WHEN poet John Donne penned the phrase 'no man is an island' more than 400 years ago, some might say he was laying the foundations on which today's neighbourhood centres are built.
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Based in the Old Courthouse Building in Wingham, the Manning Valley Neighbourhood Centre (MVNC) has been operating since 1979, and is one of several hundred similar centres across NSW today. It collaborates and facilitates across a range of interagency networks and outreach services, and provides financial counselling, legal advice, assistance to families and individuals in financial crisis, tax help for low income earners, office resources such as free access to a computer and the internet, and much more.
"Our neighbourhood centre underpins much of the support network across the region for those in need. We're like a clearing house for information that goes out to other services, while filling a community's financial and emotional need," said Caron Watkins, the centre's manager.
"A client might come in needing help to pay off a government debt. We provide work and development to help them pay it off, then engage them in a more wholistic way depending on their issues and the resources available," said Ms Watkins.
In the MVNS 2014 annual report, Ms Watkins wrote that there was still a major need to provide services to people falling through the cracks, even with numerous new services in the area. For that reason, the centre takes a large advocacy role.
Every neighbourhood centre provides a diverse range of services, all built around strengthening and building communities and reducing inequality and disadvantage. Services and projects are brought together for different groups, referral services are provided to support structures elsewhere, and a meeting place and resource facility for residents is established. Centres arrange mentoring schemes and management training and build community organisations, such as Manning Valley's University of the Third Age, now boasting almost 400 members as an incorporated entity in its own right.
With approximately 120 volunteers across a range of services, Manning Valley's centre launched and runs the Bushland Tukka Cafe as a community owned cafe; attracts local interest with its community gardens; its upgraded kitchen provides free nutritious meals weekly, complemented by an array of community presenters; and the Garden Kitchen project pumps out practical nutrition information and cooking classes to the community. It provides food packs and petrol cards for those in crisis, and helps with bond and vehicle registrations in emergencies. Last year it hosted Bridges out of Poverty training for 100 community workers, and was a driving force behind Taree's successful African Festival which attracted a large crowd with its healthy dose of culture. Circus workshops have further diversified its offerings, as part of a My Place, My Space initiative.
And yet despite the fundamental role neighbourhood centres play within the community, they operate on the whim of different funding structures whose boundaries are constantly shifting their state of play.
Funding for the most part comes from the Community Builders program, which came into force in 2011. Over 500 community organisations across the state were on the receiving end of $49.4 million committed by the state government in 2012/13. This covers rent, insurance, minimal staff, and services, with not alot left over for much else. But since last year centres have been operating on borrowed time, with basic funding extended on a year to year basis as the program awaits a review by the Department of Family and Community Services.
"I don't know what the impact is going to be," said Ms Watkins, who spends much of her time filling out funding applications.
"But it's really hard to substantiate in numerical figures what we do."
The Local Community Services Association (LCSA), which represents a majority of neighbourhood centres, agreed.
"To be able to measure neighbourhood centres for the number crunchers, can be like trying to fit a square plug into a round hole, but we need to find ways of complying with what they need," said Lyn Lormer, the senior project officer for the LCSA.
How to put a dollar figure on centres assisting communities and disadvantaged groups is not readily answered, but operating under the banner of an uncertain future, Ms Watkins is concerned the services MVNC provides to those who need them most will be lost or diluted across a wider regional area. With emergency relief support already under the knife, the state government's pending Community Builders review is putting pressure on centres such as the MVNC to account for every step of support given, tangible or not.
Ms Watkins is bracing herself.
"We meet different needs at particular points in time. It's not easy to just tick boxes, because the results we get can't be measured in a graph," she said.
With the election over, this review is now scheduled to take place within the next few months.