Strategy 2020: Goal 4

When we talk about deep social exclusion we’re talking about our core work supporting people in critical need – those who are most excluded in our communities.

Our focus will be on working with people and communities experiencing deep disadvantage. You won’t see us competing in mainstream spaces, where there are multiple providers and crowded markets. Instead, we will work with people experiencing such severe social exclusion and disengagement that it reduces their access, opportunity, choices, resources, social networks and life chances. These are people who are falling between the service cracks.

In the coming months we will be focusing the energy and expertise of Red Cross people on working out how we can meet this goal.

The ways and means we use to support those in need is in constant flux. Across the not-for-profit sector we are seeing a move away from traditional models where one group designs and delivers programs, to a model where diverse groups partner up to co-design services, sharing their resources and skills for greater impact.

We won’t be able to achieve our targets without the help of our volunteers, supporters, other not-for-profit organisations and the wider community. We alone cannot, and should not, be the sole agent of change and humanitarian action. And more and more in the future we will be partnering with others to make a greater impact.

Here we are talking about people made vulnerable by migration – there are many groups of people we are talking about and there is no one term that describes them all. Migrants in transition are those who have been forced by circumstance from their own country and who are vulnerable. They include people such as those seeking asylum, refugees, and people who have been trafficked, or used as forced labour.

We know there’s a clear association between community health and wellbeing, and location; so to really change lives, it makes sense to target areas impacted by high levels of complex, multi-generational disadvantage.

We have already adopted a place-based approach in 10 Australian communities (Kalgoorlie, Katherine, Tiwi Islands, Daly River, Woorabinda, Kempsey, Wallaga Lake, Horsham, Bridgewater and Ceduna). We’re looking to expand this work in up to 10 more communities by 2020.

Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies around the world have a long history of working in prisons and in the area of criminal justice. Our fundamental principle of impartiality means we don’t discriminate based on people’s beliefs or actions; we focus on their need. In Australia, we seek to contribute to safer and more socially cohesive communities through getting better outcomes from more effective criminal justice systems.

With nearly 34,000 people held in Australian prisons, the impact on the lives of prisoners, their families, and communities is detrimental, inhumane and unacceptable. The continuing over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and other people who experience social exclusion and disadvantage cannot continue unchallenged.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities are particularly impacted by our criminal justice system, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being incarcerated at rates 13 times greater than non-Indigenous people. There has been extraordinary recent growth in prisoner numbers among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, with an 88% increase in incarceration since 2004.

With the prison population doubling in the last 20 years, and the occupancy rate of Australian prisons at 104.4%, something needs to change.

And we think it’s critical that a proportion of the savings made in the criminal justice system are re-invested into community-based programs addressing the causes of crime and keeping people out of prison in the first place.