
The Local Solutions Funding enables the trialling of innovative, community-led projects aligned with local strategies and priorities. In 2025, this funding supported NextGen Community Connect, an after-hours youth outreach initiative led by HomeBase Hoops as part of Sunraysia Community Health Services to contribute to a broader whole- of-community approach to reduce youth crime. In 2026, LSF has enabled trialling of community-identified priorities connected to the two Early Years Hubs with a strong emphasis on community leadership and shared decision-making.
Together, these efforts reflect a maturing phase of Hands Up Mallee’s work, one that continues to centre community voice but is increasingly focused on embedding that voice in the structures, partnerships, and decisions that shape the outcomes for the community.
Because meaningful change does not come from a single program, one project or one organisation alone. It grows through shared leadership, long-term commitment, and a community that is genuinely part of the journey of change.
