The Aboriginal Employment Strategy (AES) is celebrating its 25 years in operation. The AES works with more than 550 employers across Australia each year to create career opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. 16 regionally based offices across four states and territories, work locally to support more than 1,150 career opportunities each year. Click here to learn more.

Pro Bono Australia's tenth annual Salary Survey is the largest in Australia. Strong participation from across the sector is critical in order to benchmark and analyse trends in salaries from year to year. The results will provide invaluable feedback and information and assist in compiling Pro Bono's report analysing salary levels, expectations and employment trends for the not-for-profit sector in Australia. Take part here.

As Australia continues to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing poverty and inequality, and natural disasters, Foodbank Australia has revealed in 2021 it sourced 48.1 million kilograms of food and groceries, equating to 86.7 million meals, or 238,000 meals per day. According to Foodbank Australia CEO, Brianna Casey, the continued huge volume of food and groceries needed for food relief is not unexpected, confirming many people are still doing it extremely tough. Click here to learn more.

The Lowitja Institute has opened the door to support innovative community-led research into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing. The Lowitja Institute Seeding Grants program is offering grants of up to $35,000 to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and businesses. Click here to apply and learn more.

Our Watch and Women With Disabilities Victoria have launched a new national, evidence-based resource to guide the prevention of violence against women and girls with disabilities. The resource was co-designed over a number of years with women with disabilities and our representative organisations. Click here to learn more.

Ask Izzy has come a long way since it was launched in early 2016. In the six years Ask Izzy has been in operation, vulnerable people in Australia have made over 10 million searches for help across health, welfare and community services around Australia. While Ask Izzy’s initial focus was on assisting people experiencing homelessness, it is now proud to support people in need across many areas including mental health, food help, disability, financial assistance and family violence services. Click here to see brief overview of what's been achieved in the past six years.

On the 14th Anniversary of the National Apology to Indigenous Peoples, SNAICC–National Voice for our Children called on governments to honour the fundamental spirit and intent of that Apology by ensuring that injustices of the past never happen again.

The Family Matters 2021 report found that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were 10 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be in out-of-home care, an over-representation that has increased consistently over the last 10 years. New data released by the Productivity Commission in January shows that at 30 June 2021, numbers had grown again to reach a staggering 22,297 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children living away from their parents.

This year also marks the 25th anniversary of the Bringing them Home report which shone a light on the deep trauma and injustice of the Stolen Generations. More than two decades later, SNAICC is still trying to negotiate government action on the report’s core recommendations, most of which remain unrealised.

*TRIGGER WARNING*

Mind Australia’s Aftercare program for LGBTQIA+ people experiencing suicidal thoughts has seen a rise in referrals as debate over the Religious Discrimination Bill and its impact on the LGBTQIA+ community dominated public discourse in recent weeks. The bill, which has resulted in debate over the rights of transgender school students, has led to an increase in referrals for psychological distress and suicidality at Mind’s Aftercare program.

Mind CEO Gill Callister said the “prominent and dangerous debate” about the rights of LBGTQIA+ students had directly contributed to a rise in people seeking support for suicidality at the Aftercare program.

“Mind’s Aftercare program continues to develop and evaluate solutions to support much-needed mental health services for LGBTIQA+ communities in Australia but this program currently only services Melbourne – a small portion of a much larger community which continues to be disproportionately affected by mental health and wellbeing issues, including depression and suicide,” Ms Callister said.

Since December 2020, community pressure has helped nearly 200 refugees win their freedom.

Now, the brief detention of Novak Djokovic has shone a global spotlight on the fate of refugees that the Morrison government is imprisoning in Melbourne’s Park Hotel. There's a simple solution. Under Australian law, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews can free refugees with one signature.

The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRCs) is asking people to take action now: Call Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews MP.

Key messages:

1. Instead of keeping people trapped in dangerous detention, the government should release them into the community.
2. Everyone deserves a place to call home. No matter where we come from or how we got here, we all want the same things: a safe place to live with our families.
3. The Government has already released almost 200 people from detention. There is no reason why they cannot release those who remain in detention. Keeping them in detention is just cruel, but serves no policy purpose.

• Please join the much-awaited launch of the Report on Young Women and Non-Binary People’s Experiences of Gender-Based Violence across Australia. Drawing on both the 2021 survey conducted by Australian Women Against Violence Alliance (AWAVA) and translated into Easy English by Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA), as well as a subsequent community forum hosted by AWAVA and the National Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Women’s Alliance (NATSIWA), this ground-breaking report explores a range of issues associated with gender-based violence and its impacts on young women and non-binary people - 17 February 2022 - Click here to register

• Join preeminent experts in children’s health and wellbeing as the Royal Australian College of Physicians launches its ‘Kids COVID Catch Up Campaign’ in this national, virtual summit, hosted by RACP President, Professor John Wilson. Together, the speakers will discuss the impacts of the pandemic on our youngest generations, who continue to face an uncertain future - 18 February 2022 - Click here for more information and to register

• Disability representative organisations will receive more than $5.3 million over two years, a new national advocacy secretariat will be established to streamline advice and increase sector collaboration, and counselling and advocacy providers will receive $41.6 million to assist more people engage with the Disability Royal Commission. Under the Disability Representative Organisation program organisations to receive funding are: Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA); First Peoples Disability Network Australia (FPDN); National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA); People with Disability Australia (PWDA); Women with Disabilities Australia (WWDA); A consortium led by the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO); and Inclusion Australia. To access counselling or advocacy support, contact the National Counselling and Referral Service on 1800 421 468 or find more information here.

• The National COVID Vaccine Taskforce is setting up additional vaccination hubs across Australia to assist priority cohorts accessing boosters, including disability support and aged care workers, people with a disability, childcare workers and distribution centre workers. The Hubs will run for 5-7 days in each location during the month of February. The details of the vaccination hubs that have been confirmed so far are linked here. 

• Find out where to collect your free RAT from a local community pharmacy here – remembering supply is subject to availability.  Only collect RATs from a pharmacy if you are well – if displaying symptoms you must go to a testing clinic or GP. More information is available from Services Australia or the Department of Health Factsheet here. 

NACCHO says First Nations children are less likely to have received two doses of a vaccine than many of their peers, with 40% of non-Indigenous children now fully inoculated. NACCHO says despite the disparity, First Nations vaccination rates are improving. Emily Phillips from NACCHO said “We’ve got 22% of eligible Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids that have been vaccinated. Over 7,500 of those kids received their first dose in the last seven days, so that’s really promising.”

Samantha Connor, president of People With Disability Australia — the peak disability rights body — said her organisation had been overwhelmed with hundreds of people contacting them after their NDIS funding was reduced in recent months.

"It seems to be the diagnostic groups like autism, intellectual disability and people with psychosocial disability who have been affected," she said.

Aged care advocates say the deployment of the army to help staff facilities indicates just how bad things have gotten for the sector.

Many are angry too, saying this situation could have been prevented if the Federal Government had worked to fix the staffing crisis years ago.

And they point out that this is only a temporary fix, fearing nothing will be done to fix systemic and longer term problems.

Ian Yates from Council on the Ageing discusses.

“How could the whole reason a kid is kept out of a school be based not on their personality but one aspect of their life that has nothing to do with school?”Miles, 16 - now in year 11. “It’s just appalling.” #ReligiousDiscriminationBill #protecttranskids https://t.co/dF3XK48csY

— FYA (@fya_org) February 9, 2022