As I write this message I am very aware that our recent exciting news is also presenting some transitional challenges for teams and individuals.

The good news includes:

• Baptist Care SA is part of the strong and successful Toward Home Alliance that has been endorsed by the SA Housing Authority to implement a radical new approach to preventing and addressing homelessness in the City and Southern Adelaide and Hills regions. We are delighted to be working with Lutheran Care, The Salvation Army, Mission Australia, Aboriginal Community Services and Sonder to remodel the sector’s response to the needs and aspirations of vulnerable people and to offer better integrated Transition Pathways from adversity toward opportunity.
• We have now officially taken over management and ownership of the Wirraway Homestead campsite, along with many of their dedicated staff… and about 16 horses! This unique camping experience expands the range of life-giving and relationship-building experiences that we can offer to SA’s children and young people.

• Our Tumbelin Program has secured ongoing funding to sustain most of its restorative work with young people who are struggling with Alcohol and other substances, mental illness and disconnection from family and community supports.
• The Dept of Human Services has advised that Baptist Care SA’s innovative ‘Living Connected, Living Well’ program has been selected as the preferred model for delivery of the new Community Connections in the Northern, Eastern and Southern areas of Adelaide. This new service will dynamically respond to the needs of people who are not eligible for an NDIS package, but who need support to live in the community.

Whilst our organisation and our services are moving through this period of exciting and significant change, I acknowledge that waiting for these tender outcomes has unfortunately been very unsettling for our staff. I hope you will understand that as the new services are quite different, we need to conduct open recruitment processes to appoint the right staff on their merits. We encourage you to “put your best foot forward in the direction that you want to go” as there are many new roles now becoming available.

The unprecedented scope of sector reform has led to concurrent restructures and re-alignments across a number of our service portfolios and in some cases some challenging industrial implications. I thank for your patience and assure you that our Executive and Management Teams are working as hard and fast as they can to communicate the changes to staff and to conduct fair and transparent processes that aim to bring some long-awaited calm to the ‘sector transformation storms’ that we have been navigating through over recent months.

Thanks for your ongoing efforts to sustain provision of high quality services to our vulnerable clients.

Graham Brown
Chief Executive Officer