Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I would like to share with the House a number of projects and activities that are taking place in my electorate that are aimed at improving very much the lives of families, and in particular children, particularly the lives of the families and children in the many migrant or ethnically diverse communities that make up my electorate of Calwell. On Wednesday, 24 October, which incidentally is also Universal Children's Day, I had the privilege of launching the Victorian Cooperative on Children's Services for Ethnic Groups' program called New Opportunities in Family Day Care, or the FDC program. The program is part of the government's Better Futures, Local Solutions initiative and aims to provide training and workforce participation for unemployed—and, in particular, unemployed migrant—women in the federal seat of Calwell. More specifically, it is designed to create employment opportunities for some 20 women—20 positions per annum over the next three years, a total of 60 positions—in the family day care centre.

Based, of course, on the positive statistics gathered from similar programs, the success of the FDC—or the family day care—program is almost a given. Plans are already in place to expand the partnership with the Brotherhood of St Laurence, who already run a family day care service in Craigieburn, and for VICSEG to establish its own multicultural day care service to provide more work placements and ongoing professional development for bilingual family day care educators.

John Zika, who is the Executive Director of the VICSEG New Futures, is also the Chair of the Hume Early Years Partnership. He, as well as myself and many others, is very excited about the prospects of this program. As John has often said, these programs reduce disadvantage, by supporting women to succeed in their studies and in the workforce. Of course this combination of studying and participation in the workforce has a ripple effect for families, as we all know. As more culturally responsive family based child care becomes available, the more confident a child feels and is more responsive to developing new language, wellbeing and social skills. In turn, having access to these services enhances parents' participation and access to English-language classes, vocational training and employment—which, in short, is a win-win for both parents and children.

VICSEG's New Futures manager, Janet Elefsiniotis, said that as a community partner the organisation facilitated 16 playgroups in Hume, which in turn supported 360 parents and children from diverse backgrounds, including the Assyrian or Chaldean community, the Bhutanese community, and the Samoan, Arabic, Vietnamese, Turkish, Sri Lankan and Arabic communities. They are all very well represented in my federal seat.

VICSEG has also actively contributed to the development of a number of successful community hubs in nine local primary schools. The coordinator of Communities for Children, Colleen Turner, says that these programs had proven their worth and contributed to a steady increase in the number of children attending kindergarten and child care over a five-year period. The same is also true for attendance at playgroup and connections to the local library. For example, in 2006 there were 50 registered playgroups in Hume. Today, in 2012, some six years later, there are about 130, and an estimated 2,000 preschool-aged children are attending playgroup in my electorate. More recent reports indicate that from January to June 2012 1,420 adults attended activities, and of those 851 were from non-English-speaking backgrounds and 60 from our Indigenous community, and 456 were families whose main source of income is Centrelink.

I am particularly pleased that such programs are active in my electorate. The success of these programs is recognised in a number of ways, and they are very much a prototype, and are being used as a prototype in other municipalities. They have been recognised by government by being refunded and expanded so that our target group in between 2009— (Time expired)