DOCUMENT LIBRARY

Opening Doors is a practice and systems approach to provide timely and effective access to homelessness and social housing services to people seeking assistance. The framework is for use by Housing and Community Building Division-funded homelessness assistance services and social housing services. When the framework is fully implemented in these services, allied services such as health, mental health and drug and alcohol services will be invited to link with local homelessness and social housing networks.

The Opening Doors framework is summarised in three documents:
• this Framework document
• the Service coordination guide for local area service networks
• a Practice guide for workers (attached below).

The Family Violence Risk Assessment and Risk Management Framework is a key aspect of the integrated family violence reforms. This simple tool is designed to help professional and practitioners working in a range of fields (community services, courts, health sector) to identify risk factors associated with family violence and respond appropriately to people experiencing family violence.

An indigenous visitors' guide to all sorts of services in Melbourne, from public transport, internet cafes, tourist attractions, to emergency services and accomodation, and a lot more as well. A must have before you travel to Melbourne!

Guide to increasing women’s financial capability
Download Women's Health in the North's new guide Managing Money: Every Woman’s Business, to help increase newly-arrived and migrant women's financial capability with gender-specific, culturally-targeted and sensitive, information and training.

The 2002 Victorian Homelessness Strategy was a blue-print for change in the way we respond to homelessness. It was released by the then Minister for Community Services and Housing in February 2002.

The key themes of the Victorian Homelessness Strategy were distilled into the following five strategic objectives:

•improving client focus and client outcomes
•developing integrated and sustainable service responses
•working across government and with the community to prevent homelessness
•increasing access to, and supply of, affordable housing
•supporting and driving change
To achieve these broad objectives, the Directions for Change report identified 15 immediate Actions and 16 longer term Strategies to deliver sustainable improvements in our service system.

Link to document: http://www.housing.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/166466/directions_for_change__full_report.pdf

This principle governs the practice of Child Protection workers when placing Aboriginal children and young people in out of home care. Its aim is to preserve the Aboriginal identity of the children by recognising, and relocating them within, their culture and extended family.