Wombat Housing and Support Services
Wombat Housing and Support Services provides services to people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless in the West of Melbourne.

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New Additions to Wombat’s Service

Bush Fire Case Management Service

In response to the recent bush fires a case management service has been established by the Department of Human Services to provide support to the victims of the disaster.

Carmelo Maccarrone & Mark Rayner have joined the service; they are two of Wombat’s most experienced case managers and are providing a sensitive and flexible service to those people referred.

The service is “virtual” so Mark & Carmelo will continue to work from Wombat’s North Melbourne office. The service will operate for a minimum of three months.

Community Support Program

Last year the Wombat Board reviewed the organisations core business and as a result decided to concentrate on being a provider of housing related support and not to pursue registration with the Office of Housing. Consequently the management (and ownership where applicable) of all Wombat’s properties had to be transferred to another organisation. The properties comprised four rooming houses and seven long-term units.

The result of this has been the development of a partnership between Wombat and Women’s Housing Limited (WHL.) whereby WHL is the landlord for properties and Wombat provides a service(the Community Support Program) to link residents into the broader community and enhance the living environment of the rooming houses.

Wombat’s Community Support Program aims to work with residents to develop independent living skills by providing recreational, social and educational opportunities to single adults residing in four separate rooming houses across the western region of Melbourne. 

The program works with-in a community development framework to address issues of social isolation by co-ordinating support services operating within the rooming houses.  The program provides information to residents on local community based health, welfare and community services and advocates on their behalf for access to these services.  The program also coordinates and provides individual case management and service linkage, links to recreation, social and educational programs as well as providing in-house activities and low costs (or free) outings for the residents.

Wombat is delighted to welcome back from extended leave two very experienced workers who will job-share the position - Katrina O’Sullivan and Trudy Kirk. Kat & Trudy have worked in a number of Wombat’s other program and possess a wide range of complimentary skills ideal for the program being established.

Maribyrnong Youth Accomodation Program

Wombat & The New Hope Foundation have been successful in a submission to establish a new service to provide homelessness assistance services to young people in Maribyrnong. Whilst the new service will focus on young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, assistance will be available to all young people requiing housing in Maribrynong.

The new service has been named The Maribibyrnong Youth Accommodation Program (MYAP).

The funding is provided through SAAP (Suppported Accommodation Assistance Program). The Program Manager for the new service is Rebecca Cleaver, the program workers are Alice Gaylor, Meseret Abebe and Abraha Gebremariam.

In the partnership model developed Wombat will employ the staff and provide the housing support expertise and the New Hope Foundation will provide a service base at it's Footscray office, host joint team meetings with it's settlement workers and facilitate access to cultural groups.

Staff will rotate between New Hope's Footscray site and Wombat's office in North Melbourne. Two workers will be on-site in Footscray at all times.

Wombat & New Hope are very excited about this new innovative model of service delivery as it crosses two service sectors - homelessness (funded by DHS) and services to newly arrived communities (funded by Dept. of Immigration and Citizenship).

Referrals to the service can be made by contacting the MYAP team at New Hope on 9687 4500 or at Wombat on 8327 2222.

How to Find Us
Telephone (03) 8327 2222 1800 887 775 Fax: (03) 8327 2299
Email: wombat@wombat.org.au
191 Melrose St North Melbourne

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