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Bringing services together for a Safe City

Hume City Council is one of just 25 organisations world wide having World Health Organisation (WHO) accreditation for its initiatives in promoting community safety. It is a pioneer in a field where Local Government is increasingly expected to give leadership.

Council is now taking its safety initiatives a step further. It is coordinating the integration of various services managing safety issues through the Hume Safe City Taskforce.

The Task Force provides an umbrella approach to issues including road safety, emergency management, alcohol and drug abuse and injury prevention, homelessness, suicide prevention, and crime prevention.

"Our WHO accreditation was gained through initiatives which reduced the number of preventable accidents and health problems arising in the home, workplace and community," said Manager Community Services Laurence Alvis.

"We are now bringing into our safety strategy social problems and crime. Safety is not just a single issue, it impacts on justice, police, educators and many other service areas."

The program has received high level support with matching funds coming from the Justice Department. Membership includes senior representatives from the Police and Education Departments, the Victorian Multi Cultural Commission, CentreLink and the Magistrates Court.

Council's Chief Executive Officer Darrell Treloar and Councillor Carl Lewis are on the Task Force which is chaired by local business identity Frank McGuire.

Through this cooperation, more effective solutions can be found to problems such as drug abuse, suicide prevention, crime and other social issues and community safety.

A Health and Safety Advisory Forum is strategically linked to the Task Force and the multi agency work teams provide for community and agency input. Hume believes this is the first time integration of these services has been tried on this scale.

"We tried to look at a constructive process, having various agencies working together rather than all contributing individual efforts in isolation from each other, duplicating services and sometimes working at cross purposes," Laurence Alvis said.

"It is like a case management system for social issues. Councils are ideally placed to implement such a system because they are already involved in all areas of community life. This is not just Australian best practice but world best practice."

As examples of initiatives the City would like to promote under the scheme Laurence cited the organising of a Touch Football competition involving local youth and Broadmeadows Police. This has improved relations between the two groups and reduced the level of vandalism in a local park.

Likewise the Peace Project Arts Model, operating at a local primary school, has reduced vandalism perpetrated by former pupils enabling the school to remove its barbed wire fence and undertake landscaping work.

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